Industry Committee on June 6th, 2019

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

I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Lloyd.

This is for the CRTC and the CWTA.

A lot of people ask about the huge increases to mobile prices, and we hear that the services people are asking for have increased over time, and that the data used even five years ago is very cheap nowadays but that modern data demands have increased.

When I talk to my constituents, I have to agree with them. I think it's a bit of a cop-out answer. Technology always changes, and consumer demands increase. Other countries have data plans, sometimes unlimited, for far cheaper than we have here. Why is that?

[Robert Ghiz]

I'll start off with that. I think what you're seeing now—and what I talked about—is that the model we have in Canada today, in which we're supporting facilities-based competition, is actually starting to lead towards lower prices. Are we as low as everyone would like? Probably not. But I can say this: between Q1 2014 and Q2 2018 we saw a 53.6% decrease for a gigabit of data. Between May 2017 and November 2018 we saw a 67% decrease. The price is starting to come down as competition and the growth of the regional players are taking place.

Our point is that now is not the time to divert from supporting facilities-based competition, because, quite frankly, doing so will hurt in terms of growing out in rural areas and it will most likely hurt our new entrants first and worst.

[Christopher Seidl]

The CRTC launched a proceeding in February to look at the mobile wireless market...a very broad look at the affordability, the competitiveness and barriers to deployment. I can't discuss any of the specifics on that, because it's an open proceeding, but in the call for comments we did indicate a full review. We thought it was time maybe to mandate mobile virtual network operators to help with that, but it's a very extensive review that is well under way with a hearing next January.

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

I'll pass my time to Mr. Lloyd.

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

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

My first question is for Mr. Seidl.

We've been talking a lot about prices and access today, but what I want to talk about is the threat of natural disasters to our communications infrastructure systems. It's an issue really close to my heart. As was noted, we had tornadoes in Ottawa that took down some power, and the generators just couldn't last long enough before these facilities were prepared. I've also had constituents bring forward to me real, possible threats from coronal mass ejections and solar flares creating electromagnetic pulses that could impact our.... These are theoretical, but they could happen.

What lessons has the CRTC learned from natural disasters, and what steps are being taken to protect our communications infrastructure from the very real threat of natural disasters?

Thank you.

[Christopher Seidl]

I'll talk from what we've done in the past.

We had a review a few years ago to look at our 911 system and networks. We did an extensive review making sure that they were resilient and survivable, and we set certain requirements. We found them to be very resilient. These are the networks that deliver the calls to the public safety answering points, and they interconnect to the local networks. We have best practices that we put in place, and we have some requirements there. We had an extensive review of that.

For emergency preparedness, that's the responsibility of ISED and Public Safety. We don't get involved in that particular space, but we are aware of their other aspects. We do, obviously, regulate the emergency alerting for the broadcasters and the cellphone companies now, so that's another aspect that we're involved with, plus managing the 911 system in general.

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

My concern is that if our systems are down, people won't be able to receive those emergency alerts if they're not getting any access on their phones.

I guess maybe this is a question for Mr. Ghiz. What are our facilities-based companies doing to harden their systems so that we can ensure that we have continuity of service in the case of a natural disaster?

[Robert Ghiz]

I'll have Eric take that.

[Eric Smith]

Thanks. It's a great question.

Obviously our members are the prime concern. They want their networks to be up and running. Natural disasters, as you mentioned, do happen, and I think you're probably referring to the time when there was a storm in Ottawa and the electrical generators blew up and cut off power for days.

There is resiliency built in the networks. Everything's theoretically possible. You can increase that resilience more and more times. It gets more expensive, and then we get into the affordability issue, so there's a balance there. I think we're confident in our members; we have some of the best carriers in the world. They're using best practices and are continually reviewing those, and I'm sure they have discussions with government about that as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

Now for the final five minutes, we have Mr. Sheehan.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much to all the presenters. That was very informative.

I represent an area that's called semi-rural. Sault Ste. Marie is a medium-sized community, and the outlying areas are combined with various sizes of communities and townships and local service boards to first nations. My area in Canada, along the Lake Superior shoreline, has different geographical topography to it. It also has a bunch of parks, both provincial and national. It's interesting. You're driving on Highway 17 and you'd think that on Highway 17 you'd get reception—well, not necessarily, for a variety of reasons.

It's like that all across Canada, where you'd think, “Oh, when we're talking about rural areas, we're talking about remote”—but not necessarily. We're talking about along our highway corridors, whether they're primary or secondary highways, where we don't have reception. In fact, I used to always pack a survival bag—just a big black bag that had everything I needed to live in case I got stuck. We still use those up in our neck of the woods.

When I was on the school board in the late 1990s, we did a lot of work putting towers up and partnering with different folks. My question is, overall, what kinds of steps are you taking, particularly with the MUSH sectors that are out there in those communities, to provide services to the areas they already serve? They're smaller. They don't quite have the big budgets. But there are a lot of people who have really innovative ideas. For instance, the CRTC just did a call for proposals. Who's applying for those kinds of things, and how are you reaching out? I might make my question more specific. How are you reaching out to rural Canada, specifically, to get uptake?

[Christopher Seidl]

For our broadband fund, part of our goal is to ensure there's community involvement. One of our criteria we'll be assessing in the projects is the level of support the projects that are put forward have from the communities. For the people who are going to be submitting applications—the service providers—their projects will be considered of a higher quality the more engaged they are with the local communities in understanding their needs. We expect that projects will come in, we'll have those conversations and we'll be looking to serve the priority for the areas.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

I'm still trying to understand it. How are you marketing and making efforts, first of all, to get the information out to rural Canada, and are there special considerations for those particular applications in trying to get money out to the communities?

[Christopher Seidl]

As I mentioned, we have the criteria for that, and we expect local, provincial and territorial governments to play a role in helping to bring those priorities to us. We're looking for projects from all regions. As I mentioned, one of the criteria is the community involvement.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Robert, you mentioned in your remarks that you submitted some suggestions, if you will, policy suggestions, to lay this ground. You didn't mention what feedback or what kind of response you got. Could you please comment on that?

[Robert Ghiz]

Is this around the directive?

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Yes, the one you mentioned.

[Robert Ghiz]

It's interesting. My understanding is that before Parliament rises the directive will be tabled in Parliament. I think the message I'm getting is that people at ISED and different officials are understanding that investment in infrastructure is extremely important. We've been going in to explain out our story.

I don't want to get too much into politics, but I will say that sometimes when you get closer to an election time, good public policy goes out the door for good politics. I will say that from everything I've seen, good public policy is about encouraging investments of our facilities-based carriers to help cover off the gaps—why we're here today. Any change in that direction, in our opinion, is going to slow down that investment we're seeing, the collaboration we're seeing and also the reduction in prices we're seeing, because the new entrants are creating that.

It's being heard. We'll wait to see what I guess ISED and the minister have to say, but I like to be optimistic, and I'm hoping that our message is being delivered.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much. That brings us to our time today.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today for such an important matter.

Before we go, I just have a reminder to committee that we will likely be getting the draft report on Tuesday of next week, so we won't be meeting Tuesday, but we will be meeting on Thursday at our regular time.

Thank you, everybody, for being here today.

We are adjourned.