Evidence of meeting #94 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was access.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, SouthWestern Integrated Fibre Technology
That's correct.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Okay, and then the infrastructure is owned by a combination of the public and private sectors. How do you recover the costs?
5 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, SouthWestern Integrated Fibre Technology
For seven years, it's a requirement that we own 51% as SWIFT, the not-for-profit. To get the private sector to bid, we have agreed that at the end of seven years they will own the infrastructure outright. Our rules will still apply because they've signed a contract with us. They will own it 100% at the end.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
How has the $500 million that we discussed played a role in this?
5 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, SouthWestern Integrated Fibre Technology
We were funded through the small communities fund, which is part of new building Canada, which is an infrastructure fund, not the Connect to Innovate program. Connect to innovate could have been used this way too, except they were more specific about their blue dots on the map that required service. As I said, some of the staff did analysis there.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
I have a follow-up question to that. These are the most questions I've asked in two years.
You, as a company, SWIFT, are doing this. Would a small city be able to use that model in your place?
5:05 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, SouthWestern Integrated Fibre Technology
In a small city, there's a business case for the private sector to do the work. We don't see the need to subsidize them.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
In some cases you don't have a lot of providers going to smaller cities because there's just not that business case. However, if the city were to look at this type of model, not only could they expand their broadband coverage but they could also bring in revenue if they were to sell their services.
5:05 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, SouthWestern Integrated Fibre Technology
We've had some smaller municipalities in our region do a model where the municipality puts the conduit and the fibre in, and then rents it to providers to provide services.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
All right, I want to thank everybody for testifying today. It has been very interesting.
This is our last day of testimony, and we will—
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you, Chair, for allowing me to be part of this.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
5:05 p.m.
Some hon. members
Goodbye everybody.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
5:05 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
All right.
Thank you all for coming.
Just to remind everybody, next Tuesday we have our technical briefing. We had word back that rather than having the Copyright Board on Thursday, all of the officials coming on Tuesday will be able to speak to what the Copyright Board does. That means that on Thursday we will give our drafting instructions on our broadband study to our analysts, and then we will start to strategize for our review of the Copyright Act after the technical briefings.
Thank you all very much. Have a super-duper weekend.
Thank you very much everyone.
We are adjourned.
