Industry Committee on July 25th, 2022

[Ian Scott]

No, the public includes those who would exploit that information.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Michael Kram]

We are out of time, Mr. Masse.

Moving on now to the second round, we have Monsieur Deltell from the Conservatives for five minutes.

Monsieur Deltell, the floor is yours.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I'm very pleased to see you.

Mr. Scott and Mr. Murray, welcome to your House of Commons.

As you can see, we're here to ask questions, you're here to answer them, and that often makes for some very interesting discussions.

Can you remind us of what you did at the CRTC following the events on April 19, 2021, meaning after the crisis in southern Ontario and elsewhere throughout the country?

[Michel Murray]

I don't have access to the details of what we did. Some time has passed since then.

However, as was mentioned a moment ago, the situation in April 2021 was different. The cellular network was not working, but all other services were operational. People could still reach 911.

In the event of a large-scale outage or a major problem, we get in touch with the service provider to try to understand what is happening. We also want to know when they expect to restore service and how emergency services are impacted, including 911 and alert services. That is our priority when an event like this occurs.

Since Canadians also contact us to find out what is going on, we make sure we get all the information we need to answer their questions.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

People contact you, then. You must know that, in 2021, Mr. Anthony Lacavera, the founder of WIND Mobile, alerted the public to the situation that occurred then. He said we should make sure our networks can talk to each other. He had therefore defined a problem and found a solution. Minister Champagne is now appropriating it. That's his prerogative.

We're talking today about what happened three weeks ago. Trouble is, the same company had a big problem 15 months ago. We understand that the scale is completely different for both. This morning, I even said that it was different and that we were not talking about 12 million people.

However, for the hundreds of thousands of people impacted twice by the same provider, namely Rogers, I'm not sure they found it amusing to be told it was less serious. Especially since a citizen, the founder of a group, had alerted the public. I can't believe that you at the CRTC didn't know.

After the events in 2021, what did you do to make sure that, if by some misfortune there were an outage, the major service providers could at least deal directly with each other?

I'm asking the question because that's not what happened.

What did the CRTC do after the events in 2021?

[Ian Scott]

If I can join in, I think there's a distinction here. Outages happen, and I don't like saying it's not just Rogers. At the moment it's very much Rogers, and there have been two in relatively recent times; you are quite correct. They're so different in nature that it's hard to ask why the right measures weren't put in place. Measures were put in place. What this outage has taught us is that we need more measures. We need greater network reliability and we need greater measures, prescribed measures, for the industry to co-operate in emergency situations.

This is unprecedented, but it has now happened and there need to be further steps taken. We will take steps, and the minister has announced that he has taken certain steps.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

You've mentioned the minister four times now, but as I said, he appropriated the idea of making sure that service providers work together after the events in 2021.

I would now like to turn to another topic, as my time is limited.

Are there any laws and regulations affecting the CRTC that could be changed to prevent the problems we experienced three weeks ago?

[Ian Scott]

I don't think so. A legislative provision can't resolve this type of situation.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

You obviously know that we are faiseurs de lois, as they say in bad French.

I addressed that question to Rogers' representatives, to the minister and now to you.

We therefore have no legislation to pass or regulations to change.

However, section 48 of the act clearly outlines that CRTC licensees must provide adequate service. However, there is no denying that Rogers contravened section 48 on July 8.

I understand that the CRTC is not a court of law and that your role is not to assign punishment.

Earlier, my NDP colleague went quite far in his suggestions. I will ask the question again, though, and I think it is a legitimate one.

Earlier, the head of Rogers was sitting in your seat. He acknowledged that what happened was terrible. He apologized and said that Rogers would invest millions of dollars to correct the situation. That's fine, but people were denied service for too long.

This morning, I received another email from an individual saying they had no access to their services for six full days.

What will the CRTC do to punish Rogers?

[Ian Scott]

I beg your pardon. I will answer in English, if I may.

It is simply too early to indicate what will be a commission decision. We are a tribunal. We are quasi-judicial. We make our decisions based on facts and a record, not public statements or promises. We will get a record and then we will take the next steps.

As I said to Mr. Masse, our proceedings are public. To say how we will punish Rogers is not the issue today. Today is understanding what happened and what measures need to be put in place, and then other matters will be addressed as we go along.

I don't speak for the commission. The commission makes decisions based on a record, and nine members make those decisions on the advice of expert staff.

