By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – The House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology (INDU) adopted a motion this afternoon by Liberal member of parliament Han Dong to conduct a study and hold two special meetings before month’s end to investigate the Rogers Communications Inc. outage that left an estimated 10 million wireless and 2.25 million retail internet subscribers across Canada without service.
“The public is owed some answers,” said Dong, who represents the Ontario riding of Don Valley North.
His motion calls on the committee to review the causes of these widespread disruptions; the impact the service outage had on Canadian families, consumers and business, including – but not limited to – the healthcare, law-enforcement and financial sectors.
The motion also calls on the committee to review best practices to “prevent and mitigate” similar widespread outages in the future and, “given reports about Rogers customers not being properly notified, best practices to ensure that the impacted Canadians are updated about service outages in a timely and transparent manner going forward.”
The motion further calls for representatives from both Rogers and the CRTC to appear before the committee, which would present the results of its study to the House.
Saskatchewan Conservative MP Michael Kram, who serves as an INDU vice-chair, successfully added to the motion that Innovation, Science and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne also appear before the committee.
Bloc Québécois MP Martin Champoux, an associate member of the committee, attempted to also have Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino appear before the committee – an idea supported by another associate member, Quebec NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice.
“There are also public-safety issues,” he said. “If one cannot dial 911 to call an ambulance in the case of a medical emergency – this is very problematic.”
Boulerice added that there are also national security considerations.
“We cannot disregard the idea that there could also be potential cyber-threats from various hostile nation states now and in the future, so we need a strong and robust system.”
In the end, it was decided Champagne will be the only minister to appear before the committee this month.
Last Monday, following the widespread outage, he held a meeting with telecom CEOs, including Rogers’ Tony Staffieri, to ensure “that in no uncertain terms they understand how Canadians found the situation unacceptable and they need to take immediate initial steps to improve the resiliency of our network in Canada,” Champagne told reporters in a conference call.
The following day, Ian Scott, chairperson and CEO of the CRTC, ordered Rogers to provide a detailed account as to “why” and “how” its network disruption happened, “as well as what measures Rogers is putting in place to prevent future outages,” the Commission said in a news release.
“We acknowledge the actions taken by Minister Champagne yesterday to direct the major telecommunications companies to reach agreements on (i) emergency roaming, (ii) mutual assistance during outages, & (iii) a communication protocol to better inform the public and authorities during telecommunications emergencies. Once we are satisfied with Rogers’ response to our questions, we will determine what additional measures need to be taken.”
The CRTC gave Rogers until July 22 to provide its responses.
