Industry Committee on Nov. 30th, 2017

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

In terms of people who are still operating on dial-up speeds, do you have any idea of how widespread that is, or what percentage of the population? I know it's a tough question.

[Sara Brown]

Ten of our 33 communities are still on satellite service. They would be the slowest. From a percentage perspective, it's not as high. Yellowknife, for example, is over half of the population of the NWT. Percentage-wise it doesn't speak to it as well.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

But if it's a low percentage, it might be something we could fix quite easily if we invested in it.

[Sara Brown]

Absolutely. We'd like to think so.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

Did you also have comments, sir?

[Ray Orb]

I think the CRTC has done a fairly good job of creating maps. If you go to their website, you can see the areas in every province where there's a lack of high-speed coverage. Those maps are, I would say, at a higher level than maybe what we'd like, because we know that in our own provinces there are places within those areas that are worse. They don't have any coverage at all, and that also applies to cellphone coverage. We have places in rural Canada where we don't have cellphone coverage. We actually have dead spots.

This is an issue, and I'll give you an example. You're familiar with agriculture, with farming. For modern machinery, you now need to have high-speed Internet. You need to have the app either on your cellphone or on a laptop to operate those machines to be able to calibrate them and operate them effectively. That capability isn't there.

More important, I think, is redundancy. You need to have some kind of a backup in case that system goes down, because those machines will not operate without good reliable connectivity.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

I imagine this really affects your economy as well. I have somebody who does web work for me, web pages and things, who used to be located locally, but has since moved to Puerto Vallarta, and that's where he does his work from. I was thinking that if Puerto Vallarta has enough Internet speed for him to do e-commerce from there, wouldn't it be great if we had it in remote and rural communities? It would be a significant boost in employment if your location all of a sudden didn't matter.

Could you comment on how this is negatively impacting our rural and remote economies?

[Ray Orb]

It has a very negative affect on economic development. We know that there are a lot of businesses that would like to move out of some of the larger urban centres and get out to rural areas. It probably makes sense for some of them, because that's where their roots are and that's where their customers are. Because they don't have good connectivity, they're not able to do that. Some of them rely on satellite, but that is not a dependable mode of telecommunication. It has a real effect.

We probably could provide more information on that through FCM, but the impediment is there. We know there is an impediment.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Now, this is the million-dollar question, or perhaps billion-dollar question. How much do you think it would cost to get you where you need to get? Do you have any idea?

[Ray Orb]

I know that in Saskatchewan, SaskTel would like to take all the money from Connecting Canadians. They said they could use it all in rural Saskatchewan. That gives you an idea of the complexity of this issue.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Would that fix the problem there?

[Ray Orb]

They think it will. They're doing a better job now, but there's a big part of this country that needs the same kind of coverage.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

That's right.

[Ray Orb]

As I stated, these programs are really helping rural Canadians, but it's a work in progress because we have to partner with our provinces, our municipal organizations, and the industry as well. The industry, I think, is starting to pay attention. They see that this is heading in the right direction.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Great. Thank you very much for your time. I think my time is up, so I hope we deliver for you. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move to Mr. Graham. You have seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Orb and Ms. Brown, for being here virtually. That's an ironic technical note for this file that I think should be on the record.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

In the poorest county or MRC in Quebec province in my riding, fewer than one in three households has access to broadband Internet. By broadband, we have a fairly loose definition of that even to get there.

We call our access “innovating to connect”. Dial-up and satellite are still common and obviously hopelessly ineffective. Cellphone service is also rare in large areas of my region. It applies to large chunks of that 200 kilometres on the Trans-Canada that we have, but this will change over the next four years because of the large community-led co-operative that is supported by Connect to Innovate, but we're, of course, the exception.

I want to get to the guts of this.

In the opinion of FCM, is Internet access a right?

[Ray Orb]

Sorry. I missed the last part.

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

Is Internet access, in your opinion, a right?

[Ray Orb]

A right? I think FCM believes it's probably a privilege for all Canadians to be able to be able to be connected. We're asking for basic high-speed Internet coverage, so if it's a right, that would mean that we would have to be able to have access to it.

In a sense, I think people in rural and northern communities think it is a right because people in the cities, the urban centres, already have it. We know there is a cost associated with it, but at the same time, we need it. We require this for our businesses in our rural communities to be able to survive.

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

That's fair.

Sara, do you have any comments to add?

[Sara Brown]

Certainly with northern and remote communities being so isolated, you would be relying on it so much more and would be able to participate so much more if you had it. It is bordering on a right, for sure.

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

Would you consider it an infrastructure or a service?