Industry and Technology Committee on Sept. 24th, 2025

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

It isn't your information. That's very clear. Thank you for your answer.

I have one last question. On page 71 of that same report, it says that the CRTC ignored an order in council in 2022 for over 34 months.

Is that standard practice at the CRTC? Is that normal?

[Scott Hutton]

I'll have to follow up on that order as well. I'm sorry. The report is quite comprehensive. I know that the authority to issue orders includes a number of elements.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

We can send you the detailed question through the clerk.

Thank you very much for your offer to follow up on that.

Last April, there was a Supreme Court decision—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Mr. Ste‑Marie, you don't have much time left.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Okay.

Thank you very much for all the answers.

I see that we have a chair who's very tough on committee members.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

You know that's not the case.

You started a question when you had already exceeded your speaking time. I'll try to find a few minutes for you later.

Mr. Falk, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses and to the commission for attending here today. Thank you for the opening comments you made.

In your opening comments, one of the take-aways I picked up on was that you would contribute some success in making cellphone plans more affordable, or the use of cellphones more affordable. That's maybe one of the commission's successes.

One thing I've noticed in the last couple of years is that there's been a shift in the whole cellphone industry. Monthly fees used to be higher, but the cost of the cellphone was minimal or almost non-existent. You just had to commit to two years. Most people replace their phones every two to three years. The monthly fees are down, but the cost of phones now is $2,000. It seems to me they've pursued the Costco model, where they take the profits up front before you've even bought anything.

Can you comment a bit on the overall cost of a two- or three-year contract and whether it's really more affordable than it used to be three or four years ago?

[Vicky Eatrides]

We do know that overall, cellphone prices are coming down. That's based on StatsCan data. I pointed to the 2023-24 decrease of 16.7%. I think more recently, just over the past year, it's been roughly 10%. That's the figure we have.

With respect to specifically the devices, Scott, I don't know if you want to address that.

[Scott Hutton]

Yes. Our area of responsibility, or who we have authority over, are the service providers—your Bells, your Teluses, your Rogers. We do not have authority over the Apples or Googles or Ericssons who make those phones available on that plan.

What we have put in place, certainly, are measures to make sure that as the service providers make their offers to you, the information you receive is made very, very clear. You understand that you are paying for a phone. You understand that if you are paying for it through your monthly bill, then it's occurring. You understand what happens at the end of your contract period, and that you are able to renegotiate your service plan at the end of two years. Those are all measures that we put in place to help make sure that Canadians are able to get the best possible price and they are not surprised at the end of the day by certain situations on that front.

Yes, we work diligently. There's a whole bunch of other market impacts. It's not just the CRTC that claims we've lowered cellphone prices. It's something that has been occurring for a number of different years now. It's probably 50% lower now than what it was about five years ago on that front. There is the impact. What we're working a lot on, as we mentioned earlier, is making sure that Canadians have the ability to switch. They can get the right information, switch easily, shop and get the better deal. They can get a deal for exactly what they want. They also have to think about whether they need a $2,000 phone or some other product on that front. That's part of that regime.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I appreciate that answer. As you say, you have control over the service providers, but those are the ones who are usually bundling the phones and the monthly fees together. My question is really this: When you compare what a bundle would have been five years ago with what it is today, is it really that much cheaper over a period of two or three years?

[Scott Hutton]

What Canadians have been feeling is that over the last number of years, companies have been selling them plans with maybe more data, more speed and more options on that front—or more phone, to put it quite frankly. Yes, over the last number of years, Canadians have not been feeling, or haven't had the impression, that they were getting better prices. In the last year or so, with a lot of the elements that have been put into place to ensure choice, to be able to help Canadians shop and do better, they are starting to feel that this is changing.

We are starting to see it with the measurement of the average revenue per subscriber by the telephone companies. That is going down. That's an indication. Through surveys, people are also telling us they are shopping around and starting to feel better about the prices.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

They're feeling happier.

[Scott Hutton]

Yes.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay. Good.

I want to shift gears over to the Internet side. In terms of rural connectivity, you were tasked with disbursing $750 million to get fibre optics for the most part into the rural communities. Were the contracts you issued to make that happen sole-source contracts or were they competitive bid contracts?

