By Greg O’Brien
“THERE’S A WASTE OF two hours,” was my thought after listening to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on Thursday evening.
Not just my own time. Everyone’s.
The meeting notice said only that the INDU committee was looking at the Canadian response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but with a witness list of Jay Thomson, CEO of the Canadian Communication Systems Alliance; Ian Stevens, CEO of independent broadband provider Execulink; Andy Kaplan-Myrth, vice-president, regulatory and carrier affairs at TekSavvy; two rural politicians – Steve Arnold, mayor of St. Clair Township and Rob Gay, the board chair of the Regional District of East Kootenay; and OpenMedia executive director Laura Tribe, it was pretty clear broadband, especially rural broadband, was the primary agenda item.
Plus, committee vice-chair and Conservative shadow critic for the minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Michelle Rempel Garner had just released a rural broadband manifesto of sorts, which we reported on last week. So in virtual attendance (the meeting was all online) is a rural operator, the association that represents them, a third-party ISP and two rural politicians each with their own legitimate broadband complaints. All working directly, in the field, with rural Canadians, with direct knowledge of their connectivity needs and complaints.
And who did Rempel Garner speak with exclusively? Tribe, of OpenMedia. Look, OpenMedia does a heck of a job complaining and Tribe is an effective communicator with an easy message. She gave Rempel Garner and the other politicians the answers they wanted to hear: The current government isn’t doing enough and big companies are generally bad guys favouring profits over rural expansion.
But in front of Rempel Garner and all the other committee members sat, without a SINGLE question being sent his way, the CEO of Execulink, an independent which owns and operates rural networks. It operates as a reseller, too. It offers 1 Gbps service in its owned-network territories and to its TPIA customers. Thanks to provincial and federal funding, it will soon build and deliver fibre to the home in Lambton and Norfolk counties, which it already does in other small communities like Port Dover.
There was nobody in that meeting who has done more for rural broadband, to connect more rural Canadians or is more qualified to speak about rural broadband than Stevens. His company is keeping thousands of Canadians connected through the Covid-19 crisis by managing an unprecedented surge in traffic. He’s spending federal money to deliver 1Gbps broadband to Canadians (speeds far beyond what Rempel Garner and some of the other committee members said is needed) – and none of the politicians thought it worth their time to ask him a question.
120 minutes. Not. One. Question.
“Maximum windbaggery is what I saw.”
In fact, in these committees, the MPs are on a strict time limit for their questions. You’d think they would want to get to the point, let witnesses speak, maximize their time with a number of good questions. Nope. Maximum windbaggery is what I saw as the committee members usually consumed 20% to 50% of their time with blustery preambles that went nowhere, leaving witnesses to rush answers which often ended incomplete as each members’ time expired.
Perhaps during an in-person meeting, Stevens would have been able to interject, something impossible in the virtual format, but that part isn’t his fault. The MPs, however, were they truly interested in hearing from someone actually doing the work of connecting rural Canadians, should have turned to Stevens at least one time.
It made me angry, to be perfectly honest, that the majority of the questions and attention went to Tribe, an Ottawa lobbyist these Ottawa politicians hear from all the time. It’s not that OpenMedia shouldn’t be heard, there were far too few queries made of Thomson and of the rural politicians – people who actually know what’s going on beyond Ottawa and what’s needed in rural markets.
The committee members, some from rural areas with connectivity problems, didn’t even think to ask Stevens how he might connect their areas, or learned about the myriad challenges Execulink has solved in its regions.
As an aside, how the major operators have not yet come in and wired, fibred, overbuilt and erected wireless towers all over Will Amos’s Pontiac, Quebec riding – which is just over the river from Ottawa and where so many Ottawa big shots live, is just beyond my comprehension. Many senior bureaucrats live in places like Chelsea, for example, and their personal experiences with one bar of cell service and lousy broadband influence policy. He is still on the committee and has been an advocate for faster rural broadband rollouts.
As least Amos asked Thomson (one of his constituents), what he thought and the CCSA CEO delivered a good answer – which of course none of the other MPs expanded upon or asked more for more info.
“It’s important to look to the smaller, locally-based providers that are actually in the communities and fully understand the needs of their local customers, and money that can be made available to them perhaps in smaller sizes than has been the case in the past,” Thomson said. “We don’t need huge multi-million dollar projects in smaller communities necessarily, but we need a way to get access to it quickly and through a simple application process, with the ability to use smaller amount of funds for local projects.
“The other aspect to it is that there’s more to this than just the capital expenditure to build the network. Once it’s built, it has to be maintained,” he added. “The economics of rural Canada and smaller populations is that impacts on costs is the same for builds as it is for maintenance. Operational support is also important so that once built it can be maintained and even improved over time.”
Look at that. Real, actionable items to speed rural broadband. Did any committee member pick up the torch and carry that further? Of course not.
This Thursday, representatives from Cogeco, Rogers, Telus and Xplornet will face the committee. We’re going to listen in.
Sigh.
