Industry Committee on July 25th, 2022

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Well, certainly that's part of the mandate of the CRTC. As we've seen with the recent event of Rogers, that was unacceptable.

I saw a statement by the CEO of Rogers over the weekend. It said that they have been looking at providing additional resiliency on 911. That's something I think we should be looking at as a committee. That's certainly something that is top of mind for my colleague, the Minister of Public Safety. That's part of the emergency roaming that we've been looking at, to make sure we have more resiliency when it comes particularly to emergency services.

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

Thank you, Minister. That was a yes-or-no question, so I'll add to that: Is there accountability?

We had the outage in 2021 and then this one in July 2022. Do you believe that senior executives of a regulator should receive bonuses and remain in their roles if they're not meeting their mandate?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

I think what senior executives should do is their job and investigate what happened with the outage of Rogers. Millions of Canadians have been frustrated. I've been their voice all along to push the telecom companies in Canada to do more with respect to resiliency. I expect them to do a full investigation.

As you know, CRTC is independent from my department, but I expect them to do a full investigation and come with recommendations. We will be demanding additional measures from these telecom companies.

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

Thank you, Minister. I mean this is pretty clear-cut: They're either fulfilling their mandate or they're not.

The CRTC is the regulator of telecommunications. Does it conduct regular operational risk assessments of the telecoms?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

I think they should do that. You should ask that question of the chair of the CRTC, who I understand will be a witness at the committee in the coming hours or days.

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

Well, I guess if that's the case.... There was an outage back in 2021. Did you take actions or give directives after the 2021 outage?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

The civil service would have looked into that. I would say that the nature of the 2021 outage was nothing compared to what we have seen in the last few days, which certainly was something that we....

First of all, this was the failure of one company; this is the failure of Rogers. It has acknowledged that, and then acknowledged that it lost public trust from that. What we need to do together is to make sure, as parliamentarians, and me as the minister, that we have more resilience. That's why I took immediate action with the three steps, to have that.

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

Thank you, Minister.

You're responsible for this area. There were also 911 outages in 2021. Did you take any action? Did you call a meeting with the telecoms? Did you give any directives at that time?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Like I said, what we saw before was nothing like we've seen today. There's been a lot of work with respect to 911. We all understand that this is essential for Canadians. That's one thing I expressed frustration about, you will recall. When I was in front of the media, I expressed frustration.

I was pleased to see what Rogers was saying over the weekend. This is top of mind. This was top of mind when I conveyed to the CEOs, on behalf of Canadians and all of you as parliamentarians, that this was unacceptable.

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

Right. So basically what you're saying is that after 2021, you had not taken any actions or done any directives.

You did say that the CRTC did some work. At that time, did you ask for a report back from the CRTC after the 2021 outage?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

I would disagree with the characterization that you made. What I said very specifically, and the record will show it, is that what happened in 2021 was nothing like we have experienced now.

The department and CRTC have been looking at 911 for a number of months. What we want now, and what we've seen with the recent outage, is that we need more resilience. That's exactly what I have demanded from the telcos.

Like I said, I was pleased that the CEO of Rogers said over the weekend that it's working actively on that.

We will continue. We made spectrum available for 911. We're making sure that we do everything we can from our side. The CRTC needs to do its job. We did ours; they need to do theirs. As parliamentarians, we need to hold people to account.

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

Minister, going back to my first question, if they're not doing their job, then they're not fulfilling their mandate. It's been twice in just over a year that 911 services have gone down.

Once again, do you believe that CRTC is not fulfilling its mandate? If so, what are you prepared to do about it?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Listen, I will uphold the highest standard on behalf of all Canadians when it comes to everyone in the public service doing their job. What I would suggest, MP Gray, with respect, as I think you have assigned this to the chair of the CRTC, is that they should be answering for their own actions. As you know, they're independent from my department, but I was the first one to call on them to investigate, so I think you should take comfort in the fact that this minister has taken action—

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

You're the minister. You're ultimately responsible, Minister.

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

The CRTC is independent, MP Gray, under the legislation—

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, MP Gray, and thank you, Minister. The time is up.

We'll now move to MP Gaheer for five minutes.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Minister, it's great to see you.

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

It's very good to see you, my friend.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Minister, during your July 11 meeting with Rogers and other major telecom providers, you instructed them to work together on a plan that includes collaboration on emergency roaming, assistance during outages and a communications protocol to better inform the public and authorities during emergencies. How did the other major telecom providers respond to your request for collaboration? Is there a sense of mutual responsibility to ensure that this doesn't happen again?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

I'd say I was in no mood to get a lot of comments. This was really directing them to take steps. As you said, I was expressing the frustration of millions of Canadians. I said this outage was unacceptable. As our colleague MP Gray said before, at that time I also said there should be a CRTC investigation of that. Although this was Rogers' failure, let's be clear that this was one company's failure when it did coding in what we understand was a routine update.

What I can say to you and to other members of the committee is that when I talked to the CEOs of Bell and Telus, everyone was in solution mode to try to see, as the crisis was evolving, what they could do to help with staff, experts and networks. I understand from the CEO of Rogers, whom I think you'll have as a witness, that they even enlisted international experts from their vendors internationally to get to the bottom of this. This was deep in the system, as they explained it to me. That's why I not only was pleased to see there was this level of willingness to help, but also want that to be codified in a legally binding agreement. That's also why mutual assistance will be part of that agreement, as will be emergency roaming and a communications protocol with the government and the public.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Great. Thank you.

You said that your instructions on collaboration were just the first steps, and we've talked about the charter. What do you see as the next steps for telecom providers to remain accountable to Canadians?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

First of all, I think of the communication, and I would invite you as members of the committee to see.... You're going to have Rogers executives coming, and I think their communication with the public was one thing. I think the Canadian public deserves better answers when something like this happens, and I would say government officials as well.

I was very clear in that meeting that these were only the first steps and that more steps would be needed, but we need to get to the root cause. It's a bit like with an air incident investigation: You need to get to the root cause to understand what really happened, what the fail-safe measures were, what the review process was like and who was involved, trying to better understand.

With that body of evidence, recommendations will be coming from the CRTC. As MP Gray said, the CRTC will be investigating. We will be taking up these recommendations, and I told them that I'm going to be looking at them and will likely be demanding that additional steps be taken to improve the resiliency of the network in Canada.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Great. Thank you.

I want to bring up a point that a previous MP made. There were some media outlets that said that the outages proved that telecommunications networks should be considered as public utilities, rather than being owned and operated by the private sector, because they provide critical digital infrastructure for Canadians.

What do you think about this statement? Do you think we should reconsider the way that telecommunications networks are managed in Canada?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

My first order of priority, as you would appreciate, MP Gaheer, is to improve the resiliency of the network. When I saw this happening, first we had to understand what happened. Second, we had to make sure that all resources would be put into restoring the network as quickly as possible. Third, we had to take immediate action to make sure that we would improve the resiliency. Fourth, we now have to have a thorough investigation, because you need to understand what really happened. Fifth, I would say we also have to look at additional measures.

I heard what you said, and I think MP Masse mentioned something similar. For now my concern is to understand what really happened. I think you need to do that. That's the logical next step. Once we have the findings and understand what really happened to cause this unacceptable failure for Canadians in our network, we'll know what the appropriate steps are.

As I said, what we've done is largely similar to what the U.S. did on July 6 with respect to network resiliency, but I'm prepared to go further as we look into that. As for the committee and the very valuable work you'll be doing with colleagues, I will certainly look at any recommendations you have with a lot of interest.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

I look forward to it.

Thank you, Minister.