Meegwetch.
[Witness spoke in Cree]
[English]
I want to thank you for inviting me to make this presentation.
As you see on the screen here, the biggest problem that we have here in Canada is that all of our links are in the United States. We only have 11%, which are on the Newfoundland side, to Greenland. That's our only escape route. The rest are all in the United States. This is a major issue for us.
As you see on the screen here, we have a project that we're looking at. It's called the Quintillion link. It is already serviced in Alaska—the first phase. The second phase will be service from Alaska to Japan, and the third phase will go from Alaska through the Hudson Strait to Europe. This is where we want to connect our pipeline to Wemindji because once that pipeline comes through we only have one opportunity to connect, and we don't want to miss that opportunity.
The northern link is a high-fibre.... It has six big fibre links that are connected, and two of them stay in international waters. Those are the two that we want to connect, and we believe that the security, safety and sovereignty of the Arctic are key for us as a first nation. This southern spur that's going to go to James Bay will also be linked to Montreal, Toronto and the southern network.
A Canadian northern international connectivity project must be developed to assure Canadian international connectivity and cybersecurity.
As you see on the map here, it would go through the Northwest Passage, from Alaska through the Hudson Strait. This is where we want to connect, through James Bay to the Wemindji-Tawich Development community, and from there we connect to the south, to Montreal and Toronto.
On this map you can see that 89% of Canadian data passes through the United States. The USA PATRIOT Act governs this data and governs Canadian data, and this is where we believe security is an issue. Canada's new northern fibre can change this paradigm. Data centres with access to northern international fibre connectivity and ultra-low latency connectivity, in the long haul, in milliseconds, are important. The geographic position related to financial hubs with London, New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Montreal and Toronto is key. The inexhaustible renewable energy and ultra-reliable power in the north at a low cost, at an approximate price of 4 cents U.S. per kilowatt, is a strength on our part, and low operation costs for data centres with cooling would be a competitive advantage because the computers need a lot of cooling.
A northern link would assure the independence of international connectivity and security from the United States. As an example, one of the big advantages is that from Montreal to Tokyo, we're looking at 18 milliseconds of speed that we can gain just between those two cities. There's no real advantage into the United States. The big advantage is from Montreal and Toronto to England and Asia.
The other advantage is that Hydro-Québec has announced in their strategic plan that they would give an estimated 4 cents per kilowatt. This is a huge advantage for us in terms of power usage. Another advantage is that we're on the Canadian Shield, and there are no earthquakes. You probably know what happened in Japan and Alaska. Earthquakes are a big issue, so this could be a good location for data centres of the north.
I'll pass it to Jean Schiettekatte to make concluding remarks.