Industry Committee on Feb. 27th, 2007

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

You still see gas stations--big companies like Shell--prohibiting customers from using their cellphones. If somebody had a heart attack, they couldn't dial 911; they're afraid it would cause the car to explode. That's the extent of the stupidity.

[Prof. Daniel Krewski]

I think it's a communications issue. I was reading an article just this afternoon in the Journal of Public Health that was talking about restrictions on the use of cellphones in hospitals. When you go into a hospital you're asked to turn off your phone because it might interfere with medical equipment. This group of experts pointed out that we've never really had much of a problem with medical equipment. As long as you're more than a metre away, there's only a remote possibility of interference. With the new digital technology, the possibility of interference is getting even smaller. So I think it's a communications problem that we have on our hands.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, sir.

Welcome, Mr. Vanier.

What are you carrying on RISQ that could not be carried on conventional Internet, now that the network has been built?

[Michel Vanier]

There are very important research projects, for example an international partnership on the new particle accelerator at CERN, in Geneva. This accelerator will transmit incredible amounts of data. The transmission of this data to various universities throughout the world will require 10 gigabit dedicated lines. In Canada, several universities, including the University of British Columbia, the University of Montreal, McGill University, the University of Calgary and others as well, will be receiving this data on a regular basis. Very high throughput rates will be required for the simple transmission of this research data.

The volume of this data will be such that it will not be able to be processed by a single computer or a single processing centre situated in one city in the world. The analysis of this data is spread out among several centres, and these calculation infrastructures are usually funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

State-of-the-art scientific research requires this kind of network.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

In the specific case of the accelerator in Switzerland, how will the data travel between Switzerland and Canada to your network?

[Michel Vanier]

All of the data will be exclusively carried by what I call the world academic Internet, which is an entirely private international network.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Your international equivalent.

[Michel Vanier]

In essence, our international equivalent. There are optical fibres running along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Another example is high definition videoconferencing. Our networks were built with these needs in mind because of our educational mission. These networks must operate. The architecture of our networks is very specific and very different from that of commercial networks. We use new Internet technologies that are three, five or ten years ahead of those that are being used commercially by the industry.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

You have built up this network with the telecommunications companies and with the cable operators, depending on where you wanted penetration. Is that correct?

[Michel Vanier]

That is correct.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Now that these two entities might be called upon to enter into fierce competition, this might bring about a drop in prices. Is there a chance that you might profit from the battle between your two co-owners in the form of reduced access costs?

[Michel Vanier]

That is possible, but I cannot count on that happening. However, teaching institutes cannot run the risk of having changes substantially increase what they have to pay. That is more our worry.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

In summary, you are afraid of seeing the costs increase, but you have never prepared yourselves for the possibility that they might go down.

[Michel Vanier]

Let us say that that is an outcome that requires less preparation.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

If the cable companies and the telecommunications people are at war with each other — and they have the right to steal customers from each other — will you not quickly become a choice target, given the millions of dollars that you invest in the network?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay. Final response.

[Michel Vanier]

It is more on the access side that there is an issue for us. Our network has very specific characteristics and it remains a private network aimed at serving its members.

As far as access is concerned, it is not a matter of competition. Whether we are in a Bell or Telus CO or in a Vidéotron or Câble Axion hut makes no difference to us.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Money does not matter?

[Michel Vanier]

Yes, a lot.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay. Thank you.

Merci, Monsieur Arthur.

We'll go to Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the delegation for being here.

I'll start with Mr. Krewski.

A previous witness, Mr. Meldrum from SaskTel, made a good point that's often true. He mentioned his son saying he doesn't get a land line at his home. His home doesn't need a phone; he needs a phone. That's often the thinking of a lot of younger people and people who don't want to pay for the cost of a land line in their house and the monthly fees versus the portability, and so forth.

With regard to your work, is it probable then...? I don't want you to speculate in terms of your results, but what is the significant risk or potential risk for those using hand-held devices versus land lines, the difference between the two? With this whole debate of deregulation, some of the competition we're looking for would come through other technologies versus another technology. Can you comment on that?

[Prof. Daniel Krewski]

We've witnessed an explosion in the use of wireless devices, from about 100,000 in Canada in 1986 to over 17 million today. If you look at some European countries, the market penetration is over 100%, which means that some people own more than one cellular phone, and on average everybody has at least one. So your observation of people making more use of this technology is quite accurate.

You could express some concerns about the larger number of people using the technology, the longer amount of time they're on the phone increasing their exposure to RF fields. If there is a risk, we are looking at larger numbers of people exposed.

Having looked at just about every piece of scientific data that's ever been accrued on this topic, at this point—and there have been over 40 epidemiologic studies of radio frequency fields on health—we have no clear evidence of an association between radio frequency fields and adverse health outcomes.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, there are some subtle biological changes, things like alterations to the rate at which certain ions get transported across cellular membranes, which have no known clinical significance, but probably warrant a little bit of investigation. That's the reason we have embarked on additional research studies, to my mind the most important of which is the World Health Organization's 13-country study, which will be looking at long-term heavy users of cellular telephones as one of the population subgroups. When our results become available later this year, I think we'll be able to give you some direct scientific, factual information on your question.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I used to work on behalf of people with acquired brain injuries. The first thing I learned is how little we understand about the brain and the consequences of a series of different things we do in our lives.

With regard to the types of things you're studying, is it cancer, is it hearing loss, is it a whole spectrum of things that are being looked at? Give us a little detail in terms of those health side effects you are examining.

[Prof. Daniel Krewski]

In terms of the health effects that we looked at, let me focus first on the WHO so-called interphone study, because that's very focused. We're looking at four types of lesions, two types of brain cancer—meningioma, glioma. We're also looking at acoustic neuroma, which is a tumour of the auditory nerve, and we're looking at parotid gland tumours, non-malignant tumours of the salivary gland. So those will be the contributions, all cancer-related, from the WHO study.

If you look at the work we review in our periodic updates of the original 1999 Royal Society report, we focus on all outcomes—on cancer, reproductive outcomes, on memory loss, changes in enzyme function, mutation in cellular systems, everything under the sun. The preponderance of literature really provides no clear evidence of adverse health effects associated with RF fields.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I want to ask this question, because I'm not familiar with your institute. Do you receive any funding from those in the telco industry or associated with it, be it owners or companies? Who pays for the study, the funding? Is there any association with anybody who might have a vested interest in terms of the use or non-use of the products?