Evidence of meeting #54 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was crtc.
A recording is available from Parliament.
February 3rd, 2011 / 5:15 p.m.
Acting Executive Director, Telecommunications, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
The commission made its decision and put those rates in place. Subsequent to that, Bell Canada reviewed and varied that decision.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
They actually came back and said they didn't like the 25%?
Acting Executive Director, Telecommunications, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Correct.
Acting Executive Director, Telecommunications, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
They reviewed and varied the decision on the basis that the cable companies, who also must provide wholesale service to the smaller ISPs, did not provide usage-based billing at a discount.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
At any discount, so zero was the number then.
Acting Executive Director, Telecommunications, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
At zero. They requested a review and vary so that their discount would be zero.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
So from your third decision in January 2011, what is the discount right now?
Acting Executive Director, Telecommunications, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
It is 15%.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
And this is CRTC's decision, right? So what's the methodology? What research was done to come up with 15% as opposed to 25% or 0%, or 80%?
Chairman, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
If you want to look at research, as I mentioned before, this is not an art. We get various submissions showing various numbers, etc., and you have to strike a balance on it. Did we strike the right balance or not? It is one of the reasons we're going to have a review and vary.
As I mentioned at the outset, I don't profess to have all the answers, and neither do the people who have been before me. There is a whole variety of submissions and numbers thrown around and studies and justifications based on different assumptions and on different facts. That's part of the job we have. We have a whole army of people looking through this and looking out, and then they make their...and we, finally, as commissioners, have to make a decision and bear the responsibility.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
So a whole army of people, but shouldn't that whole army of people be actually doing the research ahead of time to make sure we get it right when the decision comes about?
Chairman, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Of course we do. They have done research, etc., but that doesn't necessarily mean that people agree with us. As I say, there is always an error factor, because all of this, when you start something new, is based on a lot of assumptions. You have to make assumptions in order to make this decision, and their assumptions may turn out to be wrong.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
But it's a pretty big deal. I mean, this is a pretty big decision and it has a wide-ranging impact on a lot of people.
Chairman, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
We have had three hearings on this. We have looked at it three times. We have looked at hundreds of documents. This is not something we do lightly and then let the chips fall where they may. We do it very carefully after lots of internal discussion. As I pointed out, one of my colleagues dissented in minority because there is no right or wrong here. You are trying to do the best under the circumstances on the basis of partially old information and partially unknowns, and that's the problem.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
You talk about the armies of people doing lots of research, the three hearings and everything else. If what you're saying is accurate, then I would hope that you could actually explain the methodology behind 15%.
Chairman, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
You know, Mr. Lake, I make the decisions on the basis of a huge number of presentations. That's one thing. You are now zooming in on one little thing, and you're asking me here to resuscitate something right off the top of my head and give it to you six months after the fact, or whenever the decision was made.
You may think that I have it at the back of my mind. You're putting me in the middle of it. It's the biggest transition in Canada on telecommunications. Now that I'm here appearing before you, you're asking me for tiny little facts about a decision I made some six months ago. I'm sorry, but I cannot give you the answer.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
In fairness, the decision wasn't six months ago; the 15% decision came down not even two weeks ago.
Chairman, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
That's when it came out. After we make the decision, it has to be written up. It has to be translated in both languages and then published.
I wish I could put them out as quickly as we make them. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The actual date was maybe six months or four months ago; I don't know. It was quite some time ago that we did this.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Thank you, Mr. von Finckenstein.
Thank you, Mr. Lake. Did you want to ask for tabling of documents on the rationale at a later date?
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Okay. If you would provide that, that would be great, Mr. von Finckenstein.
We're now on to our last questioner from the Liberal Party. Madam Coady, you have five minutes.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
We certainly appreciate your being here today on such short notice.
I am a businessperson. Prior to getting into politics, I owned a biotechnology company. While listening today, I was reflecting on bandwidth. I will tell you a little about my company. It really does sound to me as though this is policy pulling on progress. As a biotechnology company in genomics, we did work all over the world. I did work in Seoul, South Korea. Seoul, South Korea, would ship its DNA to my company. I would do the genetic analysis and ship back the results. I had to ship back the results by Internet. I had to be globally competitive. Otherwise, Seoul, South Korea, would go somewhere a little closer than Newfoundland and Labrador to get the genetic analysis done.
This is really about competition, competition from one perspective in terms of making sure that we have the best access and the best rates, and competition to ensure that Canada is globally competitive.
My first question is, why would you accept such a low cap? I know it was Bell's suggested cap, and I'm sure there was a rationale for it. Why would you accept such a low cap when there are much higher caps in other countries?
Chairman, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
You keep saying “accept the caps”. This is a cap that Bell imposes on its own residential users. Bell's residential users—I don't know what the numbers are but it's in the millions. They've just said that when they resell, they want to impose that same cap on the people who take Bell's product and resell it. That's what it boils down to.
This was Bell's business decision. I'm sure Bell will be appearing before the committee. You can ask Bell why the cap is so low. I agree with you that it should be higher. I fully agree with you that the Internet is absolutely vital to our competitiveness. The last thing I would want to do is to cramp the competitiveness. On the contrary, we are trying to make sure that we have a vibrant market, because this is one of the big drivers of the market.
You and I are totally in agreement on that point.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
It's policy pulling on progress, as I said earlier.
As you may know, in the last number of days we have been soliciting questions from the public about what kinds of things they're concerned about with this decision.
Dr. Angelo Fuoco from Kirkland, Quebec, said:
One concern that has not been reported to date is the negative impact this CRTC decision may have on health care, especially as it relates to electronic health records. Modern EHR software will require doctors to receive and send out large amounts of medical information over the Internet.
Such information includes blood tests, X-rays, MRIs, information that doctors may need, as well as prescriptions, and so on. He said that as a doctor he is deeply concerned about this policy. Has the CRTC studied the impact of this decision on health care, or have you even considered it?