Industry Committee on Feb. 27th, 2007

[Wendy Sol]

Are you talking about the anti-scab legislation?

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Yes, the replacement worker legislation.

[Wendy Sol]

Actually, it's called anti-scab.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Well, it's called replacement worker, but are you—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Van Kesteren, I think we're straying. We're talking about deregulation in telecommunications.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Chair, I want to find out.... I think it's a fair question.

I want to know where your motivation lies.

[Wendy Sol]

I can tell you that the experience where we have anti-scab legislation, in Quebec and in B.C., is that we have seen fewer labour disputes, shorter labour disputes, and less violent ones.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

So you're in favour of the legislation. Do you think telecommunications should be regulated as essential services, or do you feel they should be exempt from such regulation?

[Wendy Sol]

During the last dispute in Atlantic Canada there were hearings on essential services, and it was determined that there was enough infrastructure that when there was a dispute, people's phones still worked. There was also a provision for essential services, if it was needed, but nobody was carved out of the dispute as a result of essential services.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Van Kesteren.

We'll go to Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for appearing here today. Actually you are the first—and I would say it's an important discussion point that has been missed—to bring up the issue over the Patriot Act. That is the act you're referring to.

PIPEDA does not cover Canadian companies or American companies once they leave this country. That's the problem we have. Once that data has actually moved over to the United States, and often it's for billing and other purposes, and it can be done through a third party—a number of different banks and organizations use this as a way of conducting business—what ends up happening is that these companies, even though they're located in Canada, are not even notified by those other companies when the Department of Homeland Security, or the FBI, or some other agency takes that information and provides it to the American government agencies. There's also no process for scrubbing that information post-evaluation of the material.

So you're raising something that is very important, because it does affect Canadians' personal privacy, and there have been several high-level cases about it. That's why some provinces have moved to provide some type of protection for their consumers, but it's actually a trade agreement that has to be done at the end of the day.

Maybe you could talk a little bit about privacy in business in general, about some of the concerns, because you are raising an issue involving the Patriot Act and our own country. Can you talk about some of the privacy issues that are faced by people in protecting our privacy?

[Wendy Sol]

You're right. There is the...what's the acronym I'm looking for? It's the local access. Through the back door, telecommunications can do some data mining, if you will, and look at the phraseology of people, at what they're saying, and whom they're calling, and there could be some really innocent links to terrorists. It is quite a concern.

But what's really a concern to us as well is that telecommunications and the lifting of foreign ownership would be part of the GATS discussion, when in fact it is totally against Canadian law. We're not having the debate in the legislature, and they're trying to use pressure through negotiations at the GATS to say that we need to change our regulations.

They're really circumventing Canadian law by going through trade agreements.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes, and what's important to know here is that there are very few restrictions on actual investment by foreign investors. It's really the controlling shares that have the restrictions. That's an important distinction that often gets lost.

Now, I wonder whether CEP has a position on net neutrality. Are you familiar with it? That is where a provider of Internet access favours various providers or services people. If amazon.com, say, pays an extra fee or takes a service, it gets quicker access on that site than others do. The government of the day right now, the minister, doesn't really have a position on that neutrality—something I think this country needs to have a law on. The United States is looking at it.

Has CEP had a discussion about that issue yet, or is it new?

[Wendy Sol]

That's something, Brian, that I'm not briefed on. I would have to get back to you. But I can certainly say that on the face of it, it sounds like a two-tier medical system—jumping the queue.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

That's exactly what it is. You pay the fee.... And it's already happening in the system right now. It's a real concern, because it affects competitiveness and of course democracy in terms of freedom of speech on the Internet servers—who is actually getting access to site locations and who is not, at the different speed levels.

Those are all my questions, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Mr. Masse.

Ms. Sol, I want to clarify one thing, mainly with respect to your union's position on the win-back provisions. You may have mentioned this, but I want to clarify it.

As you know, under one of the decisions we're talking about, the CRTC restricted the ILECs by having a three-month provision for win-backs. Now the minister is recommending that in certain areas, if they meet the test put forward by him, he would do away with the win-back provisions.

What is your union's official position on the win-back provisions?

[Wendy Sol]

We believe there should never have been a caveat of three months before the incumbent carrier could try to win back, because the perception out there from the consumer was that they didn't care; they didn't try to get their business back. We think the incumbent carriers should be able to win back their customers immediately.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much for that clarification. Thank you very much for being with us here today. I know it's been short, but it's been a very good discussion. If you have anything further to provide to the committee, please feel free to do so.

[Wendy Sol]

I have two briefing papers I'd like to table.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay. You can do that with the clerk.

Our next witness, from the Réseau d'informations scientifiques du Québec, is Monsieur Michel Vanier, the chief executive officer.

