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Public Accounts committee No. This is an ongoing consultation. I would just like to shift to another point. With respect to our auctions—and it is relevant—we have deployment conditions. Again, we've been trying—and the Auditor General raises this question in his report—to increase our deployment condit
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee First of all, I'd like to just step back. There are three—
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee The answer is that we did not assign weights, because there are different solutions in different areas. We assess the community needs and the technological requirements, and they vary from place to place. We believe that it is not appropriate to set one specific set of weights.
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee I would maybe rephrase it, not as a failure but as an agreement with the Auditor General, and note that every time we do a project on broadband in rural and remote areas, the challenges, the balance, the public investment and the private sector investment...we try to do the proje
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee That is why doing broadband is not easy.
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee The other thing I would just emphasize—maybe you should turn to the Auditor General office after I say this—is that they were looking at the design phase of our project. Again, I think we've moved past the design phase, and we're talking now about—
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee —what actually was implemented.
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee There are always issues of value for money, and we agree with the Auditor General that in doing our work, we should pay attention as a priority to value for money. We are pointing out that in this case, this particular program was being delivered to the remotest areas where there
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee I'll give you a few cases where the projects took place. One would be in northern Quebec, where we were very partnered with Quebec. In fact, the partnership there is probably a model for how we move forward with an integrated collaborative strategy. We had common applications and
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee Mr. Chair, maybe I could just add the department's perspective on value for money. I think what we thought mattered in the connect to innovate program was that we leveraged funds. As we mentioned early on, and as the Auditor General people referenced, was the one-to-one. We went
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee In all respects, what I understand is that we follow a very strong due diligence process. I think the issues at play here are—and they relate to the overall strategy as well—is what are the technologies at play and what are the specific community needs? Again, this links back to
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee Maybe I would add, though, that one thing we do, which we looked at really in our last two programs, connect to innovate and connecting Canadians, is that we don't always look for the technology that solves the immediate problem. We are looking for projects that have the capacity
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee I think about a third of the actual companies in the projects are small ISPs. We certainly are always talking to small ISPs and looking for opportunities for them to participate in projects. That's the short answer.
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee It's on the Canada portal.
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley
Public Accounts committee We don't use the portal for an application. There are issues, in terms of the ISP footprint, around commercial sensitivity. Basically, again, we are trying to promote small ISP participation. Recently, separate from the program, we've been consulting with the small ISPs to unders
February 21st, 2019Committee meeting
John Knubley