Mr. Speaker, the spectrum licence deployment requirements of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, or ISED, are based on the provision of wireless services to a percentage of the population in a given service area, known as tiers, at specific times throughout the term of the licence. These graduated deployment requirements facilitate timely deployment of services across the country and include a number of milestones that must be reached during the licence term to remain compliant with the licence conditions.
Deployment requirements are established by ISED following public consultation and take input from stakeholders into account as the Department pursues its objective of maximizing the economic and social benefits of this valuable and finite public resource. Deployment milestones are set up to allow licensees the opportunity to plan and deploy their network. Licensees may put the spectrum to use as the primary licensee or through alternative arrangements such as subordinate licensing and the transferring or subdivision of licences to secondary providers. This use by secondary providers is encouraged by ISED as it promotes the deployment of services to rural areas.
When a milestone is reached, ISED verifies that the deployment requirement has been met according to the deployment schedule. ISED’s approximately 15,000 spectrum licences are currently 100 percent compliant with their respective deployment conditions. If a licensee is not compliant with its deployment conditions, ISED may invoke various compliance and enforcement measures. These measures may include warnings, administrative monetary penalties, legal action, licence amendments, suspensions, or other measures. However, in non-compliance cases, ISED first works with licensees to attain compliance to ensure that Canadians do not lose access to existing services that the licensee may have deployed. In the very rare instance that a licensee cannot be brought into compliance, ISED may determine that the most appropriate course of action is to not renew or even revoke the licence. Since 2015, ISED did not renew 69 licences and revoked 3 others for non-compliance.