44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 19, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, when this bill gets to committee, I will definitely be in favour of any amendment that is going to improve it.
For the most part, the amendments in the Senate have already satisfied some of my colleagues' concerns, including the effects on rural Canada and those companies, specifically with respect to the fact that the minister would have all the power to determine what happens if spectrum is unused. The biggest provision of this bill would be that of punishing only those who are grossly negligent in terms of not using spectrum that they said they were going to sell, in other words, using spectrum only for speculative activities by buying and selling it for more profit. If companies want to develop that spectrum in a rural area, I think they are going to find support from the minister in ensuring not only a use-it-or-lose-it provision but also the use-it-or-share-it provision that is in this bill.
We are going to be happy to discuss that at committee and make this bill the best it can be going forward.
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Madam Speaker, one of the differences with the New Democrats' policy on Internet broadband is to actually have spectrum fund the build-out, which right now requires about $6 billion.
I would ask my colleague if there are any regrets through the process we have had, in which $21 billion has been raised through spectrum auctions since 2001. Conservative and Liberal governments have taken that money in. At the same time, there has not been oversight, and we have some of the highest prices. What are the member's thoughts in terms of why we have taken in so much money and have not had any type of connection with our spectrum auction policy with the $21 billion that the governments have collected from Canadians?
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Madam Speaker, the simple answer is, yes, the government has taken all this money in, and at the end of the day, Canadians have paid more for Internet and cellphone than ever before. Canadians pay the highest cellphone bills in the whole world and they pay double for the Internet what the Americans and Australians do.
The answer from our side is to make sure there is more competition. Perhaps we should also ensure that when we are collecting all that money for spectrum, we should be looking at an urban component and a rural component, because the rural component needs help and the urban component is doing just fine.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House as our parliamentary work resumes to represent the people of London West. Today I am pleased to speak to the important role that spectrum plays in the Canadian economy and in the daily lives of Canadians.
I am pleased to see Bill S-242 draw attention to this important issue, and I look forward to studying this matter. Spectrum is a finite public resource and important enabler of economic activity, and Bill S-242 seeks to ensure that unused spectrum is being put to work. I think we can all agree on this goal.
As we conduct our study of this bill, it is very important that we reflect on the way it takes spectrum into account. Spectrum is increasingly having to support a wide range of economic and social activities, including mobile connectivity. Spectrum supports public safety networks, research, industrial applications, national defence and satellite services. The rules on spectrum also have to ensure that Canadian institutions and businesses can take advantage of smart technologies that can allow businesses to be more efficient, productive and innovative.
By supporting the use of automated, robotic and remote operations in industries such as mining, agriculture and manufacturing, spectrum can support business growth and economic development in remote rural regions and even in southwestern Ontario.
The government recognizes this and is supporting innovation through its spectrum licensing processes. For example, our recently announced non-competitive licensing framework will support the adoption of innovative technologies that our economy's productivity will ultimately depend on. My hope is that Bill S-242 can accommodate important spectrum measures such as these.
Bill S-242 has an important goal to put spectrum to work and get Canadians connected. Every Canadian, regardless of where they live or work, deserves access to reliable and affordable high-speed Internet. We saw the importance of this during the pandemic, when everybody had to work from home and figure out ways to continue to be productive. Furthermore, further study of this bill should be considered, including its interaction with existing and planned policies, and focus on ensuring that it would accelerate the objectives of universal broadband access and efficient spectrum use.
The Government of Canada has already committed to connecting 98% of Canadians to high-speed Internet by 2026 and 100% of Canadians by 2030. This is ambitious. We have made available over $7.6 billion to expand access to high-speed Internet in underserved areas. Through our universal broadband fund, we have already helped connect over 200,000 underserved homes to high-speed Internet. With an additional 80,000 homes getting connected by the end of this year, that is a total of 750,000 homes to come.
The main proposal in Bill S‑242 is to implement an overall target of 50% deployment in each spectrum band. Further study should examine how that objective will help us address this gap to achieve universal broadband coverage.
