Industry Committee on Nov. 19th, 2020

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

None has been allocated. It's a new program that builds on the first program.

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Of the first program, of the $1 billion, how much of it has been allocated?

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

My friend, we launched the program last Monday. It will be requested in supplementary estimates (C).

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Of the original CRTC broadband fund, the $1 billion that was allocated, how much has been allocated?

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

The CRTC—

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

You've added $750 million. Of the initial fund, how much of that has been allocated?

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

The CRTC fund is a separate fund that is administered by the regulator. They have already put out a call for proposals. They've extended the deadline as per requests from folks in communities, so the answer to that would be zero as well.

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Does the minister think it's acceptable that we've been announcing fund after fund—we have several different funds dealing with broadband—and that we have lots of announcements about dollars, but not a lot of announcements about how effective the funds have been?

Can we receive a full report as to how many people have been connected and what the costs are per person connected, and receive better details on how effective these funds have been?

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

Absolutely, and I will tell you that the most frustrating part of this file hasn't been figuring out the diverse range of ways that people are underserved or underconnected. It's that previous programs, as small as they were, did not keep track of data. There was no baseline for us to work from.

What this program also includes, colleagues, is a partnership with StatsCan. We'll be rolling that out in conjunction with the program to keep track of the households, businesses and communities that are connected and of how they benefit. The service providers themselves are asked to report quarterly to show progress moving forward, and there's also a tracker where you can go and see, per community, per project, which stage of development each project is at.

What my colleague is asking for is entirely reasonable. That transparency is key. For the first time ever, these projects are being counted, measured and reported on because it's a big investment, and a lot is riding on it.

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Minister, that's great, because we do want transparency, but when will we actually be able to see detailed reporting on the efficacy of every single program dedicated to rural broadband? Is it going to be before year-end that we're going to start seeing proper reports?

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

You can see it right now. The connect to innovate program tracker is available online now. It's available on the universal broadband fund site. The CRTC program, of course, they are rolling out as well. As far as I know, to date, about $72 million in projects has been rolled out. We're still waiting on the rest. The top-up funds for CTI, which MP Nater asked me about—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Minister.

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

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see you. I was looking at MP Nater. Forgive me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

My apologies. You're a little over time.

Our next round of questions goes to MP Lambropoulos.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would also like to thank my fellow members Minister Monsef and Minister Ng for being with us today to answer our questions.

As we know, the most vulnerable members of society remain the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The closure of schools and day cares has forced women to take on a lot more unpaid domestic work, in addition to their actual jobs, which many of them are doing from home because of the pandemic.

Minister Ng, my first question is for you. Can you tell us what the government is doing to help women entrepreneurs?

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Lambropoulos.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has affected all Canadians, it has had serious repercussions for women entrepreneurs. To address that reality, we are committed to advancing women's economic independence.

We invested an additional $15 million to support women entrepreneurs through the women entrepreneurship strategy. The funding will go to select organizations currently benefiting from the ecosystem fund and will help women entrepreneurs deal with the pandemic.

Empowering women-owned businesses is a priority for our government, and we will continue working to ensure women entrepreneurs are supported through the pandemic and into the economic recovery.

Let me give you an example. Sheena Russell is the founder and CEO of Made with Local. She's a granola bar producer in Dartmouth, and she's benefiting from the women entrepreneurship fund. I met her last year when I announced the trade accelerator program, when we were expanding into Atlantic Canada. That program was to help our amazing entrepreneurs, and certainly female entrepreneurs, grow their business and grow it internationally.

During COVID-19, Made with Local, which is her company, closed their Real Food Bars production bakery, but Sheena and her team didn't let the pandemic stop them. She pivoted to packaging and selling granola bar mixes. It's a new product. Instead of you walking in the store... She has pivoted, with the help of the women entrepreneurship strategy, and is now making those mixes available. They're in grocery stores here in Canada. She's exporting and growing her business internationally, and we're helping her do that.

We're going to keep supporting women entrepreneurs just like Sheena.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much, Minister Ng.

Minister Monsef, you described what it was like for you, as a young woman, when you got your first cell phone. You had your first job at the age of 10.

I had my first job when I was 15, but I was in a much different boat. I had a flip phone, and my mother took it away from me after a year, so I became used to living without a cell phone while I went to university. It was actually a good thing. I would go to the campus every day to attend classes and I would use the computer there to communicate with my friends. Today, however, that is not an option. Students are doing their classes online, so we need to make sure they have more support.

Tell us, if you would, about the government's programs and investments to support ridings across the country, including Mr. Lemire's, Abitibi—Témiscamingue? Can you tell us what the government is doing to help?

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

You have 45 seconds.

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

MP Lemire gave me a bit of a ribbing for talking about the red BlackBerry Pearl. Right now, there are millions of young women just like us, trying to find their way in the world, trying to make the most of the opportunities and to get beyond the barriers. These devices, these connections, make a world of difference for little girls who grow up in poverty, like my sisters and I did, and try to get out of the cycle.

The program we have developed is meant to provide a pathfinder service for those smaller communities, like MP Lemire's, that do not have the capacity to apply for these projects on their own. They call a number and on the other end of the line engineers and project managers can help.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

That is the end of our second round.

I'd like to thank the two ministers for being with us today.

We'll now move into round three with the technical—

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Chair, I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Yes.

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

We've had two ministers here today, and I do appreciate their time in coming today, but it just strikes me that putting these two ministers together and giving us just over an hour—and I know they gave us slightly more than that.... In the work of this committee, we've set aside time for this committee to be very specific around ministers, and it strikes me that either they should make themselves available for the entire two hours, or we should have these ministers back-to-back so that the people who participate in this committee can have a more robust opportunity to ask their questions.

We can always bring department officials in. I know how busy the ministers are, but this is our opportunity to be able to quiz them. I know that everybody did a lot of prep work on this and would have many questions. At the very least, I would suggest that for our meetings going into Tuesday the ministers should be back-to-back rather than together at the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Mr. Cumming, as you know, the motion was put forward by the committee to have the ministers come over the course of two to three meetings. We also have a deadline of November 30 in order to make this happen. With that scheduled, we were able to get two ministers today, and we have two ministers coming on Tuesday.

As is the standard operating procedure at this committee, we normally include the second hour with departmental officials for technical questions, so this is nothing that's out of the ordinary.

Unfortunately, I do know that our ministers have to go, as they are on House duty. If you would like to submit additional questions to them, you can feel free to do so through the clerk, and we will pass them along to the ministers. As I said, we also have two ministers coming next Tuesday, so they will be there as well.