Thank you very much, Chair.
Good afternoon. My name is Michael Geist. I'm a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where I hold the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law, and I'm a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. I appear in a personal capacity representing only my own views.
I have to begin by noting how discouraged I've been by what I've heard for the past three hours of hearings. We need more than tough talk and references to ministerial demands of CEOs. It's about far more than who called whom or solely about the failure of one company.
I think we have to recognize that private phone calls or beers among companies, legislators or regulators aren't the answer. It can't be about saying “I'm sorry” but then evading questions on key issues such as essential services, as if it's hard to acknowledge directly that 911 calls should be an essential service, or about a regulator who blithely dismisses the role that competition played in this event or that new regulations could play.
Today's inescapable takeaway is that much more needs to be done and it needs to come through a legislative framing. To that end, I'd like to highlight the following seven measures.
First, the investigation should extend beyond the CRTC's initial round of questions in today's hearing. Organizations such as Interac, governments and health care providers need to explain how they found themselves without redundancy plans and an appropriate backup system to address wide-scale network outages. Assuming some of these questions are outside of the CRTC's remit or it's unwilling to extend what is itself an uncertain process further, it falls to this committee to expand the study and ask those questions in a public forum.
Second, there must be greater transparency with respect to the outages. Rogers can't claim to support transparency and simultaneously request wide-scale redactions in its submissions to the CRTC. The commission should reject the request for redactions where it's in the public interest, which seems to apply here given that public safety is involved. Furthermore, there is a need for a consistently transparent approach to network outages and extended downtime. These should be filed with the regulator on a regular basis and disclosed to the public.
Third, consumer compensation requires more than a company simply saying it considered the matter and decided what it thinks is appropriate. There should be regulations that establish clear parameters for compensation, including mandated payments for downtime that are automatically applied to customers' monthly bills.
Fourth, the communications standards on outages should also not be left to the carriers alone. Outage maps, estimated times to address problems and consistent, widely accessible communications have become standard for other utilities such as hydro. The same should be true for communications services, with penalties levied for failure to meet the requisite standard.
Fifth, competition concerns with Canada's communications sector must be met with real policy reforms. While the Rogers CEO tried to claim otherwise with a straight face, few dispute the competition problems that leave Canada's broadband and wireless pricing among the most expensive in the world. The carriers, as we just heard in one exchange, have often touted the link between high prices and network quality. However, the latest outage confirms that the networks often fail to live up to the industry hype. Instead, high prices mean consumers gravitate to riskier bundled options in order to reduce monthly bills. Canada needs real competition that draws on both facilities-based and services-based competitors.
Sixth, the Rogers-Shaw merger should be regarded as dead in the water. The last thing Canadians need is an even more concentrated market. This committee has already recommended that the merger not proceed, but left an out in the event that it does. It should adopt an even stronger position in opposing the merger now.
Seventh, the next chair of the CRTC is scheduled to be appointed in the coming weeks. In the aftermath of the Rogers outage, a former CRTC chair posted about a commission investigation, saying, “I don’t think the CRTC is the body to run such an inquiry. They have become captive to the big players and the current membership are not trustworthy truth seekers.”
This cannot stand. It's essential that the chair prioritize Canada's communications infrastructure and its impact on consumers and business as the single most important policy issue faced by the CRTC. That person must be independent, with knowledge of the sector. While there's been an emphasis on cultural policy in recent months, CanCon policies don't matter if Canadians can't access the content or the network. Since communications is job one, a truly independent digital and network-focused chair of the CRTC is essential.
I look forward to your questions.