I did.
Evidence of meeting #32 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was rogers.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #32 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was rogers.
A video is available from Parliament.
2:15 p.m.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
I did.
2:15 p.m.
Liberal
Han Dong Liberal Don Valley North, ON
Do you have it right with you? There you go. My version is redacted.
2:15 p.m.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
I haven't finished my homework. We received them, obviously, towards the end of the business day on Friday. Staff began examining the responses immediately. I worked over the weekend. I personally reviewed them. But certainly some aspects of theirs are well beyond mine.
2:15 p.m.
Liberal
2:15 p.m.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
The next steps are clearly with respect to these responses. We need to finish our examination of the responses and make a determination as to whether these are complete answers. My initial impression is that Rogers is being fully co-operative and transparent. There appear to be fulsome responses, but I'll let my expert staff finish their analysis and indicate whether anything is missing. Then we will work with ESWG to help with the minister's already established objectives in any way we can as we decide what are the next steps.
2:15 p.m.
Liberal
Han Dong Liberal Don Valley North, ON
Okay.
There was one particular bit of information I was looking for, and I don't think it was asked. Is there any way that Rogers can quantify the economic loss directly due to the outage? I'm not talking about something indirect, whether or not people lost their means to complete transactions. I'm talking about direct economic losses. I'm talking about small businesses, not-for-profits not being able to raise funds on a Friday. We know that for a lot of Muslim organizations, Friday is their day to receive donations.
Would you be able to include that question in your next steps of the investigation to see if we can quantify the economic loss due to the outage?
2:15 p.m.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
We certainly do not have that information. I don't know whether Rogers could possibly make such an estimate. I don't know if you put that question to them this morning.
I think it would be very difficult to quantify. There are so many unknowns.
I did hear Mr. Staffieri say that they are in discussion with both residential and business customers to understand better the economic impact on them. I have no further information at this point in time.
2:15 p.m.
Liberal
Han Dong Liberal Don Valley North, ON
As a member of the committee, can I have your commitment to ask that question to Rogers, to ask them to quantify...?
2:15 p.m.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
We can ask them, yes.
2:15 p.m.
Liberal
Han Dong Liberal Don Valley North, ON
I appreciate the difference between the 2021 outage and the outage that was experienced last Friday. Were there any instructions or changes promised by Rogers back in 2021? Again, they said that they'll do things to make sure this doesn't happen again.
2:15 p.m.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
I am aware that they informed us and took steps following the outage so that particular type of outage could not happen, would not happen.
Sorry, I shouldn't say “can't happen”. That never is the case.
2:20 p.m.
Liberal
Han Dong Liberal Don Valley North, ON
They took steps. Were you satisfied with the steps they took and that since 2021 those outages haven't happened?
2:20 p.m.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
With hindsight, I would now say no, maybe they should have been focusing on the core.
Yes, we were. They addressed the issue. They identified the cause. They introduced measures that would lessen the probability of that ever happening again. In that sense, yes, but one can never anticipate whether or not outages can happen given different circumstances.
2:20 p.m.
Liberal
2:20 p.m.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
I'm saying that in hindsight, it turns out that was a much smaller problem than the one we experienced on July 8 when the core network went down.
2:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Michael Kram
Thank you, Mr. Dong. Your time is up.
Next we have Monsieur Lemire from the Bloc Québécois for six minutes.
2:20 p.m.
Bloc
Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm glad to see you in that chair.
Mr. Scott, thank you for being with us.
Some media outlets reported that, according to certain experts, the Rogers network outage shows that the country's telecommunications sector needs more competition and its companies need better government oversight.
Do you agree with this statement? Why?
2:20 p.m.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
I think these are two very different subjects.
We certainly need to have more competition between companies that provide wireless services and those that provide broadband Internet access services.
However, in this situation, it's not clear there is any distinction between the two.
Mr. Murray, do you have anything to add?
2:20 p.m.
Director, Dispute Resolution and Regulatory Implementation, Telecommunications, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
No, I have nothing to add.
2:20 p.m.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Very well.
Mr. Lemire, thank you for the question.
2:20 p.m.
Bloc
Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Perfect.
I echo the minister's words about wanting a resilient, reliable and affordable network. I think one of the solutions is competition or a fourth player. In wireless, you have to make sure that there is some pressure on all the competitors.
Nonetheless, as you mentioned, the CRTC has requested detailed explanations from Rogers regarding several aspects of the network outage.
Do you intend to publicly disclose the information Rogers will provide?
2:20 p.m.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
For the most part, we certainly will, but some information is confidential. However, as I mentioned in my presentation, everything we can publish is publicly available.
2:20 p.m.
Bloc
Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
If you are not satisfied with the answers you get from Rogers, what steps can you take to ensure that events such as major outages do not happen again?
2:20 p.m.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
We have several tools at our disposal. For example, if we have more questions for Rogers and they don't respond, we can apply administrative monetary penalties. That's a possibility, but I don't think that will be necessary.
2:20 p.m.
Bloc
Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Failures occur regularly, but never on this scale.
Have other options been considered?
Do you have the authority to, for instance, inspect Rogers' facilities and ask questions about their backup system? What happens if there is an outage? Do you conduct audits?
Do you have a way to verify a telecommunications network's resiliency?