Industry Committee on May 30th, 2017

[Sue Hart]

That project won't be completed until well into 2018. There's also another connecting Canadians project that touches your ridings from Tuckersmith. It's very small. It was a fibre-to-the-home project. It's also completed, and I think it impacted about 30 to 50.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We'll go back to Mr. Baylis, for five minutes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I'd like to commend you, first of all, because I can see you're chasing a moving target with all the innovation that's going on. You have demand changing, technology changing, and you're trying constantly to put these things together. It's not an easy challenge.

If I understand the connect to innovate program.... You're saying by the end of summer you should have a pretty good idea...or go to the minister, and some decisions will be made. That being the case, I assume, Mr. Delorme, you'll get to at least try to reproject your map—we come back to that 18%—and it might change again.

Is that fair to say?

[Luc Delorme]

It is fair to say that. We will reproject the map. To reiterate what Ms. Hart was saying earlier, the majority of the focus for the connect to innovate program is on the backbone portion. There may not be an immediate jump in last-mile speeds, but we're enabling that to happen. In many of these communities you would never be able to do 50/10 unless that backbone came in first.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

It will give us a much stronger idea of where we are at with the 50/10 objective.

[The Clerk]

It gives us an idea of where 50/10 is now achievable, where it was not at all achievable previously.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Ultimately, this comes down to money, so when that's done, let's say at the end of summer, beginning of fall, then as you said, it's going to dovetail in with the CRT program, which is for $750 million, and you're going to be able to sit down and relook at it.

Is that the idea?

[Christopher Seidl]

Yes, and the private sector is also building out in that time frame, as well, so we'll some movement. That's why we set a target of 90% getting to the 50/10 by 2021, and that's based on the private sector continuing to invest, other government programs, and building last-mile, or in this case, mostly backbone infrastructure. Then the CRTC funds should help fill in further gaps to try to get us to that point. There's still work to be done beyond that, so I fully expect other programs to come on board later to help finish the job.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Once we have that, you're saying other programs may be necessary. That's maybe where our committee could come in and see what input we could have to finish the job, if I could say that.

[Christopher Seidl]

Absolutely. Even some of the larger connectivity projects.... The $750 million is our contribution. Obviously, there will be private sector and public sector aspects to that, so that $750 million will grow to whatever amount is matched in that. There are some projects that are in the hundreds of millions of dollars that really are nation-building, and that's where there is a focus needed.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Would it be good for us, once you have an idea of where the connect to innovate program money is going to go, to take a state of the union to check out where things are, knowing that the CRTC program is coming? This would allow us to see where we can go, how we can assist, and what further work needs to be done.

[Christopher Seidl]

I think that would be appropriate, yes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Chair, I think Mr. Longfield has a question.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thanks for sharing your time.

I want to build on where Mr. Lobb was heading, around satellites. When we were in the States, we heard testimony from EchoStar satellites, and they talked about using Xplornet as a reseller on their satellite network. We heard about GEOs and LEOs, satellites going around the equator, but they're now launching 4,200 low-orbit satellites on the north-south, on a polar axis, which could help Canada's north. They talked about the work they're doing in India and in Brazil and about how we could maybe work with satellite technology.

Is satellite technology something we're including in the connect to innovate or the connecting Canadians programs, or is that something we can study a little bit further? That's new technology the Americans are working on that I thought was really interesting.

[Sue Hart]

Satellite is a technology-neutral program. Although fibre is really going to be the focus, satellite technology is eligible under the program.

In terms of the LEOs, this is still kind of in very early prototype phases. I can turn to Luc to speak more about LEOs.

[Luc Delorme]

Taking a step back, there have been a lot of satellite advancements recently. EchoStar, which you mentioned, is a new high throughput satellite. Xplornet is already using that for its residential customers in remote areas, mostly in the south; that one doesn't cover the north. Telesat is launching a satellite this year that will be able to cover the far north of Canada with high throughput, and we expect that's what will provide an advance for the Canadian Arctic.

There is definitely significant interest in low earth orbit right now. It has been tried before, and the first iterations of that haven't worked out quite as well. As of now, we have many companies looking into it. It has a lot of potential in the medium term, I would say, but I wouldn't expect it to solve our problems tomorrow.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

Thanks to our clerk for getting all these wonderful witnesses, and for what she did in the States. We had great witnesses there too.

[Pamela Miller]

I was going to add that our department is actually consulting on a licensing framework to support next-generation satellites currently, including the LEOs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you.

Mr. Masse, you have the final two minutes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

The CRTC decision was very important with regard to net neutrality, probably one of the most underestimated decisions that we've had, and a very good one, in my opinion.

With regard to the 50 Mbps goal, explain in practical terms what it means for Canadians if that's the subsidized goal we're seeking, in terms of trying to get out to Canadians and having public funds to achieve that goal.

[Christopher Seidl]

It really allows Canadians to participate in the digital economy, from residences and businesses across the country. Obviously we have that capability in urban centres, with both the latest technology on the mobile side and the higher speeds. We also set quality-of-service standards. Economic development in our more rural and northern communities and, for businesses out in those areas, the connectivity of their machines and devices including when they're on the move for tourism, navigation, and public safety, are all important for Canadians.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

How has that number been ascribed? Is that just the base level? Has there been a defined preferable target level? That's the set level, but is there a level that we'd kind of like to get to, maybe 70 Mbps? I don't know; I'm just throwing that out there.

[Christopher Seidl]

We heard various proposals when we had our hearing on this, and most people were actually asking for lower levels than the 50 Mbps. Some were up to a 1 Gbps as well. When you don't have to think about the speed anymore and it's not a concern and your applications work with no delay, that's when you know you have enough bandwidth. We set quality-of-service standards. Latency is important as is delay, which might affect some of the technologies that can deliver that quality of service. It's really when the experience is sufficient to meet the needs of all the applications that want to use it. When you have those speeds available, you'll see a growth in applications and using up of that bandwidth faster than you think you have availability for. I expect we'll see it continue to evolve.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

With that, we've come to end of this session.

I'd like to thank our witnesses for taking the extra time today to answer our questions. It's very important. We've have a lot of things to talk about.

We're going to suspend for a couple of minutes while we go in camera.

Thanks again.

[Proceedings continue in camera]