Thank you, Minister and your department, for being here.
There's a saying that all politics is local, so I'll start out with a bit of local advocacy here.
Parkland County, which I represent a large swath of, was recently a finalist in the smart cities challenge by Infrastructure Canada. Also, in 2018, they were listed as an ICF Smart21 community in relation to its advances towards increasing rural connectivity and broadband.
In anticipation of this meeting, I messaged my local mayor, Rod Shaigec of Parkland County, and asked whether the federal government has been supportive through the connect to innovate program. His answer was that, so far, the federal government has not been supportive through the program. To quote him exactly, “It has been limited.”
They have made huge investments in building cellular towers throughout the community in trying to advance rural broadband for their area. I know this is an issue for places that are adjacent to cities across the country. You don't have to be somewhere north of 60 or far outside an urban area to have digital broadband access problems. As my colleague Michael Chong said, you could be right next to a thriving metropolis with adequate and affordable high-speed Internet, yet still have a dead zone equivalent to being near the North Pole. That's my local advocacy piece.
My next piece is that we had spoken to this motion in the previous committee. I brought up a similar motion last fall in the wake of the Ottawa tornadoes. There are a lot of things we can laud in the wake of this natural disaster in the Ottawa area, such as the effectiveness of our emergency alert management system. That's hugely important for all Canadians, but particularly rural Canadians who don't always get their local newspaper or don't have access to cable TV all the time. How do they get these essential warnings or alerts?
Perhaps you, in your capacity as minister, or your department can answer. Is there any movement on this and do you believe the government should set a minimum standard to ensure that cellular infrastructure can be powered independently in case of a natural disaster for a minimum standard period of time?