Industry Committee on May 16th, 2019

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I appreciate that.

One of the things about your appointment as minister is that you are under infrastructure. I think it's really important to put Internet and cellphone service as infrastructure instead of as service and I wanted to thank you for that.

The first Internet as an infrastructure project last year was in my riding, so I'm very proud of that fact.

I want to come back to Michael Chong's point from earlier. He talked about having access and affordability. Everyone has access to a Porsche, but not everybody can afford a Porsche. We have to be careful in what words we use. When we say everyone has access, it's really quite not true for huge communities that have nominal access to Internet. When you actually look at it, as I said, it's not realistic.

When we are telling the CRTC that competition is the be-all and end-all, I don't agree that it's necessarily the case. When we're telling them competition will solve all the problems, it won't. If you don't have any service at all, competition doesn't fix it.

What we need to get to—and again, this is more of a comment, but you're welcome to comment on it—is a paradigm where Internet costs the same in downtown Montreal or downtown Toronto as it does at the end of dirt roads, just like electricity does. We did this generations ago. There's no argument that it is 3.9¢ a kilowatt hour, or whatever it is where you are, here and in the country. As long as you have a hydro pole, you pay the same.

Can we get there for Internet and cellphone service? Can we get to where the service, the infrastructure, is what you're paying for, regardless of where you are?

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

It's imperative that we make sure that high-speed Internet is affordable as well as available.

Right now, we're building the national strategy on connectivity. We will take all those things into consideration as we go forward with that, recognizing that rural Canadians should have the same access to the same services as people who live in urban Canada. You shouldn't be disadvantaged for living in a rural community. I believe that's one of the reasons I was appointed, because we recognize that there is a divide between rural and urban, and not just in connectivity but a lot of different things.

We need to make sure that people who want to live, work, grow businesses and raise families in rural Canada are able to do so just as easily as people who want to live in urban areas. I'm quite passionate about rural specifically, because I am from rural Canada myself and I can't imagine living anywhere else. I know we have to make sure that we can keep our young people there and that people who want to live in the area are able to do so.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, and good luck.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you.

We're going to move to Mr. Lloyd, for five minutes.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

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?

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Actually, I met some of the people from your community at the smart cities challenge reception the other night. We had a good conversation and I look forward to continuing that with them.

With regard to their connectivity specifically, the program was a $500-million commitment that we leveraged dollar for dollar with stakeholders. Unfortunately, it was an oversubscribed program. We do have the top-up that was announced in budget 2019. We know there is no one-size-fits-all solution for everybody, but we are working very hard to make sure that we do connect all Canadians. Hopefully we can continue to work with Parkland County to make sure that this is something we can go forward with.

With regard to the cellphone and emergency signal specifically, it's funny, because somebody was saying that when they drive, they hit an area and then they have to stop. It's so much more than being able to talk hands-free. We know that it's critical infrastructure during emergencies such as fires and floods. We saw it with the tornado here in Ottawa. Making sure that it is available to people is critical.

We're building the infrastructure now to help mitigate that, to make sure that we have that ability to connect people. We know that ISED works closely with national security whenever there is a crisis, so that they can get things up and running as soon as possible, working with the military and working with public safety so that—

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

If I could briefly interrupt, in the case of the Ottawa tornadoes, we had areas that do have adequate cellular access, but when an electrical station is hit—and there are independent generators at these stations—they only run for a short time. People were in areas that previously had cellphone access but because the electrical stations weren't up and running quickly, these cellphones weren't up to snuff.

Is the government looking at having a minimum standard to ensure that these cellular stations can run for a reasonable amount of time to ensure that our electricity system can get back up and running?

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Reply very briefly, please.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I'm not aware of minimum standards at this point. It is up to telcos to make sure their infrastructure is up and running. However, as we go forward with the national connectivity strategy, that could be part of it. Thank you for the suggestion. We've written it down.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We're going to move to Mr. Amos.

You have five minutes, please.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to committee members for allowing me to join these proceedings.

Thank you, Minister, and the hard-working public servants who support you.

I know that the good people of Pontiac, hundreds of whom are evacuated right now, many of whom are supporting family members, community members who are in the direst of straits, are thinking about the immediate term, about cleaning up and getting their house back to normal.

The conversations have already started around what we can do to make sure that next year or the year after if it happens again we won't be in a situation where we can't pick up our phone and call our mayor or our neighbour and get a sandbag or get some clean water or...you can imagine the scenario. This conversation has been repeated several times, and I appreciate that we can't change the lack of action, lack of investment from previous governments and the private sector overnight. It takes time.

