Thank you very much to the committee chair, members of the committee and fellow panellists for coming together on this very important meeting.
The Rogers Communications service outage underscores the risk of so many essential public services relying on a tight oligopoly of players. Communication services underpin the economy, society and people's daily lives. Typically, such things are taken for granted until they break down, as was illustrated so powerfully when the Rogers Communications outage on July 8 took place. With it, it disabled access to 911 services, financial services payment systems like Interac, and the ability of businesses, health, law enforcement and citizens to go about their daily activities.
The Rogers Communications service outage raises significant questions about how we approach communications and Internet regulation. The idea that communications services are essential public services and that people must have access to universal, affordable and secure communications is a bedrock principle of telecommunications policy in the Telecommunications Act, and it has been since communications regulation first emerged in this country in the early 1900s. Those principles must be updated and reinforced for the 21st century. The undue emphasis on market forces in the 2006 telecommunications policy directive, alongside the companies' rhetoric and regulatory hesitance within the CRTC, ISED and the Competition Bureau since, must change.
Excessive dependence on one or a small number of essential communication service providers is risky. As of 2021, the big five communications and Internet conglomerates in Canada—Bell, Rogers, Telus, Shaw and Videotron—accounted for roughly 87% of the 71 million mobile wireless and wireline connections in Canada that support mobile phone, Internet service, television distribution and POTS, plain old telephone service.
Rogers accounts for close to a quarter of all such connections, or 16.5 million connections, on its own. It is already the second-largest communications conglomerate in this country. If its proposed deal to acquire Shaw Communications, the fourth-largest such company in this country, is approved, its share would grow to a third of the market, or 23.5 million connections, in service. This is too much control over essential communication services to rest with one firm. It is risky; it is a bad idea, and I urge policy-makers to block this deal or carefully consider the alternative options I will lay out.
The scale, scope and significance of essential service providers means that they must have public obligations to match their importance as the gateways through which society's communications must pass. Some recent steps by the Competition Bureau and a few murmurs at ISED have recognized this, although the role of the CRTC under its current chair has been entirely inadequate. The appointment of a new chair must reflect such realities rather than give in to those who want to put someone in charge from the broadcast industries.
I think it's also important to move away from what we heard far too much of this morning, this mother-may-I approach where the minister speaks toughly and ISED and regulators treat the tight oligopoly of players who control Canada's communication infrastructure with kid gloves and undue deference. It is time to use the legislative measures at the minister's disposal and impose more stringent regulatory mandates on the carriers with respect to network quality, information disclosure requirements and measures to be adopted when network outages or disruptions occur. This means, for example, that instead of the minister and the CRTC jawboning and requesting that the major communication providers come up with a plan within 60 days to mitigate the impacts of future outages, they need to take a number of steps. Here are five quick ones.
First, use order in council powers under section 8 of the Telecommunications Act to order the companies to devise a plan that meets policy-makers' and the public's expectations.
Second, impose tougher conditions of licence during spectrum auctions or transfers with respect to network quality standards, information disclosure and disruption reporting.
Third, require temporary network switching in the case of network outages governed by mandatory rules that allow institutional users to fall back on secondary contracts for services or allow everyday users to temporarily switch service providers using a web-based application with a daily cap on fees for the duration of the problem.
Fourth, the proposed Rogers-Shaw deal should be a dead letter, with the risks and vulnerabilities of the recent outage adding to the already long list of why this deal is bad for Canadians.
Fifth, if we need to think of an imaginative alternative, if this deal should be approved, require that Shaw's wireless assets be spun off into a confederation of publicly, community and independently owned communications enterprises that offer mobile wireless and Internet access to underserved and unserved Canadians from coast to coast to coast. Elsewhere I've dubbed this the great Canadian communications corporation, and we may need to think about something like that for today.
Thank you very much.