Industry Committee on Feb. 28th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I have Monsieur Arthur next on the list.

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

Mr. Chair, I would like to express my disappointment, as Mr. Shipley did, but I won't try to take much more time.

I'm still scratching my head at your ruling that we should vote on a motion that is defective in French. If we vote and accept it and send it to the House, will somebody correct the motion we voted on—which I find totally unacceptable—before it gets to the House?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

There's an option, Monsieur Arthur, for you to vote against it. In fact, you can also put forward an amendment if you want to, or you could do what I suggested, which is to put forward and identify your concerns with respect to the translation, and we will try to rectify it.

The clerk gave his advice, but I've also been through this practice, where in fact I, as a member, have introduced motions at committee stage with respect to bills. an, frankly, the translations I presented were not perfect. I don't want to limit the opportunity of any member of this House, opposition or government, to introduce an amendment, especially at clause-by-clause stage. And frankly, that happened to my private member's bill before Monsieur Petit's committee. I would not want to limit members in that way.

I understand your concerns about the translation. If you have any specific points you want to make in terms of changing it, I would welcome those completely.

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

Mr. Chair, I am not a translator. I know this is wrong and I would have liked somebody who is experienced and competent to do it, and then we would have voted on something that we could send to the House and not have it laughed at.

But I respect your decision, and I understand the motivation behind your ruling. You want this committee to work, and so do I and everybody else. So I'll just shut up at this point.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Monsieur Petit.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Chairman, you read the motion. You most certainly noticed that on the fourth line—and I hope you noticed this—it says: "...et dépose au Parlement...". However, one does not table in Parliament, one tables in the House. But what is indicated is "...in Parliament...".

You don't know how to draft the motions. That is why we have people helping us, in our offices, to draft true motions. One doesn't table in Parliament, one tables in the House.

There are two different texts. That is why I humbly suggest that we do our homework properly. We will end up with proper wording. We are federal members of Parliament and we're making a mistake about where we are supposed to send this motion! We're sending it to Parliament, but there is a House of Commons and a Parliament. Imagine!

Where would we send it? The House is the House. That's the problem. You cannot accept this because the motion is already being sent to the wrong place.

I have said this from the beginning, and that is why I'm telling you that I'm not demanding a French version simply because I don't understand English. I do know where this motion should be sent, and that is to the House.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Petit.

But this committee has in fact passed motions previously to table or to send a report back to Parliament. And Parliament, in terms of this committee, can in fact refer to one chamber, namely the House of Commons. So we have in fact done this in the past. This has been the practice as long as I have been a member.

Now I have Mr. Dhaliwal on the list.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am substituting on this committee. I have been to many committees, but I can tell you one thing: I commend you. You've been a very fair chairperson. I think all members know you have ruled this motion in order. We can keep on going forever, for days and nights, here.

I think if we really want to talk, we should talk about the content of this motion and achieve something, instead of filibustering this committee.

I would request all members to talk about the motion itself, and then we can have a vote and go from there.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Dhaliwal.

We go to Mr. Van Kesteren.

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

Sukh, I appreciate that. You're absolutely right, and I'd like to pick up where I left off the last time.

The minister's direction, the very proposal we're talking about, addresses the very concerns that we see in this motion: “That the Minister of Industry withdraw the order varying Telecom Decision CRTC 2006-15 and table in Parliament a comprehensive package of policy, statutory and regulatory...”. This is exactly what the minister has done. He has given us this. So what we've done here is take what the minister has proposed and we've said no, we don't want you to do that, we want you to do the exact same thing.

Where the area of discrepancy lies—and I think this is something we can agree on right here, tonight—is in the fact that as a committee we can talk about the areas that concern us.

Mr. Crête, you had some concerns. I'm reading, from your presentation, the areas that you wanted to talk about: “We agree the telecommunications sector needs in-depth reform. However, owing to the limited time provided, we are proposing change to the local telephone”—and I'm just reading what you've given us—“service only and would like to rework the report on the telecommunications regulatory framework and submit a more detailed version in the near future.”

Let's talk about the first recommendation: “The industry committee recommends using local forbearance regions as the geographic component for establishing levels of competition. The minister also defines new regions for the establishment of deregulation, known as local interconnection regions, LIRCs and local exchanges. In Quebec alone, there are 102 LIRs. In its surveillance report on the status of competition, the CRTC used only 20 local forbearance regions for local telephone service in Quebec. By using the LIRs rather than the LFRs”—with all these acronyms, one of the first things we have to do is determine what these are—“the order increases the number of reasons making it substantially easier to ensure minimal competition in simplifying the regulation forbearance requirements. It decreases the number of competitors. The surveillance report on telecommunications states that 11 LFRs where competition exceeds 10% account for 39% of all residential lines. The minister stated 60%–40%, not...”. I guess that means “60%, not 40%”.