What confidence can we give rural Canada that when it comes to ensuring that critical infrastructure is available, particularly cellphone infrastructure in those places where there isn't access, the investments we're making are going to help us to build that up?

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Amos, and thank you for your emotion as well.

Thank you to all members for supporting it.

It's extremely important to all of us across the country that we make sure that adequate cellphone coverage is available in situations like we've had recently with the flooding, the tornadoes, the fires. We've seen right across the country what's happening in the extreme weather events we're having. It's important that Canadians are able to feel they have access to being able to make those calls that you said are so important, even about how to get sandbags.

We're making sure as we build this infrastructure that connects Canadians that we're building it for the future, that the investments we're making are going to be for critical infrastructure. People in urban areas don't understand the difference between having coverage and not having coverage until you put it down to something as critical as making sure you're able to make that 911 call if you have to.

Some of the investments we've already made in the telcos will be making a difference to cellphone coverage, investing in different highway systems, making sure they're connected. The infrastructure we're building for connect to innovate will help with our wireless component to make sure that cellphones are covered. We need to make sure we're aware of this as we go forward when we build the national connectivity strategy.

We're committed to making sure that Canadians have access to the services they need. It's very tough when you're in a situation like that and you're not able to get out that 911 call or the help you need. We know we have to continue to work to provide the service that most Canadians need and we've said right from the start that we're committed to making sure we get 100% coverage.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

I really appreciate your saying that. I know that many rural communities across Canada right now are just wondering how this is going to help. In a similar vein, small communities, for example, like my small community of Waltham or the municipality of Pontiac have far fewer than 5,000 residents. They don't have the expertise necessarily to figure out how they can advance their local needs. If the big private telecom companies aren't willing to go there, they need the help to drive their own process forward. Thankfully, the Government of Canada has, through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, flowed funding so that municipalities can apply to have environmental assessments done, technical assessments so that they have the support necessary to inform infrastructure decisions.

Could it be contemplated that there would be flow-through funding to small municipalities that don't have that capacity or the technical expertise so that they can help advance their own cellular infrastructure and Internet infrastructure building agenda?

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

A very brief answer, please.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

One thing we've done to help the small municipalities has been with the top-up of the gas tax fund. This year we doubled it so that they are able to access more money and they can use that for infrastructure in their communities no matter what that infrastructure is. There is also the $60 million that was given to FCM for asset management help so that people in rural communities, or all communities, can make sure that they know what needs to be done in terms of maintaining their infrastructure; that they have good-quality infrastructure not only for what they are building but also for what is existing. These are all things that we've been doing. By recognizing also that small municipalities have oftentimes a more difficult challenge with accessing funds because of the application process, we're trying to help them in different ways with that as well.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We will move to Mr. Albas.

You have five minutes.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister and officials, for the work you do.

We know through the Auditor General's report last fall that the connect to innovate program has been a disaster. He found specifically that there was not good value for the money spent. Now we see that of the 892 applicants applying for the money under this program, 532 have not even heard back.

Minister, the application process closed two years ago. How is it possible that 532 applicants have still not been contacted to let them know their status?

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

First of all, thank you, Mr. Albas.

We accepted the Auditor General's report as well as the recommendations and thanked them for that. The program itself, connect to innovate, is going to be connecting 900 communities, which is three times the number that we had originally anticipated. We were able to also double the investment in the connect to innovate program, dollar for dollar, so we were actually able to do a lot more than we had planned.

With regard to the program itself, we learn from things that we do. It's always a learning process. We also saw that in budget 2019 there was a top-up of that fund—

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

But, Minister, none of that is new money—

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Excuse me, if I can—

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

The question I specifically asked is regarding 532 people who have not been told. Minister, yes, the people who were successful I'm sure are very happy with that, but by the same token, 532 people, two years out, have not been told.

Are you going to be able to apologize on behalf of the government because many of them may have gone on their own and are still waiting to hear from you as to whether or not they can go forward?

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

The connect to innovate program was extremely popular with people. It was oversubscribed. That's one of the reasons we put new money in the budget, to make sure that we could top up that fund. We know there are people who need to be connected. That's one of the reasons we've committed to ambitious targets: 90% by 2021, 95% by 2026 and 100% by 2030. We know that Canadians need to be connected. There is no one-size-fits-all or one program that's going to do that. That's the reason we're making sure that we're looking at a lot of different options to connect Canadians. It will be our vision as we go forward.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

My colleague asked earlier about what the status of the program was, and I have to say, Mr. Chair, the results were incredible. The information from your government shows that under 10%—10% of the funding for approved projects—has actually been paid. Now, Minister, many of these projects had start dates in 2017 and yet no money has been paid. Again, how is that even possible?