Industry Committee on Sept. 29th, 2022

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I would appreciate that.

The only addendum I think is.... I'll use recommendations 12 and 13 as examples in relation to the CRTC. It was a while ago now that we did this. The details of this aren't in front of me at the moment in quite the same way as they were when we went through this the very first time.

Recommendation 12 was:

That the Government of Canada support efforts by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to conduct a public inquiry into unauthorized porting.

Recommendation 13 was:

Should the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission fail to launch a public inquiry into unauthorized porting within six months, that the Government of Canada introduce legislation to protect Canadians against unauthorized porting.

You wouldn't have to respond specifically to those recommendations. It would be responding to the question of unauthorized porting and the work you've done in relation to a public inquiry or other work you would have done. That would be the kind of response in writing that I think would be helpful.

The only other question I have is in relation to your work. This is not a uniquely Canadian problem. This is a problem that exists all around the world. You identified it as a challenge in other English- and French-speaking countries. I think you also pointed to Asia being a hot spot for fraud calls.

Are other jurisdictions adopting best practices that you think the CRTC should be seriously looking at? What other jurisdictions around the world would you point to that are addressing this global challenge and doing this better than we are or that are engaging in best practices that we could adopt here at home?

[Ian Scott]

Without being immodest, I'd hope that the reason we develop those relationships and partner with those agencies is to learn from them, and hopefully they can learn from us. I think we've been doing that.

I'll be honest. I would say that perhaps the most aggressive and advanced players in this regard are our colleagues south of the border. We have very close contact.

What I would say is that within the confines of our legislative schemes, we have adopted all of the best practices we've identified.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I appreciate that.

The other thing that would be useful for you to follow up on in writing—and maybe south of the border is the best example—would be where you've identified practices that are worth pursuing, those that other countries are pursuing and that the CRTC is, as a result, pursuing. It would be good for us to understand the work the CRTC has done to improve its own measures with the template being, “We consulted with folks south of the border, and here are steps we undertook to follow their model” or, if that work isn't fully completed in some cases, understanding the status of the work and following through on best practices that you've found in other parts of the world. I think that's very helpful where it's directly relevant to your work.

If in the course of undertaking some of your work—as you say, it's within your legislative scheme—there are other best practices that you come across as a result of your relationships that aren't specific to the CRTC but may be for another agency to pursue, those may also be helpful for the committee's purposes. You might not have a long list, because this is not necessarily within your purview. A follow-up on that in writing would be useful to give a sense of how you are learning from and responding to best practices elsewhere.

[Ian Scott]

Thank you. We'll do our best. It's kind of like a progress report and a wish list. I'm not trying to in any way minimize...but I think that's in essence what you're asking for.

I do want to be a bit clear. The two recommendations that you made reference to had to do with porting, which was at the time a growing problem that we were all aware of. An example of that would be that we asked and pushed the industry to do something about it, and they did. They did it without our having to have a public proceeding. The measures they've taken have been successful.

Obviously we have a lot of things to do and a lot of important work to do. We're not going to do a proceeding if we think a problem is resolved or at least on its way to being addressed.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

That's very understandable, and I use that only as an example to say—

[Ian Scott]

Understood.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

—that we've identified an issue, and you may identify the way you've addressed that issue, so the recommendation is speaking to something within the CRTC's purview. Then you would respond to us to say, “This is how we've addressed this issue [Inaudible—Editor].

[Ian Scott]

Understood, and that's exactly.... We're saying the same thing—

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Yes, exactly.

[Ian Scott]

—or we're in violent agreement.

I want to say that we have addressed it. We addressed it by telling the industry that we wanted them to address it, and they did, or they are continuing to—

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Exactly.

[Ian Scott]

—and that's been good progress.

On the other one, we will do our best, and we'll try to keep our list modest and reasonable.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Sounds good. Thank you.

[Ian Scott]

I appreciate the question in terms of what we can do better and what other practices we could apply if we had some additional flexibility, and we'll take it in that spirit.

Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Scott.

Thank you, Nate.

We still have a bit of time, and I know that MP Dong has I think one or two more questions.

You can go ahead, MP Dong.

Also, if anyone else has more questions....

[Ian Scott]

If he's going to ask about quantum computing, I'm leaving.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Actually, it was my motion to study quantum computing, but I won't ask about that today.

I'm just trying to get my head around how to break down the silos you were talking about. If Rogers or BeIl spots some suspicious activities, are they allowed to pass that on? Are they required to pass on that information to the CRTC? Otherwise, how would you know that there are suspicious activities going on? They're the service providers, right?

[Ian Scott]

That's a very complicated question, more complicated than you might imagine.

Carriers can do certain things. I'll use the example of malformed phone numbers.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I'm just talking about fraudulent calls.

[Ian Scott]

I do want to—

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

They receive a complaint from the customer—

[Ian Scott]

It's not a question of complaints here. We're talking about—or at least what I was talking about—actions the companies can take when they know there are things coming across their system that may be fraudulent. They have to be careful because, under the Telecommunications Act, they're not allowed to influence the content of the messages. From a privacy perspective, and just a civil society perspective, we don't want phone companies poking inside the messages and going, “I don't think we should let that one through, but this one is okay.”

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Right, yes, but when they tag this as a possible fraudulent call—

[Ian Scott]

Then they would have to come to us. The example of how Bell developed a potential approach to deal fundamentally with what we call callback schemes to generate revenue from international accounts—