Thank you, Minister.
Minister Champagne, I'll turn to you about something that relates to your department's focus and mandate—and it's about in the same part of the world as my first question was. Your department funded an important undersea fibre optic link between Prince Rupert and Haida Gwaii, and between Prince Rupert and the rest of the north coast, all the way down to Vancouver Island. The federal government invested $23 million in that project. It's been installed, and it's in the process of being commissioned and connected to communities. Some communities have already been connected—Haida Gwaii was connected, for instance—and yet, since it was installed, there have been six instances in which the cable was severed. There's no redundant link, and so, when it's severed, all of the communities and businesses on Haida Gwaii, everyone who relies on that fibre optic link that your government helped create, are cut off. They have to use a backup connection with much lower speed and less bandwidth, and it's totally insufficient. Right now, that fibre optic cable is not functional.
The company that installed it, CityWest—which is a company based in Prince Rupert—has been trying to get your attention. I approached you at the airport about it. I've been working at trying to get Mr. Turnbull to look into it as well. I sat down with Minister Hutchings, who provided an update from the department. The update from the department was, “The cable is broken.”
We desperately need to get two things: We need to get the cable armoured—we need money from your department to armour the cable—and we need a redundant link, so that when one of the cables is severed, the Internet connection—the connectivity to this remote part of Canada—isn't also severed. Will you commit today to funding the project that they've applied for, which is to put in that armoured cable so that it's not severed in the future?