Industry Committee on Oct. 5th, 2011

[Helen McDonald]

I think we want to make sure that all tools are available to ensure that the new competition is successful.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Yes, that's absolutely true, on that end. I'm just saying from a consumer's perspective--that's where my life is--it concerns me that consumers just don't understand all of the details when they are offered, particularly when they're clouded in all kinds of special offers.

You talked about access to high-speed Internet, Ms. McDonald, which is critical to consumers and businesses participating in electronic commerce. Certainly the world I came from, the car business, involved more data management than necessarily sales of cars over the Internet. That's still a tricky business and one that has a long way to go.

I wonder if you could explain what measures this government has taken to ensure that consumers and businesses, specifically in rural areas, have access to high-speed Internet as well as the benefit to them. Obviously we want to create a level playing field where everybody has the same opportunity.

[Helen McDonald]

The extraordinary news about Canada is that the private sector has been very successful, for a country this size with a population density our size, in reaching large numbers of Canadians. Bell, Telus, and Rogers have over 90% of the population now covered by their new wireless networks, and they're in the order of 92% to 96%, which internationally is very impressive.

Governments, not just federal but also provincial, have been active with programs trying to extend the reach of broadband. The government's program on broadband in Canada will be assisting, I think, over 200,000 households through this program, in many cases in partnership with provincial governments such as those in Quebec and Ontario. That should mean available access to broadband service for just over 98% of Canadians--i.e., they could subscribe if they wish to.

We're defining broadband service as having a basic speed of 1.5 megabits per second. In my opening remarks I said that's a good robust speed. It gives you voice-over-Internet for long-distance calls. It gives you basic video conferencing. You have a robust web experience. It's not good for downloading MRIs from your hospital--that would take some time--but it has a good basic speed, and that's what the program was intended to have.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Ms. McDonald.

We're going to go on to Mr. Hsu now for seven minutes, and I'm going to make up some time. I thought this last question Mr. Carmichael had was one that everybody would want an answer to, regarding high-speed availability, so I let it go on for a minute. I'll make sure I equal it up with the rest of the individual parties.

Go ahead, Mr. Hsu.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In fact, that was the question I wanted to ask. In the next Parliament, I hope to be the one to ask the first question.

[Some hon. Members]

Oh, oh!

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

For Ms. McDonald, getting back to the issue of broadband Internet for rural areas, are there certain choices? I know with the spectrum auctions coming up, rules will be published at some point. Are there certain choices among different proposals for rules that would be good for getting broadband Internet out to rural areas and making sure that at some point we have more or less complete coverage?

[Helen McDonald]

I'm unable to give you detail on how the government will approach the auctions. That will be something that my minister would be announcing in due course. I can say that during the broadband program we tried to be as open as possible to different technologies, because they don't always suit the rural areas or you want to pick among them.

You may know that there are new satellite technologies coming along, for example, and some Canadian firms are launching, very shortly I believe, new generations of satellites that have greater capacity at much lower costs. You also need to be aware that the private sector continues to innovate in this area, continues to try to push out its service, so that the benefits of mobility and all that entails are available to more Canadians.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

You mentioned anti-spam coming into force. Will there be metrics or some sort of follow-up to see what effect this law has? My question is whether I am going to see less spam. Can I relate that to the—

[Helen McDonald]

I'm going to ask Janet DiFrancesco to talk a bit more in detail about that, what effects we should see.

In answer to your question, and I tried to say this at the outset, we hope to see fewer spammers in Canada. I think Lisa has pointed to the fact that this is a very global game and therefore someone in Russia could be using computers in a third country or a second country to spam to Canadians here. One hopes for the interaction between Lisa and her colleagues in other countries to try to treat those cases. But it's not always possible, since they don't always have agreements with countries that want to work with them to catch spammers outside of Canada.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

The reason I'm so excited about this is that I see it as an enormous waste of resources around the world.

