Evidence of meeting #7 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 stirshaken.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
That's the thing.
I just want to ask one other question regarding the filtering services you have available right now. Is there any interest in some type of a universal system being employed or in benchmarking?
One of the recommendations I'm looking at is whether consumers or consumer agencies or even Industry Canada can benchmark the different operators in the system in terms of their protection of privacy, information and consumers' trust related to calling.
Let me start with Telus and go across.
Vice-President, Voice and Services Development Operations, TELUS Communications Inc.
Just to make sure I understood correctly, are you asking whether we should benchmark our call filtering technologies?
Vice-President, Voice and Services Development Operations, TELUS Communications Inc.
We certainly have statistics. I shared with you that our call control service blocks 40% of the calls to people who have activated it. Should it be benchmarked? Everyone is using different technologies, so it may be difficult for an independent party to generate more nuisance calls to validate whether they are being captured. This may come as an annoyance to people. But by all means we are already subject to benchmarking in the speed test and in many other forms. I can't comment beyond this.
I'll take away your comment around the caller ID, as well, just to make sure it's not bundled with anything else.
Vice-President, Regulatory Telecommunications, Rogers Communications Inc.
Yes, and I'll echo a lot of that.
Another thing, for example, is that for universal call blocking, when we first implemented it we kept the net wide, like a big mesh. Slowly, over time, we're shrinking the mesh as we understand it better.
I think it's kind of hard to try to measure people carrier to carrier or even to international standards, because we're already constantly improving what we're doing. I think it's difficult for us to actually do that.
Vice-President, Regulatory Law, Bell Canada
Yes. I'm not quite sure what you would be benchmarking in terms of how you would judge the standards.
I guess I'd put it this way. We want to be the best at providing service to our customers, and customers are annoyed by these calls, as well as scammed. Therefore, I think it's in our interest to work with the industry to actually get the best solutions and to share our learning amongst ourselves. This is a weird area, where we're actually sharing solutions amongst ourselves.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
Thank you very much.
We'll now move into round two. We have enough time for one group of questions for five minutes.
MP Dreeshen, the time is yours.
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. If I get a chance and don't talk too long, I'll see whether Mr. Van Popta would like to ask a question as well.
In the Rogers brief, there was a discussion about these groups that are operating with impunity. It's as though there's no way to help. We had the RCMP in earlier and there were discussions there. I'm just curious about how close your co-operation is with them when they need it. It would be a bit of a discussion, perhaps.
Ms. Evans.
Chief Privacy Officer, Rogers Communications Inc.
We co-operate with the RCMP, absolutely, when they need it. Sometimes we take the initiative ourselves. We have gone to them and have reported issues that we've been seeing on our network. I've met a couple of times with one of the RCMP gentlemen who was here and we've discussed some commonalities that we're seeing, so yes, absolutely.
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB
Okay. I guess where I wanted to go on the other part is that we're looking at 5G networks and so on coming into play and, of course, the cities are where the best coverage is right now. The rural areas are always concerned, in that more money continually goes into where the cities are, and it's harder and harder to get coverage out in rural and remote areas. With the 5G part, of course, come some of the other players that might be interested in this.
Some of the other discussions we've had were about how you have people from other countries looking to cause some sort of damage in your system. It could mean that they listen in on you, and if they can do that, they can then target different ways to scam, so there are the cyber-risks that are associated with that.
I'm running around in a circle on this one, but I wonder if you could comment on how people can be sure, as we expand our networks, that we're able to maintain the type of security that's needed, so that this isn't also being used as a back door for issues.
Vice-President, Voice and Services Development Operations, TELUS Communications Inc.
I can tell you that at Telus how we run works from the premise of security by design. Our security office is involved right from the design of every single service in everything we do. That's one of our fundamental values at Telus.
Vice-President, Regulatory Telecommunications, Rogers Communications Inc.
I'll echo that. We work with our technology partner, Ericsson, in making sure that all of our network is safe and secure so that our 5G network will be the most reliable and most trusted in the country.
Vice-President, Regulatory Law, Bell Canada
Obviously, security is first and foremost. As we roll out 5G, we are going to ensure that we have the best network. That includes having top security and ensuring that people aren't able to listen in, as you've described, in those manners.
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB
Thank you.
Mr. Van Popta, do you want to take some time?
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
Thank you.
Thanks for your presentations.
Several of the presenters made the distinction between nuisance calls on the one hand and illegal calls on the other. I think we could probably define those terms, but do the telecoms have the technology to distinguish one from the other and to stop one but not the other?
Vice-President, Regulatory Telecommunications, Rogers Communications Inc.
I don't think there is a technology that can do that. I think fraudulent calls are a subset of nuisance calls. I think they're all nuisance calls, whether or not they're legal.
We're paying a lot more attention, though, to the fraudulent calls, because they've been growing so much lately and the idea is that they hurt people more. Being disturbed on a Sunday morning is bad. Having your life savings stolen is a lot worse. I think that's the difference in the focus.
Vice-President, Regulatory Law, Bell Canada
From our vantage point, we can't detect and determine all calls without.... You'd have to listen to a call, and we're not listening to anyone's calls.
We are using the latest technology and we're able to identify a large subset of fraudulent calls. We confirm that those are fraudulent calls, and those are the ones that we are seeking to block. It's only those that are really trying to defraud.
That's our particular proposal, which we would like to do as the trial. If successful, I'm sure we'll be sharing the benefits with the rest of this panel.
Conservative
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
Mr. Slawner, you were saying that perhaps the CRTC or Canadians could emulate what's been happening with the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to stop international robocalls. Why haven't we done that yet?
Vice-President, Regulatory Telecommunications, Rogers Communications Inc.
I don't know. I think we're just learning some of these statistics now.
Since we've instituted call blocking, we've been learning more about what types of calls are coming, where they're coming to and how they're entering the country. I think now is a really good opportunity, after universal call blocking has been implemented, to find out more and take some better measures.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today.
I want to thank all of you for being here and I thank the members for their excellent questions.
With that, we will adjourn.