Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I recommend that we support the motion. I am going to be voting for it.
The industry committee has always had purview over telecommunications policy, in particular CRTC. This is not just an isolated incident with the recent tornadoes that came through Ottawa when the telecommunications networks, particularly the cellphone networks, went down. It was also an issue last May. Our nationwide emergency public alert system, which is to operate over mobile networks, failed. That was a nationwide test, I think you'll remember, last May. It failed in Quebec, and it partially failed in Ontario. I think this is something the committee should take a look at.
I am concerned about committees not doing their job in looking at these very serious matters. We have a Congress to the south of us that takes a look at these issues. We always seem to play follow-up and catch-up to that oversight function.
There was a major near disaster with Air Canada, as reported by the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States, where they said that an Air Canada jet came within mere feet of crashing at San Francisco International, almost crashing into a number of airliners and almost causing a thousand deaths. I'd like to hope that our parliamentary institutions are robust enough to take a look at that and not just defer to other governmental institutions.
It's the same with this. This is a question of emergency response. It's not a partisan issue. I think we should hear from officials from the CRTC about why the national alert system failed over mobile networks last May, what they're doing to address this, and what gaps there were in our telecommunications networks more recently here in Ottawa. This is our job, as a Parliament. If we can't do it, then it really speaks to a weakening of our parliamentary institution.
I am going to support it. I think it's important that we take a look at it. With the amendment that passed, it's not going to delay the study because we'll have plenty of time to do things in parallel.