By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – Canadian business and industry leaders welcomed the federal Liberal government’s throne-speech commitment on Wednesday to “accelerate the connectivity timelines and ambitions” of the still not officially launched Universal Broadband Fund “to ensure that all Canadians, no matter where they live, have access to high-speed internet.”
“Covid’s made it clear that connecting Canadians is extremely important,” said Robert Ghiz, president and CEO of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA), in an interview.
“I saw a lot of positives in the speech that hopefully relate back to the telecom and wireless industry. The government wants to build back a better Canada. Well, they’re not going to do that without connecting more Canadians.”
He explained the government’s priorities, which include a commitment to both “expand capacity to deliver virtual health care” and create over a million jobs, cannot be achieved without the assistance of the telecom-wireless sector and the transition from 4G-LTE to 5G networks.
“We know from a report we did with Accenture that 5G would result in a $26-billion investment and create upwards of 250,000 jobs,” said Ghiz, a former two-term Liberal premier of Prince Edward Island. “But in order for that to happen, we need a government that encourages the telecommunications sector through a stable regulatory environment and by incentivizing industry to do the building, if the government wants to jumpstart the economy.”
Although the throne speech did not specifically mention 5G networks, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce cited among the government’s “positive measures… investments to enable a faster rollout of [those next-generation] networks, including in rural and remote areas, to improve services to Canadians and boost productivity.”
The 150th federal throne speech, however, left some organizations wanting more.
Consumer group OpenMedia chastised the government for not providing any “concrete support” for “fast and affordable internet” to the millions of Canadians who have had to move their “work, schooling and personal lives” online during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“How do you ‘accelerate’ a broadband rollout that’s already fallen far behind?” said OpenMedia campaigns director Matt Hatfield.
“It’s now been 18 months since the Universal Broadband Fund was announced. Three months ago, Minister of Rural Economic Development Maryam Monsef said the [fund] would be opened for applications ‘in the coming days’ – well, 107 of those days have now gone by.
“How many times will they re-announce the same project, and when will they actually implement it? There’s no sign our government is acting on the urgency of Canada’s growing digital divide.”
The CWTA’s Ghiz emphasized his industry’s willingness to collaborate with the federal government to leverage 5G to achieve other objectives, such as in the fight against climate change that will be highlighted in a report the association plans to release next month.