[Scott Hutton]

Essentially, it's a program we put in place whereby effectively, yes, there's $150 million a year, which amounts to $750 million over five years. We have a process whereby we make calls for applications. When people qualify and receive funding through that element, it's done through essentially a competitive bidding process. It is an open process for which we render decisions at the end of the day. We inform Canadians as to what has happened with the various applications on that front.

We are a tribunal. That's how we have exercised that approach. It is essentially a competitive bidding approach.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

There were no sole-source contracts.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Mr. Falk, I'm afraid we're out of time. However, we are a bit ahead of schedule, so let me explain what we are going to do.

Mr. Bains will have five minutes to conclude the round. Then I would like to offer, just keeping our ratio, two and a half additional minutes to the Conservatives, two and a half additional to the Liberals and one minute and 25 seconds to the Bloc.

Would the parties like to exercise that?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Okay.

In that event, Mr. Falk, we'll come back to you, if your team agrees that you will be the one to speak. That will provide you an opportunity to follow up. Thanks very much.

Mr. Bains, you have five minutes, followed by a Conservative member for two and a half, Mr. Bardeesy for two and a half, and Monsieur Ste-Marie.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Richmond East—Steveston, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our guests for coming here today.

Earlier this month, the CRTC launched consultations on “improving the resiliency of telecommunications networks and reliability of telecommunications services”. Have you made a definition of what “resiliency” is, or will that definition be informed by consultations?

As another little part to it, will this include hostile foreign actors and transnational issues and challenges? I know that my colleague across the way talked about scams and fraud. Will resiliency against hostile foreign actors, both state and non-state, be part of that definition also?

[Scott Hutton]

The process we have open is asking all of those questions. Should there be a definition? What is the definition? What is an outage? What are the technical parameters around that?

Yes, we are looking at all that. We don't have the answer yet because we are asking those questions and working with all of the players here in our country, as we mentioned earlier. We're also looking across the world to see what are great practices elsewhere to integrate into the Canadian system.

We are looking at all forms of outages, to answer your latter question.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Richmond East—Steveston, BC]

Thank you.

I'll go back to Ms. Eatrides.

There's been a lot of press regarding the wholesale mandated access to “fibre to the premises”, which is better understood as fibre infrastructure for Internet services. It was obviously a complex issue. It's one on which your regulatory body was asked to provide recommendations to government.

I'm wondering if you could speak to why this issue has such an impact on Canadians.

[Vicky Eatrides]

Sure. This was a process that was run over a period of roughly 18 months. We did a public proceeding and a public consultation. We welcomed a number of different intervenors from major companies to smaller competitors, consumer groups, the Competition Bureau and a number of others.

Following a large public proceeding and a public hearing over a period of a week in February 2024, we issued the decision that we would be giving access to the fibre of major companies, so that competitive options could be offered where they hadn't been offered before and consumers would have new options. Again, more choice means lower prices and more innovation. That's why we opened that up for Canadians.

At the same time, we are always mindful of making sure we're promoting investment. That is why we imposed some of those measures in that same decision.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Richmond East—Steveston, BC]

Ultimately, it's levelling the playing field for competition.

Thank you for that.

Through the broadband fund, the CRTC has awarded over $500 million to over 50 projects across the country, connecting communities from Newfoundland to Nunavut with emergency services infrastructure and Internet.

Why is it important for rural and remote communities to have access to this infrastructure?

[Vicky Eatrides]

The very first public hearing that I chaired was in Whitehorse. The stories we heard there about telecommunications in the far north were troubling, to say the least. We heard about kids losing one, two and three years of school during the pandemic because they did not have connectivity. We heard a lot of other troubling stories.

You hear that across the country when you meet with Canadians. Again, I'm sure this committee and committee members have heard similar stories. Telecommunications are so important to every part of our lives. Making sure we're reaching rural, remote and indigenous communities is so critical.

It's expensive to get out there. We've heard from telecommunications companies that it can cost tens of thousands of dollars to reach a single home in very remote areas. We know it's expensive. That's one of the reasons we have the broadband fund to help. The reality is that our broadband fund is a tiny sliver of the bigger funding initiatives from federal, provincial and territorial governments to roll out broadband funding.

It's critically important to people's lives.