Industry Committee on Nov. 26th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you.

We'll now turn to Mr. Rafferty, for five minutes.

[John M. Rafferty, President and Chief Executive Officer, CNIB Foundation]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

My name is John Rafferty. I'm the president and CEO of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, best known as CNIB.

CNIB has been part of the Canadian landscape for over 100 years with a continuous mission to ensure inclusion and accessibility for all Canadians who are blind or partially sighted.

Currently, the Government of Canada data shows that there are 1.5 million Canadians living with sight loss. We have a long history of working with governments going back more than 90 years, advocating for the accessible voting act for Canadians who are blind, and working most recently with government across all disability sectors on BillC-81, the Accessible Canada Act.

Today, we are here to talk about smart devices, affordability and access. Smart devices over the last five or six years have changed the way Canadians with disabilities are able to interact. With developers developing new applications all the time, a smart device can allow me to navigate safely in the physical environment. It can allow me to read prescriptions when I can't see and safely take medications. It can keep my connected the way it keeps others connected. These devices and applications are about a person being able to interact in the community.

In areas of education and employment, access to high-speed data and affordable plans are more important. For Canadians who are blind or partially sighted, with a full-time employment rate of just 28%, affordability of data is critical. These devices may be smart, but if they're not connected, they really are not. More and more, now is the time for us to look at closing this gap. We are looking at addressing issues related to applications that are there for the safety of individuals who are blind or partially sighted, and to even consider looking at applications that should be exempt from data charges at all.

We urge this committee to take a look at affordability, access for both rural and remote Canadians, and also for all Canadians with disabilities.

I look forward to questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

My apologies to the witnesses for the constraint in time. If you would like to submit to the clerk your full speech, or any other brief, please feel free to do so. He'll circulate it to the committee members.

We'll now start our first round of questions with Mr. Dreeshen for six minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. To the witnesses, we appreciate your being here today.

We're discussing the accessibility and affordability of our Internet. Those in high density areas look at affordability, and those in rural and remote areas look at accessibility. With my apologies to the second last speaker, Erin, costs are important, as well. When you have no service, that's when you start looking at anything to keep things going.

I had mentioned earlier that my Internet service dropped twice this morning from a little bit of snow and so on. Within 20 miles of Highway 2, here in Alberta, I will lose cellphone coverage twice. That's the sort of thing we have. That's one of the reasons why it would be important to look at something new for us for the future.

Certainly, there is concern about some of the comments that were made about no business case for service in rural and remote areas. One of the discussions we had was about satellite broadband and that it, too, is going to have some major issues.

My question is for Mr. Stein. You've been looking at wholesale rights by the CRTC. You've looked at the costs and profits associated with this.

What is the business case you see as far as satellite service is concerned? Will there be a time when satellite service will be able to put enough pressure on major telecoms' pricing to become more reasonable, in line with what we would see in other parts of the world?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

You're still on mute.

[Matt Stein]

That would be my technology background shining through.

I would say that based on what we understand and what we see of satellite technology, to truly compete with the kinds of speeds of 5G, or even more importantly of fibre, it's going to be a long time before that brings the kind of competition that would be required to truly drive down prices.

It will be a great technology to very widely offer and meet some of the basic service objectives, but we will certainly not get the kinds of speeds that Canadians would expect in more densely populated areas and that, in fact, I think all Canadians should ultimately get.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you.

Again, one of the major issues, and perhaps you can comment on this because the CRTC decision we thought had been made to give some opportunity for the small providers to be able to be engaged—and you spoke about the telecoms, the lobbying and delay that's associated with it—wasn't really what we heard from the minister.

Could you give us a feel for where it's going in the future? Will we continue to see these kinds of pressures being put on the government and the minister when it comes to decisions as far as rates are concerned.

[Matt Stein]

At this point I would obviously be speculating, but we can look at the history quite easily and say that it's been a recurring theme, and it's only been ramping up and getting worse. Whenever the incumbents see something they don't like, which is a lot, they race to appeal. This time they appealed to the CRTC, the government and the Federal Court of Appeal all at the same time.

Earlier today when the chair of the CRTC referred to the fact that the final rates were never even implemented, the only reason is that it took less than the 30-day implementation period for all three of those appeal avenues to be kicked off.

I don't see that getting better any time soon, unfortunately, because as I said earlier, a delay is a win, so if they can't win, they're going to try to delay.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you.

Ms. Knight, you had spoken of one of your major concerns being, doing it now and doing it right, and not leaving anyone behind. You also indicated that cabinet decisions have been a far cry from that.

Again, I'm a former high school teacher. I think about all of the grade 7 to 12s who are now going to be back in the virtual learning mode here in Alberta. I'm just wondering if you find that there are avenues for you to put pressure on, or are you being blocked as you attempt to get your position heard?

[Erin Knight]

Do you mind rephrasing the question? I'm not sure I quite understand what you'd like me to answer.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Right now, as you had mentioned, the cabinet decisions have been a far cry from what you had suggested, so my point is—and, again, as we see the need for remote access and for communities and families to be able to have something—are you seeing barriers that have been put in your way to be able to get the ear of government?