[Helen McDonald]

It is.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

So it would be good if we could do something about it.

Maybe Ms. DiFrancesco would like to add something.

[Janet DiFrancesco, Director General, Electronic Commerce Branch, Department of Industry]

Maybe I can just add that other countries that have introduced similar kinds of anti-span legislation—the U.S., the U.K., and Australia—have witnessed significant drops in spam originating from those countries. I think, as Helen pointed out, it's a global problem, and having our three enforcement agencies—in particular, the CRTC and the Competition Bureau—being able to collaborate with their international partners will also hopefully make an impact.

I will just finally say that the legislation, as you may recall, has a three-year parliamentary review, so we are working closely with the enforcement agencies to put in place a measurement process to be able to demonstrate the results, come the three-year parliamentary review.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Do we keep track of the total amount of spam coming into Canada?

[Janet DiFrancesco]

What we do know is that in 2010 the estimate was that 90% of all e-mail traffic was spam. In Canada the estimate was that every Canadian received approximately 49 e-mail messages of spam on a daily basis, on average. So certainly it's significant. Also, that doesn't account for your spam filters that are getting rid of a lot of that. So certainly it is a significant problem, and we do hope that the new legislation will have the impact we're looking for.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Still with Ms. McDonald, you mentioned programs to train students in the areas required by e-commerce and working with immigration to facilitate people immigrating to the country bringing those skills and helping out businesses.

Have we looked at Canadians abroad and at trying to attract some of that talent abroad? I have relatives and friends who are.... I can tell you where they are, and a lot of them are not in Canada. Are there things we're trying to do to attract them to come back to Canada?

[Helen McDonald]

That's probably a question best placed for the Department of Foreign Affairs or CIC. We have a bit of a data problem, in that we hear from various parts of the ICT industry, in particular, that they don't have this or that type of skill set or that many of their jobs are taking a long time to fill. We don't have good data that lets us know whether we have a temporary problem or long-term problem—whether we have to change the way we either retrain people and encourage students to get into these careers, or to fast-track more people from offshore, whether they're Canadians who can be repatriated or other talents we're looking for.

I would say that the issue of digital skills is a little less well understood. The data is a little harder to get at. In particular, it's spread across the private sector, it's at multiple levels of government, on both supply and demand. Therefore, there's a feeling that something is needed, but not precisely what is needed—do you have to change this in particular; what is it? There is a feeling that we're just not graduating enough students for the demand, but it's hard to get good enough data to allow us to pinpoint where the problem is.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Do I have a lot of time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

You've got a minute and a half.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

This is a question I asked the deputy minister—actually, it's more of a comment I thought I would make again.

[Helen McDonald]

I'll make sure I get my answer right.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

It's a comment based on my personal experience. Mr. McColeman asked a great question. There's a program at the BDC to try to get some of the loan officers talking to BDC's clients about how to integrate ICT into the business and improve the bottom line. I understand there's this new IRAP program, which I think will be good. I know some of the IRAP officers, and they really understand the people they work with.

In my experience, having worked in businesses, where a transformation has occurred in how the business is run directly affects the bottom line, as a result of using information technology in an innovative way. It's always been driven by somebody who really understands how the money gets to the bottom line—and all the problems and opportunities and threats—and at the same time who understands the potential for a new technology.

I want to plant that bug, with the hope that the loan officers at BDC and the IRAP officers will…. They may understand their clients and roughly understand their businesses but may not understand every single little obstacle and opportunity that comes between the top line and the bottom line. I just want to plant that bug.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

That's really well used up, that minute and a half.

Now on to Mr. Richardson for a five-minute round.

[Lee Richardson, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you very much for coming.

I want you to help me with some homework real quick here. Can you tell me about point of sale payments and smartphones, and where we're going with that and where we are now? Are the current networks and communication companies robust enough to handle that? Who will pay for it? Will it be competitive with credit cards at retail outlets, for example?