You did hear correctly.
ISED's universal broadband fund does not support telecommunications redundancy, including in northern remote Canada, which is extremely concerning and problematic. When Telesat effectively goes down due to weather issues or because of fibre optic lines in northern British Columbia, Yukon or NWT and is cut off, we lose telecommunication services right across the Arctic. That can even include the RCMP informing our community members that, if we need their services, we have to physically go to their detachment.
Imagine, in a domestic violence situation, that a child has broken their arm or there's a fire. It is absolutely that vulnerable, and lives are at stake. We need redundancy in the part of the region that is incredibly vulnerable. We also want redundancy for the purposes of military defence. They need real-time data under all-domain awareness, and, when and if there is a failure in one of the networks, you want a seamless transition to another redundant network so that you never lose telecommunication.