Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'd like to thank the committee for this invitation.
First of all, I have to tell you that there's an echo in the sound, a kind of feedback. I don't know if you can hear me well. I missed the start of the discussions because I had no sound.
My name is Vicki-May Hamm. I'm the mayor of Magog and the acting reeve of the MRC of Memphrémagog. I'm addressing you today as the chair of the smart cities committee of the Union of Municipalities of Quebec. I am also on the board of directors and the executive committee of the Union of Municipalities of Quebec.
Quebec recently talked about deploying a digital strategy. For us, tomorrow's digital society will affect businesses, schools and departments alike. There is a major transformation happening, and it obviously affects municipalities as well.
The smart city is not an infrastructure issue, although the infrastructure is also important—I will talk about it later. There are still several regions in Quebec that do not have high-speed Internet, which remains a concern. The smart city is not about infrastructure.
It is about providing better service to citizens, being closer to citizens, being more transparent and sharing governance with citizens through information technology. A smart city improves services and contributes to the economic development of the regions. We are great believers in that. I have experienced this personally in Magog. All aspects of a smart city, be it economic development, applications and new equipment to improve services to citizens, have also enabled us to be a more attractive city for businesses in the regions and to encourage them to set up in our region.
The smart cities committee of the Union of Municipalities of Quebec has already done a good job in conducting a comparative assessment of 35 cities around the world in partnership with the CEFRIO. We are currently developing a self-diagnostic tool to allow all municipalities that wish to do so to become smarter in this digital transformation.
This tool will be a web-based application that will enable us to make a diagnosis in each of our municipalities on the six facets of the smart city: people, economy, environment, governance, lifestyle and mobility, a topic that is of concern to this committee.
We are going to draw inspiration from what other cities are doing. We started the initiative with three training sessions through web conferences, which began last week. This will allow us to present the self-diagnostic tool at the next annual meeting.
The municipal community wants the other two levels of government—the provincial and federal—to do their part to support the development of smart cities. In terms of concrete action, there is digital coverage, which is vital to the economy of the regions. All municipalities must have access to high-speed Internet worthy of the name. Still, it would be necessary to define what high speed is, because experts contradict themselves on this. There is much talk about opening up access to data. Several countries of the European Union, notably France, are making a lot of innovations thanks to this aspect. It is a model that could be followed here.
Approximately one in two provincial governments and one in three government agencies have begun to take action in this regard, and municipalities are following suit. This data allow us to be more transparent, to offer better services to citizens, but above all to contribute to economic development and innovation in our regions.
A CROP poll conducted this week indicates that 68% of Quebeckers want their city to be smarter. They consider that we are the smartest when it comes to public transit. All the first smart city initiatives were initially aimed at tackling a problem of mobility in urban areas. Now we are taking a much broader view, and we are including security, water supply, infrastructure and proximity to citizens. All these digital tools will allow us to have a prosperous economy, especially in the regions.
I know you have access to simultaneous interpretation. I may have spoken too quickly but, basically, that was our point of view.
In terms of open data, we can follow suit in many areas. This may be socio-economic or in the areas of public health, employment or transport. There are many possibilities in this regard.
I would be pleased to answer your questions.