Mr. Speaker, last week, The Globe and Mail published an article titled, “Life in the slow lane: Dial-up Internet still a reality for hundreds of thousands in Canada”. The article explained both the alarmingly high number of Canadians who have no option but to use dial-up Internet connections and the problems that face these Canadians as Internet sites continue to add more data-reliant content.
I know the problems faced by constituents in my riding: travel just a few kilometres outside of the downtown core of Sudbury and high-speed Internet is non-existent. I can tell residents almost to the metre where my cell phone loses both 3G Internet access and cell service, the so-called digital divide that separates the high-speed haves from the have nots.
This has real repercussions. Yes, people lose out on social media, but, more importantly, businesses are unable to participate in the e-economy and, as more government services move online, people have less access to programs that their taxes fund.
Unfortunately, the government seems determined to do nothing to rectify the situation.
The announcement of the upcoming spectrum auction made by the minister in March offered a real opportunity for the government to overcome the digital divide. A strong rural rollout requirement would have forced telecom companies to expand the areas covered by wireless high-speed networks and set asides for the so-called new entrants would have ensured real competition to drive down prices. Instead, we got an announcement that, in trying to unsuccessfully please everyone, failed to deliver on any of its promises.
The rural rollout component of the auction is so convoluted that it is actually unlikely to be met by any one company unless it acts in concert with another telecom provider, and even then, those firms will only be required to roll out new services to a percentage of areas that are already covered by their current high-speed networks. This rollout requirement should have been designed to ensure rural and suburban Canadians have access to these vital Internet services. Instead, it can be met by building out service to Canada's urban cores.
Instead of a strong set-aside for smaller cell phone companies to ensure real competition in Canadian firms, we got a cap for Rogers, Bell and Telus, coupled with a relaxing of the foreign ownership rules for all other telecom companies. In effect, the government delivered a gold-embossed invitation to big foreign telecoms to buy spectrum and compete in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal while ignoring the concerns for Canadians living in rural areas and even in small urban centres like my riding of Sudbury.
In summary, the government seems so unprepared on this file that when the minister appeared before the industry committee, he said that his department had not even come up with an estimate of the revenue that would be generated from this auction, and the government is unwilling or unable to say where the proceeds will go.
The government still has time to rectify this situation, to strengthen the rural rollout component, to ensure real competition across the country and to reinvest revenue to make Canada a digital leader, but time is running out.