Evidence of meeting #14 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was communities.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Steven Guilbeault Liberal Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC
As heritage minister, I cannot answer that question. I believe Deputy Minister Kennedy is still on the call—
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
You were at the cabinet table. You made that decision with cabinet. You still have the lion's share of the $3.47 billion that came in available to you in cabinet to redirect towards Internet services right now. Why can't that be a solution? Why do you have to wait on bended knee for private investment when we have $20 billion historically invested from the private sector? Just recently, with your tenure, we have $3.47 billion alone from the previous spectrum auction that you were part of and another spectrum coming up right now.
Why do we have to wait? What is wrong at cabinet with actually rolling these things out? Why do you need a private sector to do the arts and culture spread across this country that you could do immediately?
Liberal
Steven Guilbeault Liberal Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC
I would like to remind the member from Windsor West that we are investing $6 billion in the deployment of the network.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
You're waiting for private funds to be part of that, and you have other access to capital. Why wait? Why not deploy that capital now?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
Unfortunately, that is all the time we have for that.
That completes our third round.
We have some officials with us, and we still have about 12 minutes remaining in meeting time, so I can start a fourth round. I just need to get an indication from the Conservatives of who would like the first five-minute round.
Liberal
Steven Guilbeault Liberal Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC
Madam Chair, I must leave. I could stay on a bit longer, but unfortunately I can stay no longer.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
Thank you very much, Minister. You were scheduled to be here for 90 minutes and you've actually stayed for much longer than that, so I want to thank you again for being here. I know that we have your officials here as well who can continue to answer questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
MP Rempel Garner, are you going to be taking this round? I saw that you were unmuted.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
I was just going to say that Mr. Patzer will be taking this spot. Thank you.
Liberal
Conservative
Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I guess I'm going to go to Mr. Kennedy with some questions.
Mr. Kennedy, I'm just wondering if you would be able to give us a definition of what “rural” means.
Deputy Minister, Department of Industry
Thank you for the question.
As a public servant, I certainly think it would depend very much on the program you're referring to. Typically, on broadband programming, for example, you would have a definition of whether something is urban, ex-urban or rural, but that may well differ depending on whether it's another government program in another ministry.
If you like, I could give an explanation of how that works in, say, our broadband program.
Deputy Minister, Department of Industry
Maybe Éric Dagenais' microphone could be turned on just to talk a little about how we work with the telcos to ensure that we get built out into rural areas.
I don't know if Éric is available on the line.
Conservative
Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Yes, I just want a quick description of what “rural” would be in the context of broadband, just very quick.
Éric Dagenais Assistant Deputy Minister, Spectrum, Information Technologies and Telecommunications, Department of Industry
When we sell the spectrum to telcos through auctions, we have deployment conditions that mean that the telcos actually have to deploy the spectrum they buy, so they have to serve the rural areas in the tiers that they buy. Basically, as a condition of the sale of spectrum, the government requires that the telcos deploy and serve rural customers.
Conservative
Assistant Deputy Minister, Spectrum, Information Technologies and Telecommunications, Department of Industry
What we do is that we say you have to serve 90%, 95% or 97% of the territory of the tier. That means you end up having to serve the people in that tier. We don't actually have a definition of “rural”. We just put a condition on the percentage of the geography that they have to serve and the people they have to serve.
Conservative
Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Okay, here's the reason I'm wondering.
Right now, I'm sitting in the city of Swift Current, and we're just shy of 20,000 people. By a lot of definitions, Swift Current is considered a rural community. Within my riding, there are close to 140 communities, the vast majority of which would be under 1,000 people. There are only, I'm going to say, about five or six communities that are over 1,000 people anyway, so the vast majority of the people in my riding live on farms, on acreages or in communities like the one I grew up in. I grew up on a farm by a community that was under 300 people.
When we're talking about connecting rural broadband, my concern is that the metrics can be skewed to say, “The City of Swift Current has 50/10, so that falls into the 37% of communities that are connected already,” or we could be using those numbers to pad. I'm just concerned about that.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Spectrum, Information Technologies and Telecommunications, Department of Industry
Okay, sorry. I was talking about spectrum auctions.
If you're talking about the connect to innovate program, smaller communities of fewer than 30,000 people were eligible, and they had to be further than two kilometres away from a fibre point of presence. That's how we defined “rural” for the purposes of the connect to innovate program.
I was talking about spectrum auctions, which I thought was the question.
Conservative
Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Okay, that's fair. I'm looking for broadband here.
We were talking about the track records of governments connecting broadband. Between 2012 and 2015, I was working as an installer for a telecommunications company in an area that has three first nations on it. That was during the Harper government's time, and I did some of the first connections on first nations to ensure that they had a fixed, wired Internet solution. It was not wireless. It didn't rely on wireless technology, which is unreliable but seems to be the direction we are going with a lot of these rural broadband announcements here.
Especially if we're looking to get to 50/10, how are we going to then ensure that all of these areas that have a population of fewer than 1,000, or even greater than 1,000, are going to actually be able to achieve 50/10?
Deputy Minister, Department of Industry
That's a decision that has to be made as we look at the proposals that come in—project by project—to make sure they can meet that specification. There may be some where it's going to be fibre optic. There may be some where it will be fixed wireless. It will depend on the project.
That's the sort of thing we will look at when we're evaluating the proposals. Certainly the objective of making sure that we hit 50/10 is front and centre.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
Thank you so much. That's the end of that round of questions.
The next five-minute round goes to Lloyd Longfield.