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. Therefo

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 anythi

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 total

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 q

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 ye

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-c

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 fra

Industry committee  Here's the weird thing about this whole area. The calls that are made as robocalls are illegal. You're not allowed to call for commercial purposes with robocalls—the end. The only exceptions are for hospitals and schools and such things. The calls are illegal, but once somebody a

Industry committee  There is not an easy solution, but I'm suggesting that perhaps there could be a well-crafted law that might, if there are actual victims who lose money, trace it back to the calling operation. If you can prove that all those calls were sent out as stage one phishing—“Look, I got

Industry committee  That's certainly my understanding. In particular, it's newer Canadians, who may be more scared of calls.