[Erin Knight]

What we're hearing from folks like the parents of those kids who are at home right now, learning remotely, is that they're not sure when they're actually going to be brought online or brought online through affordable Internet.

I see that my red card is up, but apologies for that. We can address it later.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

Our next round of questions goes to MP Jaczek.

You have the floor for six minutes.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses. Your testimony today has been illuminating.

I would like to start with Mr. Stein.

You've clearly delineated the issues that have occurred with the big telecoms appealing within the 30 days, and that there is thus a delay and that delay is very important.

Could you, or perhaps your legal counsel, give us some practical recommendations on what that government might be able to put in place by way of a stronger mandate for the CRTC, some sort of regulatory change that would allow them to actually achieve what we heard from Mr. Scott that they want to achieve without this type of delay? Do you have some practical suggestions that could be implemented to avoid what you have described?

[Matt Stein]

I have one, and then I am going to turn it over to Geoff White, our legal counsel.

Number one, I would say, is to support the CRTC and to do so quickly. For the last OIC, the government released the order in council 365 days after the application, to the day, and if the answer was ultimately going to be, no, we're not going to vary this because it's already under review by the CRTC...it was under review on day 39 or something like that. It could have been, number one, a very quick response that “we're not going to review it and we support the CRTC on this” and really drive it forward that way.

I'm going to head it over to Geoff for a more fulsome response.

[Geoff White, Director, Legal and Regulatory Affairs, Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC)]

Good day.

Yes, it's ultimately a question of political will. The current government has been clear that its stated priorities are competition, affordability, consumer interest and innovation. The current government and previous governments have recognized the strong role that wholesale competitors bring to this market.

The legislative regime has various routes of appeal that are allowed, but ultimately they're being gamed, and part of the challenge is lobbying. There is actually one aspect of it, in the sense that smaller providers and CNOC members are getting out-lobbied at every step of the game.

There is also, we suspect, a number of ex parte communications going on with the regulator. Bringing more transparency to the lobbying activities and ex parte communications with the regulator might be a way to shed some light on that, but ultimately, this issue of delays at the CRTC and then delays in being held up in court can be remedied simply through political will, if it's there.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you. I'm delighted to say that nobody's bothered to lobby me.

I would like to address my next question to Ms. Knight.

I looked at some of the briefing notes that are very well put together by our Library of Parliament, and there there was reference to the “Internet Code”. This is something that the CRTC has put in place. It seems extremely well intentioned.

The Internet code protects Canadians who subscribe to Internet services. It tries to cover:

Easy to understand contracts Clearer information about prices Bill shock protection Greater flexibility

In terms of what you know about its application, this was introduced in the early part of 2020, and I believe Bell has already asked to have and has received a delay in its application to them. Are you aware, on the part of consumers, if this has been helpful? Is there anything you could say about this and the impact it's having?

[Erin Knight]

I will let my executive director Laura speak to this.

I will second what Mr. Stein has said about the delays being a win, and that's certainly a part of this.

Laura, you can continue from here.

[Laura Tribe, Executive Director, OpenMedia]

Thanks.

I think the Internet code of conduct has been very helpful in providing guiding principles as to what customers should expect, but very similarly to things like the wireless code of conduct, I think they are guidelines that are not really being enforced to the extent that customers might like. They are not aware of either how the code should be serving them or what to do if they think it has been violated and they have not been treated in the way that they should be.

Even more problematically, we've seen systemically for years reports from customers—but also verified by the CRTC—that there have been misleading and aggressive sales tactics by these companies, which would very clearly violate these codes of conduct, yet with no clear remedies for these systemic solutions and all of them really being directed at individual customers being able to file complaints about their own individual experiences, it doesn't really get at the core heart of the problem of those systemic abuses.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Would you recommend that there be some sort of enforcement mechanism, potentially, in terms of ensuring that the follow-up is done by the CRTC, with remedies or fines or some way to ensure that it is effective?

[Laura Tribe]

I see we're almost out of time, so in short I would say all of the above. I think we need to see stronger penalties—including financial—for the companies, but really for customers not to have to track every violation they see individually and have to be able to be their own lawyers and to see the system correcting itself on behalf of customers and protecting them better.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

[Matt Stein]

I will turn it over to Geoff to speak to certain ramifications or the limits of the CRTC with regard to the telecom act, but we have found that, for the most part, when we approach the CRTC for disputes such as those, these take a long time to resolve. The process is very complicated and the CRTC is reluctant to sort of point out the obvious. I'll even give a recent example, although it is broader than just your riding. It happened during the early stage of the pandemic.

When we approached the CRTC and said there is a problem, because we don't have the capacity and need help, and approached the government through ISED, we were told, “Work with the big carriers. I'm sure that you guys will be able to figure this out.” The fact of the matter is that we can't work with the big carriers, because they will do everything they can to prevent us from existing, and in doing so, stopping competition.

So, unfortunately, I don't have much hope that the CRTC can weigh in on things like that as fast as required to preserve competition.

[Matt Stein]

I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?