Industry Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2011

[Konrad W. von Finckenstein]

Health care is not residential; it's done by professionals. This decision will not have any effect on it.

We have had hearings on what you call obligation to serve and, in effect, on Internet access and what should be the minimum that people are furnished with. We went to Timmins, to northern Ontario, rather than here to find out, because, like you, we are very much concerned that the Internet is there and can serve for social purposes, for businesses, etc.

This decision deals with private residential access, not with business and not with hospitals, doctors, or anything like that.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Individual doctors may be concerned. That's his point.

I have another question. This one is from Sam Schmidt of Montreal. He says:

Canadian troops overseas frequently use Skype to keep in touch with their loved ones. Caps like this would make families choose between earning a living in a home business or keeping in touch with their family deployed overseas. This decision has an impact that could hurt this type of activity. Is this policy directive shortsighted?

[Konrad W. von Finckenstein]

Lynne, maybe you can give some details, but the usage of Skype is not going to cause you any problem with 20 gigabytes to access it. The cap comes in when you have heavy video or play three-dimensional games, or something like that. If you use it for Skyping, you will not use anywhere near the 20-gigabyte cap.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

The CRTC seems to have been put in a situation where several of its decisions have been overruled by government of late. Are you not being given the proper policy guidance by government? How can we ameliorate the situation?

[Konrad W. von Finckenstein]

The system is very simple. You have two acts on broadcasting. The CRTC Act establishes broad objectives and then basically says “Leave it to the CRTC to fill out within this frame the detailed rules on everything.” Then it provides for two government checks, if you so want to call them. One is they can give us direction on how to do it, and two, if they feel we have gone wrong or people are very dissatisfied, they can appeal to the minister to have us overruled and ask us to review it.

That system has been in place since the 1960s, and by and large it works well. But right now we are in an era of incredible technological change. We also see a convergence between two systems that have been regarded conceptually as totally separate: the telecom system here and broadcasting. We have a convergence of technologies. Digitization means a bit is a bit is a bit. The companies have converged, and we're seeing integrations like never before.

As you pointed out, it's becoming terribly important for the economy. It is really vital that we have a system that works. It's not surprising that there is more government intervention, because it has become so important and so unpredictable.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Mr. von Finckenstein, Mr. Katz, and Madam Fancy.

We have about two more minutes, if you'd like to have some closing remarks, Mr. von Finckenstein.

[Konrad W. von Finckenstein]

No, really I have not. I just want to thank you for interest in this matter.

I can only say that we didn't take this decision lightly in the first place, as I pointed out to Mr. Lake. It took us three rounds to get what we thought was the right decision. We may not have got the right one. We realize, in light of the public concern about this and the fact that even Bell itself asked us to delay the implementation, it is appropriate to review it. We will review it with all diligence and try to come up with the right solution.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much.

To members, you need to know that we have two more meetings scheduled on this, so we will need to have witnesses as well. After that we will be dealing with Bill C-501, clause by clause. We were able to get a date on the 15th, so our two meetings on this subject will be done and then we'll deal with that.

The meeting is adjourned.