[Michel Vanier, Chief Executive Officer, Réseau d'informations scientifiques du Québec]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would also like to thank the members of the Committee for giving me the opportunity to tell you a bit about RISQ.

I have provided a brief to the Committee. I would ask you to refer to it. RISQ is a private telecommunications network serving educational and research institutions in Quebec. RISQ was founded in 1989 with a view to allowing universities to use an all new protocol that was not commercially available. This protocol was the Internet. We were the first Internet link in Quebec.

RISQ is what we call a research and education network. There are such private networks in every province in Canada and in most countries in the world. For instance, in Ontario you have ORION. There's BCNet in B.C., Netera in Alberta, and the federative network CANARIE, which links all the provincial R and E networks in Canada.

In the United States you have Internet2 , and in Europe it's called GÉANT. I could go on like that for a few minutes.

Drawing from the brief distributed to the Committee, I would simply like to mention some of the roles RISQ plays in this area. First of all, RISQ is mainly a network for research, for universities, providing new Internet technologies offering very high bandwidth communications services for regional as well as national and international collaborative work.

Another role I would like to mention to the Committee is the contribution to regional development provided by research and educational networks, and in particular RISQ, when you consider distance education. In remote regions, programs that would not be viable because of an insufficient clientele can be offered through our educational institutions with the help of videoconferencing and other teletraining technologies. In Quebec, there are two such programs: the first one is Cégeps en réseau, and the second one, aimed at primary and secondary education establishments, is called Écoles éloignées en réseau. To my knowledge, there are similar programs being offered throughout Canada.

With regard to the private sector, it is important to understand that RISQ is not a telecommunications carrier as defined by the Telecommunications Act. RISQ is a not-for-profit corporation constituted by letters patent, that limit its activities to the fields of education and research.

Mr. Chairman, RISQ does not participate in the competition engaged in by telecommunications companies. You may be wondering why RISQ is appearing here before the Committee. We are doing so for the following reasons. We wish to ensure that the changes to the regulations will not affect the pursuit of our activities for the benefit of educational and research institutions in Quebec and elsewhere in the country. Our primary concern in this regard is that these changes not increase our operational costs. We are mostly funded by teaching institutions, and any increase in our costs would be directly passed on to Quebec's universities and colleges. Our second concern is that these changes not reduce the access we have to the telecommunications infrastructure of the telecommunications carriers with whom we have, in partnership, built up our private network.

In conclusion, RISQ and similar networks should not be treated as competitors of private telecommunications providers under any changes the House of Commons might wish to make to the Act and its regulations. RISQ and similar networks should furthermore not be forced into becoming telecommunications companies in order to pursue their activities.

Thank you for your attention. Those are the remarks I wished to make.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Monsieur Vanier.

We now have our second witness, Mr. Daniel Krewski, professor and director, McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment, Institute of Population Health.

Mr. Krewski, we'll go immediately to your statement. You have up to five minutes, and then we'll go to questions from members.

[Prof. Daniel Krewski, Professor and Director, McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment, Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa]

I would like to begin by thanking the Committee for giving me the opportunity to make a few comments with regard to frequencies.

Our program at the University of Ottawa focuses on potential health risk issues associated with radio frequency fields, including those from wireless telecommunications devices. These would be mobile phones, base station transmitters, and other sources of exposure to radio frequency fields.

We've been working in this area for more than a decade. One of our major contributions is that we maintain a comprehensive website--www.rfcom.ca, if you're interested in checking us out--that summarizes the world's literature on potential health risk issues associated with radio frequency fields.

We also are participants in the ongoing World Health Organization study of potential cancer risks associated with mobile phone use. This is an area that is of concern to many members of the public, and it's an area that's not well understood. It will be the largest study of its kind ever undertaken. It has been under way for almost 10 years now. It involves 13 countries, 5,000 cancer cases, and 10,000 other participants. We have about 60 investigators working on the interpretation of those results. We expect those results to be available some time in the middle of 2007. This will be a very important contribution, perhaps the single most important contribution, to the literature on potential health issues surrounding mobile phone use.

I also participated a number of years ago as chair of the Royal Society of Canada's panel on potential health risks of radio frequency fields. The panel did an exhaustive review of the literature. It reviewed more than 1,000 scientific articles. At that time, in 1999, we reached the conclusion that there were no clear adverse health effects associated with radio frequency fields. There were some biological effects of no known clinical significance, which did require clarification. We recommended additional research be done, and part of that was a large-scale epidemiologic study of the type that the World Health Organization is currently undertaking. We do periodic updates of the literature on the Royal Society's original report, and we continue to work in that area.

That's an overview of the program. We like to serve as a resource for industry, for government, and the public. We have involvement with virtually all those sectors in terms of providing health advice on radio frequency field risk issues.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Mr. Krewski.

We'll go immediately to Mr. Byrne for six minutes.