It's not possible to give an answer today.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Michael Kram]

Thank you, Mr. Deltell.

Your time is up.

Next on my list we have Mr. Fillmore from the Liberals. I understand he had some technical difficulties which have now been resolved.

We can go with Mr. Fillmore or we can go with Mr. Erskine-Smith.

I see a thumbs-up from Mr. Fillmore, so that's what we'll do.

Mr. Fillmore, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

I want to come to the point about when CRTC heard about the outage. Can you tell us when it was that you were made aware of the issue?

[Ian Scott]

Our technical staff was aware of it in the morning. Obviously, from about nine o'clock on, our client services received some complaints. There were news items and so on.

Rogers' technical staff reached our telecommunications staff in the mid-morning. I don't have the precise time with me, but I would say something around 10:30, which is consistent with what I heard Mr. Staffieri say earlier. That was about when they got their internal communication sorted out. I then heard from a senior official personally a couple of hours later, and Mr. Staffieri contacted me later in the day.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thanks for that. We want to get on the record the sequence. We have on the record the sequence of communications from Rogers, but it's interesting to hear it from the CRTC as well.

Once you heard directly from Rogers, what did that trigger within CRTC? What started happening that day in your office?

[Ian Scott]

There were many things. Fundamentally, we were attempting to find out and discuss it with Rogers. We were in contact with them throughout the day to understand the nature of the outage and when it would be restored. Those were the fundamental issues to which, in fairness, they couldn't answer. They didn't because they couldn't at that point.

My personal message to the senior officials was that 911 had to be restored as the first priority. I wanted to make that clear to Rogers. I guess somewhat—well it's not an editorial comment—it was a statement from me that their communication with their customers and the public was inadequate, to say the least, and that they had to communicate better with the public and with government.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Okay. Thank you.

We heard from Rogers some of the potential technical solutions they've been asked to figure out because the minister asked them to. They involve bouncing 911 calls to another carrier, presumably the same as with a point-of-sale transaction. Those are some technical software and hardware solutions.

From the CRTC's perspective, what is within the CRTC's domain? What can you do to ensure this doesn't happen again?

[Ian Scott]

The words that scare me are “doesn't happen again”. As I said, this is unprecedented in terms of the nature of the outage. It's the fact that they lost connectivity completely. That could occur, whether because of a cyber-attack or extreme weather circumstances.

These challenges are increasing, so our focus as the regulator will be on contingency planning and ensuring that the robustness is there. This happened, and now we need to take into account what happens when a network goes down completely and there is no connectivity. Obviously, 911 is one of the most important elements to us, but generally we need to make sure that the carriers work together to ensure that Canadians have communications available to them.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

I wonder if you or your colleague would be able to offer an opinion or insight as to whether the regulations that you're currently empowered with are sufficient. Are there others that you wish you had in your tool kit that Saturday, or that perhaps your investigation is starting to lead you toward thinking about adding to your tool kit? Is the regulation as it stands today sufficient? Are there things you foresee that would be beneficial to add?

[Ian Scott]

I would like to be omnipotent but we're not. It's a bit like the question we were just asked.

I can't think in these.... With respect to network outages, I don't have a provision that says if we had the power to do X or Y, we would have been able to prevent this. There are areas where I would like to see legislative reform, such as access to support structures. These are complicated issues, but there are a number of areas—and the commission has commented publicly on this—where we would like to see certain problems solved. However, specifically with respect to the outage and network reliability, I think this is a situation that can be addressed by the industry. It's in their collective interest to do so, and it's in our interest and that of ISED to make sure they do so.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Chair, how are we on time?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Michael Kram]

You're 30 seconds over already.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you for your indulgence, and I thank the witness.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Michael Kram]

Thank you so much.

Next we have Monsieur Lemire for two and a half minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Scott, in several reports by media outlets, according to experts, the outage showed that telecommunications networks should be considered public assets, rather than privately owned or operated, as they are critical digital infrastructure for Canadians.

What do you think of this statement? Could it lead us to rethink how telecommunications networks are managed? I would like to hear your views on this issue.

[Ian Scott]

If I understand the question correctly, I believe it is not a matter of whether telecommunications services should be provided by a private company or a public body. It is more of a technical challenge.

It doesn't make a difference. That's not the challenge. The challenge is to anticipate these kinds of technical challenges and have a degree of co-operation.

I hope that answers your question.