OTTAWA – Yesterday the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications heard two radically different witnesses: Bill Hutchinson, who is all about networks and Stuart Jack who’s more about regulatory regimes and legislation.
The committee meeting is part of its study on the modernization of Canadian communications legislation.
Hutchinson, a Distinguished Fellow, Innovation Policy Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, has a long history of Network Building as well as network-building. “I have had 60 years of pioneering and helping Canada to do its digital transformation,” he described himself. He was involved at the beginning of Canarie, an ultra-speed network for Canada’s research, innovation and advanced education communities.
He was also involved with Smart Toronto (an oxymoron? he asked), in Waterfront Toronto and is a firm believer in government spending money on broadband infrastructure. Lots of it, in fact.
The figure he floats is a single investment of $60 billion. “Every time I mention the $60 billion, I duck. I try to mention it after I mention that we spend more than $200 billion (annually) on health care in Canada, by all of our estimates that we studied,” he added.
That sum would ensure coverage in the remote communities. As an example, in line with this week’s trade news he said: “It is very important for the dairy farmers… The milking machines for dairy cows have tremendous intelligence. You need to have 10 gigabytes per second of transmission from that milking machine out into the cloud in order to do all the analysis that the milking machine allows the farmer to do on the cow and milk at the time. Tell me a farm where you have 10 gigabytes in Canada? The dairy farmers have a problem with NAFTA. It will be even more competitive, and communications are going to be even more important to them.”
He concluded on the scope of the study: “I’m the guy out there working with people trying to do these things. I’m not the regulatory expert that Stuart (Jack) is, or others, but we’ve got to get the framework set so that we can really become a world leader as we were 30 or 35 years ago.
“My point about that, what you will be focusing on is the rewriting of the various Acts. They are fundamental to the transformation of all of Canada. In fact, Finland, seven years ago their parliament declared access to broadband as a human right. They did that so they could get the incumbent phone companies to provide services in the North, which they didn’t want to do,” he said.
For his part, Stuart Jack, partner at Nordicity, a consultancy firm in telecom, media and ICT, spoke more about the need to ensure our legislative and regulatory infrastructure is ready for future challenges. He advocates a single Act: “We are fairly familiar with regulatory frameworks. Yes, Canada is 30 years out of date in terms of the OECD countries’ best practices in adopting a unified communications act. “
“There is an urgent need to adopt unified legislation and put into place the appropriate regulatory mechanisms. The window of opportunity is probably 12 to 24 months to get this running. Otherwise, it will be subsumed under the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade treaty to the detriment of Canada.” – Stuart Jack, Nordicity
His presentation was about key objectives that a new Communications Act might incorporate. “There is a narrow window for putting in place this new Communications Act. As we have seen under the new trade treaty (USMCA) that there is a telecommunications committee that is adjunct to that. It will be a tripartite, tri-country committee that will be overlooking our telecom legislation.
“There is an urgent need to adopt unified legislation and put into place the appropriate regulatory mechanisms. The window of opportunity is probably 12 to 24 months to get this running. Otherwise, it will be subsumed under the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade treaty to the detriment of Canada,” he warned.
A new Communications Act, he said, should ensure every player operating in Canada should be treated equally. Yes Virginia, there is a Netflix tax! All foreign players deriving revenues from Canadians or in Canada should contribute equally. All service providers should be integrated into the Legislation. Technology generations such as 5G (and then 6G) will necessitate the use of non-telecom infrastructure not covered by the present Act. Also, private networks owned by large U.S. service providers are not covered either.
“This is particularly important. As I mentioned under the USMCA, with this telecommunications committee, there is provision for opening up of all public network access to foreign operators. Virtually this means that, for example, in Ottawa, Hydro Ottawa facilities would be opened up to U.S. service providers such as Verizon,” he continued.
Finally, he was critical of the obsolescence of spectrum management in Canada. “ISED’s current spectrum management practices go back… to the original Canadian Radio Broadcasting Act back in the 1930s. Long-term licences are now 15 and in some cases 20 years. It is an exclusive lease. There is provision for subordinate licencing, so a subordination to secondary users can happen, but it is left to the discretion of the primary licensee,” he explained.
“The recommendations would be to recognize, particularly in rural areas, the way the spectrum regime currently operates with these longer-term leases, exclusive licences and larger licencing areas. Industry Canada currently goes down to tier 4. The FCC goes down to tier 5 and 6 — basically a postal code area — which allows the smaller licensees to access affordable, secure spectrum at a reasonable cost,” Jack concluded.
