CityWest wanted to mitigate Connected Coast risk; ISED sliced $1.5M from “served” communities
By Ahmad Hathout
WHEN THIS PUBLICATION reported Innovation Canada reduced the scope of the Connected Coast project, it couldn’t get the precise details from any of the federal or British Columbia governments or the builders as to how much funding was cut and which communities were axed – until now.
That story reported ISED had reduced a number of communities from Connect to Innovate funding because the federal government considered them already served, but with an outdated guideline of 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. (The project, a mammoth $45.4-million stretch of fibre cable that snakes in and out of the water along B.C.’s coast, was announced in January 2018 and has been delayed until 2023.)
However, thanks to a parallel freedom of information request, we can report more details of those cuts, as well as a request by the chair of CityWest, which is owned by the City of Prince Rupert to put in place risk management measures to insulate the project proponents in case the project faces difficulty.
Contained in a May 2019 project update email, B.C. officials noted following a federal government due diligence process, seven sites were removed because they were already supplied with a “1 Gbps point-of-presence in the community and residents were served at a minimum of 50/10 Mbps.”
The sites that were removed were Deep Cove, Tseycum First Nation, Malahat First Nation, T’souke First Nation, Toquaht First Nation, Ucluelet First Nation and Ucluelet (end of bay).
The value of the reduced scope was estimated at $1.5 million, which the email said was reallocated to “remaining sites to connect anchor institutions,” which generally mean hospitals and schools.
Tlowitsis First Nations gained a new landing site and infrastructure, worth about $375,000, the update said.
“Some of the descoped sites will receive a new landing site [where cable moves from land to sea] (but no point-of-presence) for future use and other sites will not receive a landing site because they already have sufficient network infrastructure,” the email said.
The emails show officials trying to craft messaging to soften the blow of the reduced scope of the project, proposing that words like “approximately” and “more than” be used in place of exact numbers.
When Cartt.ca spoke in January to Renée LaBoucane, manager of strategic initiatives at Strathcona, one of the two proponents of the project, she denied that the project scope was reduced and said that communities connected to the project would only go up, not down. Cartt.ca acknowledged that money can come from other sources to fill the gaps that CTI funding leaves.
But there’s no question the project has been reduced from its original scope and, in fact, the emails show that B.C. officials were bracing for possibly more reductions. “Additional scope changes (to increase or decrease landing sites) may result from detailed engineering studies and consultations,” the May 2019 update email said.
The project, which initially slated to connect 154 communities, was reduced to 148 from that time. It has since been reduced to 139 communities, its website reads.
Some, still, were concerned about the project. Bob Long, chair of the board of CityWest, the second builder of the project, asked in April of 2019 that risk management measures be put in place for the fibre, according to the documents.
That included “discussing with other telco’s [sic] the possibility of sharing the cable risk, proceeding with a procurement process to assure value for the investment, separating the project into smaller portions, and investigating the purchase of insurance to mitigate project risk.”
Citizens’ Services, the ministry tasked with B.C.’s broadband matters, responded by offering a meeting to address Long’s “concerns” and “how the Province can assist to achieve important milestones for the project.”
CityWest did not respond in time for a request for comment about whether any of those measures were put in place (the province deferred to CityWest on the matter). Citywest and Strathcona have already gone through a procurement process where they’ve selected their construction partner on the build, B.C. native Baylink Networks.
B.C. officials had also pointed to criticisms of then-ISED Minister Navdeep Bains’ involvement in the approval process as unnecessary bureaucracy. Federal ministers in charge of broadband give final approval to projects, after which the money agreement can be signed.
“I would like to call to your attention that the CTI program has a significant political component as Minister Bains is part of the project approval process,” said Susan Stanford in Citizens’ Services. “This was one of the key criticisms of the Auditor General of the program in their report last year.”
She added that this is a process step that isn’t done for B.C. funding, and that the CRTC’s $750-million Broadband Fund is “arm’s length from any political influence.”
