Industry committee  No, it is an important difference. It is meant to make companies, encourage companies, to comply. Rogers and others have had outages. We investigate, and then they introduce measures, if they introduce measures, to correct the problem.

Industry committee  It's not that we don't do it. We do it on the CASL side. We have done it recently on the telecommunications side. We penalized a major telecommunications company for frustrating a competitor from offering service. So, we do it. My point was simply that if Rogers does something—has a practice—and we tell them that we want them to change and correct it and they change it, then they don't require punishment.

Industry committee  I won't comment. That is a subject we will have to deal with, and it would not be appropriate to comment on it at this time.

Industry committee  If you mean how did this outage happen, I mean, I think there's been a—

Industry committee  Well, no, what I said was “we”, and I assume—although I cannot speak for ISED, I did hear what the minister had to say—that both the department and the CRTC will insist and will require the industry to make the necessary arrangements. My comment about the industry is that they do have an incentive to work together to address this kind of outage, because it could happen to anyone.

Industry committee  No, I said that we would ensure, for our part, that there are measures put in place to address this kind of situation.

Industry committee  My focus is on working...having the commission deal with the industry to put in place the necessary measures. I don't have a crystal ball. I can't predict the future, and I won't predict failure. I hope to ensure the opposite, that the necessary measures are put in to make sure that the networks are more robust.

Industry committee  No, no, I'm not arguing, sir.

Industry committee  I'm saying the 911 network—

Industry committee  I agree.

Industry committee  I agree, sir, very much. My point simply was that you just characterized it as the 911 network failing, which was not the case.

Industry committee  You are right.

Industry committee  The words that scare me are “doesn't happen again”. As I said, this is unprecedented in terms of the nature of the outage. It's the fact that they lost connectivity completely. That could occur, whether because of a cyber-attack or extreme weather circumstances. These challenges are increasing, so our focus as the regulator will be on contingency planning and ensuring that the robustness is there.

Industry committee  I would like to be omnipotent but we're not. It's a bit like the question we were just asked. I can't think in these.... With respect to network outages, I don't have a provision that says if we had the power to do X or Y, we would have been able to prevent this. There are areas where I would like to see legislative reform, such as access to support structures.

Industry committee  If I understand the question correctly, I believe it is not a matter of whether telecommunications services should be provided by a private company or a public body. It is more of a technical challenge. It doesn't make a difference. That's not the challenge. The challenge is to anticipate these kinds of technical challenges and have a degree of co-operation.