INDU Committee Report

NDP Supplementary Observations and Recommendations

Over the last decade, Canadians from coast to coast to coast have decried consecutive governments for not doing enough to support rural and remote broadband access. Canadians in these communities should have access to broadband – it’s 2019. Every Canadian deserves access to affordable and reliable broadband of some kind. This needs to be addressed for our economy and to ensure equality.

• In the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and Nunavut no households have access to high speed broadband (50/10 Mbs with unlimited data) and 72 percent of highways and major transport roads do not have access to LTE wireless services.
• In Canada 63 percent of rural households do not have access to high speed broadband (50/10 Mbs with unlimited data) and 14 percent of highways and major transport roads do not have access to LTE wireless services.

This past fall 2018, the Auditor General released a report on the ‘digital divide’ between Canadians in rural and urban centres. It highlighted the government’s lack of strategy to meet the connectivity needs of Canadians in rural and remote communities.

In Budget 2019, the government announced its commitment to set a national broadband target, in which 95 per cent of Canadian homes and businesses will have access to internet speeds of at least 50/10 Mbps by 2026 and 100 per cent by 2030, no matter where they are located in the country. By the government’s own estimate it will cost approximately $6 billion to provide full broadband connections to all Canadians. In the Budget the government only committed to $1.7 billion over 13 years, starting in 2019–20, to establish a new national high-speed internet program, the Universal Broadband Fund. This is only 30 percent of the required amount of funds. The government is depending on the private sector to providing the remaining investments but there are no guarantees or commitments or a dedicated timeline for this private funding.

Our committee report, Broadband Connectivity in Rural Canada: Overcoming the Digital Divide, unanimously supported by all parties, and in the best interests of rural and remote Canadians, recommended twelve distinct points for the Minister to consider while moving forward and improving access to broadband for rural and remote communities. Some of the recommendations included: working closer with internet service providers; government funding for ‘last mile’ infrastructure; and, considering the spectrum allocation process for the purpose of broadband deployment to ensure smaller providers have a larger chance obtaining spectrum licenses to help push service to rural and remote communities.

Also in the fall of 2018, a decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2018-377, halved the speeds previously announced by the government in 2016 - from 50Mbps to 25Mbps download and from 10Mbps to 5Mbps upload - for Canadians in rural and remote areas. This is a step backwards. It is not acceptable and the 16% of Canadian households who have no access to internet would all agree that being relegated to a substandard connection when the rest of the country is going to receiving access to even faster speeds through new technologies.

Since 2001, there have been multiple spectrum auctions, resulting in billions of dollars to our government in licenses being awarded to telecommunications companies. The total revenue for the government through 2019 was $ 17.6 billion. These spectrum auctions continue being a significant source of revenue for the government, yet Canadians in rural and remote communities still do not have appropriate service or even service at all.

Recommendations

• The Minister must reverse CRTC Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2018-377 and mandate that minimum speeds for all Canadians in rural and remote area match those in urban areas which are 50Mbs to download and 10Mbs to upload.
• The government should use funds raised from telecom spectrum auctions to invest in high speed broadband infrastructure in rural and remote communities to achieve the goal of 100 percent of access for all Canadians.
• The government needs to disclose how all funds raised from the spectrum auctions to date have been used.
• The government needs to disclose why it will not implement any of the required actions of Motion 208 as the Minister of Rural Economic Development revealed during her testimony for main estimates for her department.