Industry Committee on May 11th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

That is all we have for that round. The next five-minute round goes to MP Longfield.

You have the floor.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I'd like to thank both ministers for being here with us. I'd like to start off with Minister Monsef and then finish up with Minister Guilbeault.

We've been talking a lot about spectrum. In the last session of Parliament, the industry committee spent a lot of time studying this, and I felt for a moment here that I was back in those discussions. To bring them into the COVID-19 era, the way we are allocating spectrum and in fact doing spectrum auctions has changed. We did study areas such as Peterborough, Guelph and even Windsor, and other communities that have a lot of rural around them, getting brought into spectrum auctions. The more profitable parts of the coverage areas were gobbled up and other parts were left fallow and weren't developed.

Could you discuss how the new way of doing spectrum will benefit the communities that are now experiencing difficulties due to COVID-19?

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, MP Longfield.

It was probably a lifetime ago, but it was only March 3 when Minister Bains announced that he would be setting aside 50 megahertz in the next spectrum auction to provide a more equal footing for those smaller ISPs, to provide greater support, greater speeds and greater capacity for new applications for smaller communities that right now don't have that access.

He based that decision on what we heard from industry and what we heard across the country, and many thanks to the committee for their work. We've seen that what this has done in the past is that it's increased the way smaller communities can be connected and enhanced it by about 50%.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, and the work continues.

Minister Guilbeault, I'm very interested in the heritage funding that has been announced. Guelph has a lot of festivals. We have the Hillside Festival, the jazz festival and the multicultural festival. We have festivals that won't be happening this year, and because of that, there will be some serious impacts on our hotels and the hospitality sector. I'm wondering how the funding you've described will help get us through this year and still be in place for next year's festival season.

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you for the question. It's an important question and an important point. On what we're trying to do with this funding, this is not funding for the recovery, for when we are no longer confined. This is really emergency funding to help as many of our arts and cultural organizations as possible make it through the first wave of the crisis.

We clearly understand that we will need to do more. The Prime Minister has said it, and I've said it many times. We will do more to support our heritage, cultural and arts organizations as we rebuild, as we recover from COVID-19. That is not what those funds are destined for. They're emergency funds to help them make it through that first wave of the crisis.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Will there be a pickup point that we can direct the not-for-profits and the performers to in order to access these funds?

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

As far as organizations are concerned, I would encourage you to send them to the Canadian Heritage website. Canadian Heritage doesn't directly fund artists. The Canada Council for the Arts does. As I said earlier in my remarks, they have received additional funding to support arts organizations and artists as well.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

You have a complicated file across Canada. The artists also include authors and publishers. At the end of this, publishers will be returning a lot of books, which will leave a void in inventory that we'd love to fill with Canadian authors. Is there any thought toward that?

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

As someone who has published three books, I know a bit about the issue of copyright and editors. I've worked with many of them. This is an issue that's very dear to my heart. It is in my mandate letter. The Prime Minister has asked me to look into this. I'm assisted in that task by the member of Parliament for Toronto-Danforth, who, you may remember, was chair of the heritage committee that worked on the copyright issue. The file is in good hands, and we will be moving on it as fast as we can.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Beautiful. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you so much.

Our next round of questions goes to MP Gray.

You have five minutes.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Minister Monsef, I have a question for you.

With more people working from home and using the Internet to socialize with their friends and family during COVID-19, rural areas are specifically hard hit by data caps and throttling. The bandwidth capacity for a consistent 50 up and 10 down broadband connection is critical.

How many of those rural households have gained access to consistent broadband Internet under these parameters since your government took office in 2015?

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

We've set aside investments to connect close to 400,000 households. Just under the connect to innovate program 25,000 have been connected. This year 50,000 will be connected.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you very much.

Also as part of that, through the same program, your government pledged to connect 300 rural and remote communities in Canada to high-speed Internet by 2021. How many communities have been connected? Do you have any information for us? Is it just select communities, or are there a number of communities across the country that have been connected?

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I will pull that up for you right now.

By the end of next year over 50,000 households across 150 communities that don't currently have high-speed Internet will have access.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Will those be primarily rural communities?

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Yes. They will be mostly communities that are considered rural or remote, but that also includes communities that are really close to urban centres but don't have access. That includes backbone as well as last-mile investments.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Minister Monsef, according to the CRTC, 87.2% of major Canadian transport roads and highways currently have access to mobile LTE, which is full signal.

Does this actually include full signal, or is this low signal, such as one bar, which is classified as accessible LTE? How many bars would that be that would fall within that percentage?

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

There are communities, like my own, that weren't connected to the kind of cell service that would provide accessibility and, particularly, safety. With projects like the EORN project, for example, we are working to address those cell gaps, because they are a matter of safety as well as a matter of economic growth.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

It sounds as though, when we're talking about percentage of coverage for signal, we're not really specifically clear about what that percentage is.

As part of that though, how would you define rural? When you're saying that we're connecting with all these different rural communities, what would be defined as a rural community?

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

That is an excellent question.

Rural includes resource-dependent communities. It includes agricultural communities. It includes those that are close to urban centres but have a mix of both rural and urban. It includes many indigenous communities. Well over 40% of Atlantic Canada is considered rural. Actually, if you want to get into a philosophical discussion about what rural is, I just hosted a round table with experts across the country last week, and there's no clear consensus.

For the purposes of connectivity, we are defining rural as areas without access to 50/10.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Minister.

I have a couple of questions for Minister Guilbeault.

You stated just a few minutes ago that you were supporting news media, and that you would put funding into hiring 200 journalists in communities across the country. What percentage of that would go to local and community media?

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

This is entirely for local media. That fund is dedicated to local media.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

How would local media apply for that? Is there a website set up so that they can easily apply for it? Is that all ready to go?

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

We would be happy to provide you with the information as to how a media outlet could apply for that funding.