Industry committee  It's tempting to want to leave it with the CRTC, because they are the natural regulator in this area. I don't believe they have the statutory authority at the moment. Perhaps the committee could consider that. However, the difficulty is that most of the funding comes through the federal government, where it should rightly be from, because when you're building things you want that to be taxpayer money and be accountable to the voters.

Industry committee  If you were to take a look at the U.S. legislation, you'd see that it requires that funding be up to a certain standard. All Canadians would have roughly the same access to advanced telecommunications. That's the way the U.S. law is structured. It has a joint federal-state board to work out problems between the two levels of government in the United States.

Industry committee  Our frustration at the moment is that some pieces are run out of the CRTC and some out of ISED. I'm making it up a bit on the fly, Mr. Masse, to be honest, because we don't have a national broadband plan that has tapped a particular agency to do this. Whoever it is, or whichever ad hoc department it is, I hope they would be able to coordinate separately from the CRTC and industry because of the parochialism in those two areas, and I hope they would be able to contact and work with the provinces.

Industry committee  The United States has a universal service obligation, which they put in their act many years ago. It requires all U.S. citizens to have an affordable and upgraded connection to telecommunications services, which the FCC has interpreted as including broadband and wireless. Therefore, they have undertaken at the FCC a number of auctions of spectrum, as well as a number of rollout programs in some key areas such as education, schools, medicine, what they call down there “tribal lands” and another rural program, to try to get everyone who has challenges or special needs onto the network more quickly.

Industry committee  Yes, because it's the legal basis for taking all of the other planning that you need to do—building, supporting through subsidies and finally getting it into people's hands through buying subsidies. Without that, no one can make the private companies that run our system do anything at the end of the day.

Industry committee  The national contribution fund was in place for 30 years for rural telephone service. The CRTC decided, when broadband came along, to phase it out. We believe that was a huge mistake. We believe it should have been continued, and broadband funding added to it, and that it's totally achievable at a cost of about $1 to $2 at most per subscriber.

Industry committee  I believe there should be more conditions in the spectrum auction regarding rural build-out. There should also be a process for “use it or lose it” spectrum. Often it is sat upon, with big plans to put into practice that are not followed up on by the industry department. The question of whether you should change the process from an auction to something more like a beauty contest, which is what I think you're referring to, is a really fraught one.

Industry committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. The Public Interest Advocacy Centre is a national non-profit and registered charity that provides legal and research services on behalf of consumers, particularly vulnerable consumers. PIAC has been active in the field of communications law for over 40 years.

Industry committee  No, not necessarily, because I believe Bell also wants to stop fraud calls, because people are cancelling their land lines. One of their reasons for doing so would be just to stop the bleeding. They thus may well do it anyway. They may want to sell it in certain contexts; non-consumer contexts, I believe, would be fine.

Industry committee  By that, do you mean protecting any regulations we set up so as to require this?

Industry committee  I would say yes, from our group's point of view, but getting it to be part of an overall digital policy that goes with trade policy and makes sense is the trick.

Industry committee  The point of the comment at the end of my remarks was that the fraud provision in the Criminal Code may need to be made more specific for telephone-delivered or phished fraud.

Industry committee  I won't go quite as far as to say it's ineffectiveness of the organization. They have a mandate, which is limited now, to stop telemarketing that's illegal and to do the do-not-call list. That's it. Their job is not to stop fraud, as Mr. Scott said very clearly.

Industry committee  Yes, it would help.

Industry committee  This is the question of how to design a law that would specifically call something phone fraud, or wire fraud, as they call it in the United States, so that it's a separate fraud offence. You could think of things. For example, at the moment, getting somebody to prosecute a fraud is difficult because you can't go back up the chain and make everybody who was involved in the calling—the actual person talking, and then the people who own and run this thing, whether they're in Canada or not—criminally liable for it.