All right. That's a good recommendation, and we've considered this. It's not like the government side is saying we're going to ram this thing through, that we're going to accept all these proposals. This is why we went through this procedure.

We could have saved two months' time. When we came back from China, Mr. McTeague, I know it was my recommendation that we start talking about the issue of China and trade. To my knowledge, that's a study no one in government has begun yet. Instead, we decided to take up all this time. It was very educational, but the result of all of it has been that we're not even listening to what the minister is saying. We're not even giving him any direction. Instead, we're going to try to embarrass the government.

We on the government side are offering our hands and are saying we should talk about it. My recommendation, Mr. Crête, is that we respond to your recommendation, first of all. We can go through these recommendations: “We believe local interconnection regions and local exchanges should be maintained. Local forbearance regions are too broad, in the sense that competitive conditions vary widely across the area. With such a geographic area, two types of regulatory errors can arise. Number one, deregulation is granted over an area where there are many customers that have few alternatives available. Number two, deregulation is denied even though there are many customers that have no need for regulatory protection and would benefit from a competitive process encumbered by regulations. These errors are avoidable if smaller areas, which have reasonable competitive conditions, are considered as a geographic market. Using smaller markets, the decision may be to continue to regulate or to refrain from regulation, but in either case, the risk of making an error is significantly reduced.”

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

The interpreter is having trouble following. The document that my colleague is reading should be given to her because she can't translate everything. You understand the difference between French and English, that's the problem. So give her the document.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Monsieur Crête. We'll give the interpreters the document.

Mr. Van Kesteren, please continue.

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

To continue on this first recommendation, Mr. Crête's recommendation is a great recommendation. We recognize his concerns, and we need to talk about this. Rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, let's see if we can't get the baby scrubbed down.

This is our response, and that's your recommendation, so let's talk about them. Can we not come up with a recommendation to the minister that addresses this concern? And if we don't get consensus, what's wrong with having a minority report and a majority report?

If we want to talk about that one first, I can go on from here, but let's let some of the other members speak at this time, Mr. Chair. Or maybe we'd like to discuss that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I have Mr. Shipley on the list.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you.

I'm just trying to review where I left off. I'm going to carry on a little bit with what Mr. Van Kesteren has talked about, because the whole purpose of this committee is not to delay and make things more difficult for our telecommunications people, it's not to take away the advantage for our consumers; it's to give them the best that they can have in telecommunications.

I know my friend Mr. Brison has raised the issue of rural Canada. I come from rural Canada, and I would have to share those same concerns. I think that's why, in terms of the recommendations and the discussions that we've had, there is absolutely a protection for rural areas. It's all about competition. If there's no competition within a designated area, within a rural area, that doesn't meet the criteria, then obviously, Mr. Chair, the regulations stay. There's great protection, and we need to have protection for our rural communities.

One of the things I have learned a fair bit about—and I think all of us have—is that we start to understand the significance of our wireless systems. Are they going to be the answer for everything? Right now, obviously they aren't.

It shocked me the other day to learn that, at least in some areas, and maybe in more areas, 5% of the consumers have absolutely no way of talking other than their wireless. They don't have any wirelines coming into their house, and if they do, they don't buy a phone. I think one of them said their house doesn't need a phone; they're the ones who needs a phone.

Are there concerns about quality out there at this point in time? Absolutely. There are. But in my area where it's maybe not as hilly and as mountainous as some parts of the country, we do have a lot of tree cover. I know trees eat up some of the signal, and I know they block the signal in some areas. But we've gone from where we were five to ten years ago, when you used to carry a phone around in a bag that weighed five pounds, to where we now have them almost as.... The BlackBerry that I have is now out of date, and I've only had it a year. They now come a lot smaller than this. So we obviously need to be cognizant of the changes that are going to happen.

I want to go to Mr. Crête's first recommendation. Those are the things we want to talk about today. He talks about defining regions and moving them into the larger regions for local exchanges. He used the example that there are 102 LIRs in Quebec, which I guess are local interconnected regions. Can we work with those? Some suggestions are that having larger ones may not be as good as having them broken down into smaller ones. With smaller ones, you don't get caught with a.... You may have an urban area within that region that will have great service—

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Shipley, and you'll appreciate this.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Will I?

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have a point of order, Mr. McTeague.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

It is a very salient one. It's riveting and it's up there with Ich bin ein Berliner.

I wanted to point out that I think Mr. Shipley,

Mr. Arthur and Mr. Petit would probably agree. If they don't, then obviously they will not participate. However, I would suggest to the chairman that he ask for a meal for several people, including our clerks and the committee members sitting at the table.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, on this point of order, Monsieur Petit,

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Perhaps, as the chair, I can get a sense of whether we are going to be here for a while. Is that the sense of the committee?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I'm ready to vote anytime, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I know, but....

Okay, it looks like we may be here for awhile. I understand the Conservatives have some more points to make. Am I correct on that?

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I thought Mr. Masse indicated he wanted to have a vote.