Most of these sectors are on track to be connected soon through our funding programs and 5G spectrum rules, which already require wireless services to be deployed to more than 97% of the population. At the same time, this bill must still allow for innovative approaches that improve access to spectrum in rural areas, for diversity of use. For example, the non-competitive licensing framework I mentioned earlier takes an innovative approach to spectrum licensing. It enables access to shared 5G spectrum for a wider range of users and utilities than ever before, and allows small providers and non-traditional licensees to cover small specific-licence areas that are suitable for business cases. This could be a private network within a plant or a mine, coverage to support aquaculture, precision agriculture, or wireless broadband services for consumers. This framework will provide small Internet service providers, innovative industries, remote rural communities and indigenous peoples with quick and easy spectrum access.
However, it is licensed spectrum; it is a public resource, and it needs to be used. That is why we are already putting strong “use it or lose it” policies in place as part of our licensing policies in our spectrum auctions. As we release more spectrum, we continue to increase our deployment requirements using more ambitious targets, as well as smaller licence areas to ensure that coverage is targeted to rural communities. Our upcoming 5G spectrum auction later this year will feature our most ambitious deployment requirements to date, which will require operators to increase their coverage over time and expand into rural communities to meet our targets.
We are also strengthening older deployment requirements and pursuing policies that will provide new users with access to unused spectrum. This will also be in areas where deployment conditions have been met. As these processes come online, we will see even further progress in closing the connectivity gap across the country.
Finally, I believe that the potential impact of this bill on investment and implementation is worth studying. Bill S‑242's deployment objectives will be implemented as quickly as the bids that could face significant uncertainty about exactly what is being sold during the next 5G auction.
We also have to look at the potential impact of the bill on planned and existing investments, the 5G spectrum, and whether the rules for spectrum holders have now been changed. As the bill is drafted, operators will have to significantly modify their multi-year investment plan to comply with all the new deployment conditions. This could cause major upheaval in the sector. I am sure that is not the intent of the bill. The study can be more thorough and must look at the best way to maintain and improve existing investments in the network.
This is an important bill, and it is an important topic. I look forward to hearing the discussions of my colleagues and how we can continue to make sure that every home in Canada is connected and deployment is supported. The government has already started to connect families, and 750,000 families will be connected through our connectivity plan.
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Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill S-242, an act to amend the Radiocommunication Act. If passed, Bill S-242 would require spectrum holders to significantly increase the deployment of this finite and valuable resource.
Most Canadians will ask what spectrum is, and that is a great question. Spectrum is intangible, but it is an extremely valuable asset worth billions of dollars. In fact, the most expensive auctions in the entire world are for spectrum. Access to spectrum decides who can go online, determines who can use the Internet and can even save a person's life through a call to 911. However, to help understand the importance of spectrum, let us go back over 100 years to April 14, 1912: the day the RMS Titanic crashed into an iceberg over 300 nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland. The tragic result was that over 1,500 people perished.
Some will say that it was solely an iceberg responsible for the fatalities of the Titanic, but many experts have pointed out that managing radio interference could have prevented the fatalities the night the Titanic sank.
Radios use spectrum bands to communicate through different frequencies, and back in 1912, radio communication was the most common way to communicate wirelessly. Historians say that the electronics of the wireless telegraph on the Titanic created so much noise that it interfered with the communication systems on ships nearby. In fact, multiple ships warned the Titanic of nearby icebergs the day it encountered its own.
To make matters worse, a ship by the name of the SS Californian, only 16 kilometres away, did not receive the Titanic's urgent call for help on the night of April 14. This was not because it was too far away, but because its only wireless operator had turned off the communication system after an earlier dispute with the Titanic over radio interference. As a result, not one SOS message was received by the Californian, although it was the closest ship to the Titanic.
This failure to manage spectrum prompted the swift passage of the Radio Act of 1912 in the United States. The Radio Act enabled the federal government to license wireless operations, and although spectrum was mainly used for radio communications in 1912, today, spectrum is the foundation of Internet and cellular connectivity in our digital world.
As such, although times have changed, the consequences of mismanaging spectrum continue to exist. The reality is that Bill S-242 was introduced because of the current government’s mismanagement of spectrum. Rural Canadians in particular suffer as a result of this mismanagement.
As the Conservative shadow minister of rural economic development and connectivity, I will focus on how the current Liberal government's mismanagement of spectrum has failed rural Canadians.
