Thank you very much, MP Dong. It's great to see you again as well, my friend.
As you know, I was wrapping up a mission in Japan as the events unfolded, when I was made aware of the initial issue that we had with the Rogers network. With the time difference, I think it was in the very early hours in Tokyo, if I recall—around 4 or 5 a.m.—that I was made aware it was more serious. At that point, I did reach out immediately to Tony Staffieri, the CEO of Rogers.
Obviously, he understood the seriousness of the situation and the obligation he had to inform the minister of industry of the situation. On that call, I first inquired about the network situation and how long it would take. Obviously, at that moment I was expressing the frustration of millions of Canadians, but I was also in solution mode. When you have a crisis of that nature, which is unprecedented....
Immediately after that call, I reached out to the CEOs of Bell and Telus. Everyone offered their assistance. The Canadian Telecom Resiliency Working Group was also called upon to make sure that an update was provided by Rogers, but I would say, MP Dong, my takeaway from what happened....
This is why I demanded—I did not ask, I demanded—three things from the telecom companies in Canada, as I landed in Canada a few hours later.
I convened a meeting with them. First, I wanted to formalize the mutual assistance agreement. I knew that some form of informal mutual assistance existed between the networks, but I said, “This is not good enough for Canadians. Now you need to enter into a binding formal agreement to include that.”
The second thing was emergency roaming, and that is quite similar to what the Federal Communications Commission did in the United States recently on July 6.
However, I went beyond that, MP Dong, to address exactly what you said. They failed to inform the Canadian public properly. They failed to inform the Government of Canada properly. It should not be up to the Minister of Industry to reach out to the CEO of Rogers. It should be the other way—