Later this year, the Liberal government is set to auction off the 3,800-megahertz band of spectrum. This spectrum is needed to connect Canadians with high-speed internet and cellular service. However, if telecom companies fail to use the spectrum they purchase, then Canadians will not be connected with the reliable Internet and cellular service they need. Moreover, because the government sets the rules for spectrum auctions, along with the requirements for deploying spectrum, the government directly influences how many Canadians will be connected with this essential service.
Unfortunately, if we examine the deployment requirements of the upcoming spectrum auctions, we can clearly see how little the government cares about connecting Canadians in rural and remote areas. The government has irresponsibly signed off on a plan that will shut rural Canadians out of accessing high-speed Internet and cellular services for decades.
For example, the deployment requirements for most urban regions in the upcoming auctions require a minimum population coverage of 50% over 10 years. Regions that include cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Regina and St. John's all require telecom companies to connect 50% of their population within 10 years. Members may think that 10 years is a long time for only 50% of the population to be covered with the newest technology, and I would agree. However, when we look at the connectivity requirements set by the current Liberal government for the upcoming spectrum auction, a massive discrepancy exists between how quickly urban Canadians and rural Canadians will be connected.
This is shocking in today's digital age when high-speed connectivity is vital to economic and social prosperity. Rural Canadians should be furious that the current Liberal government has signed off on a plan to connect rural Canadians much more slowly than the rest of Canada in the upcoming spectrum option.
For example, the good people of Timmins, Ontario, should be furious to learn that only 35% of them can expect to be connected with the Internet and cellular services needed in today's digital age within a lacklustre 10 years. In Grand Falls-Windsor and Gander, Newfoundland, the government is only requiring telecom companies to connect 10% of the population over 10 years. It is clear how little the Liberal government cares about Smithers, British Columbia, because it will only require telecom companies to connect 20% of the Smithers region with this spectrum band over an outrageously slow time frame of 20 years.
When we look at its plan for connecting Canadians, it is clear how little the government cares about connecting the rural and remote Canadians who need this service the most. The longer the spectrum deployment requirements are, the longer Canadians will wait to be connected. The Liberals love making announcements when it comes to reliable Internet and cellular service, but they have failed to deliver, miserably.
This Prime Minister does not care about rural Canadians. In fact, he has yet to learn what realities they face. I was recently in Yukon where a local first nations development organization told me that predators will deliberately prey on individuals along highways without cellular service because they know their victims cannot call 911 for help. These are the realities of the government's failed connectivity plan.
This Prime Minister pretends that his government has connected rural Canadians with high-speed Internet and cell service, but rural Canadians know he is misleading them. Earlier this year, Canada's independent Auditor General confirmed in her damning report to Parliament what rural Canadians already knew. Despite billions of dollars in announcements and multiple so-called strategies, over one million Canadian households and over 50% of first nations still do not have access to high-speed Internet. This report did not even include the many cellular dead zones across Canada that are threatening the public safety of Canadians, especially those in Atlantic Canada who just faced deadly hurricanes.
However, results do not matter to the current government, because the Liberal government measures success on how much of Canadians' money they announce instead of how many Canadians they can connect. In fact, since the Liberals introduced their universal broadband fund, they announced over $200 million in taxpayer funds for Bell Canada, over $38 million for Telus and over $5 million for Rogers. I cannot forget to mention the Liberals' disastrous Infrastructure Bank. The government announced over $640 million for Bell and $660 million for Rogers through its Infrastructure Bank, which has failed to complete countless projects.
It would be one thing if these billions of dollars resulted in high-speed Internet and cell service for all Canadians, but that is not the case. Connectivity projects across Canada are not getting built because government gatekeepers are slow to approve applications; connectivity projects are not getting built because there are so many bureaucratic programs that organizations are losing track of their applications; and connectivity projects are not being built because there just is not enough competition. The Liberals love announcing billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded money, but fail to connect Canadians.
This is a problem because the government can connect Canadians through better spectrum policy. Rural Canadians cannot afford to wait any longer to receive dependable quality and affordable service. As urban communities become connected at a much faster rate, the future of economic growth in rural Canada is at risk. It has become clearer that the current approach is not working.
In conclusion, sending Bill S-242 to committee is important so it can get studied, and improved if needed. We know the consequences of poor spectrum management. In 1912, it contributed to the sinking of the unsinkable Titanic. Today, it determines whether rural and remote Canadians sink or swim in our economy and our society. Canadians are counting on us to connect them. Let us bring it home.
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