THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, April 30, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met with videoconference this day at 9:02 a.m. [ET] to study Bill C-288, An Act to amend the Telecommunications Act (transparent and accurate broadband services information).
Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Before we begin, I would like to remind all senators and other meeting participants of the following important preventative measures.
To prevent disruptive, and potentially harmful, audio feedback incidents during our meeting that could cause injuries, we remind all in-person participants to keep their earpieces away from all microphones at all times.
As indicated in the communiqué from the Speaker to all senators on Monday, April 29, the following measures have been taken to help prevent audio feedback incidents:
All earpieces have been replaced by a model which greatly reduces the probability of audio feedback. The new earpieces are black, whereas the former earpieces were grey. Please use only a black approved earpiece.
By default, all unused earpieces will be unplugged at the start of a meeting.
When you are not using your earpiece, please place it face down, on the middle of the round sticker that you see in front of you on the table, where indicated.
[Translation]
Please consult the card on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents. Here it is so you can see it.
Please ensure that you are seated in a manner that increases the distance between microphones. Please don’t lean forward. Sit up straight and speak into the microphone.
Participants must plug their earpieces only in the microphone console located directly in front of them.
These measures are in place so that we can conduct our business without interruption and to protect the health and safety of all participants, including the interpreters. They are over there, so our thanks to them. I hope everything will go smoothly. What happened was very troubling. We will be more careful than ever.
Thank you all for your cooperation.
[English]
I’m Julie Miville-Dechêne, senator from Quebec and deputy chair of this committee. I would like to invite my colleagues to introduce themselves.
Senator Cardozo: Andrew Cardozo, Ontario.
Senator Richards: David Richards, New Brunswick.
[Translation]
Senator Clement: I am Bernadette Clement from Ontario.
[English]
Senator Quinn: Jim Quinn, New Brunswick.
Senator Martin: Yonah Martin, British Columbia.
Senator Dasko: Donna Dasko, Ontario.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Today, we are beginning our study of Bill C-288, An Act to amend the Telecommunications Act (transparent and accurate broadband services information).
[English]
We are pleased to welcome the sponsor of this bill, Dan Mazier, Member of Parliament for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, to our first panel this morning.
[Translation]
Welcome and thank you for being with us.
[English]
We will first hear your opening remarks of five to six minutes, followed by questions from the senators. Mr. Mazier, the floor is yours.
Hon. Dan Mazier, Member of Parliament for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, sponsor of the bill, as an individual: Thank you, senators. It’s an honour to discuss my private member’s bill, Bill C-288, with you today.
I also want to thank Senator Martin for sponsoring Bill C-288 in the Senate and former Senator Patterson for his supportive words on this bill before his retirement.
As you know, Bill C-288 passed the House of Commons with unanimous support. I was proud to see Parliament come together and put consumers first on an important issue for Canadians. Many Canadians, especially those living in rural, remote and Indigenous communities, don’t feel they are receiving the internet quality they are paying for.
The speeds that customers see when they purchase an internet speed are not guaranteed speeds and rarely minimum or average speeds. Instead, internet companies advertise maximum theoretical speeds. Words such as “up to” are used in advertisements. This leads consumers to believe that an internet service is better than it is. Technically, Canadians receive what they pay for as long as their speeds are lower than the maximum theoretical speed, but this information does not accurately reflect the service quality that consumers can expect. That’s why it is no surprise the data released by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority revealed that only one third of Canadians believe their household receives the “up to” speed included in their home internet packages all or most of the time. Bill C-288 addresses this by providing potential customers with accurate and transparent information — a common-sense concept I know we can all support.
The first pillar of Bill C-288 mandates internet companies to provide Canadians with typical download and upload speeds — not just maximum theoretical speeds. Instead of potential customers being provided with best-case scenarios, Canadians deserve to see the speeds they can expect so they can know if a service accurately meets their needs and budget.
Second, this legislation will provide Canadians with advertised speeds during the time of day they are most likely to use the service. Of course, service quality will be better when no one is using the internet, but knowing the speeds at 7 p.m. is much more relevant than knowing the speeds at 3 a.m.
Finally, this legislation will initiate a consultation process that allows industry, advocacy groups and Canadians to develop a model that puts consumers first. This will ensure technicalities are addressed and the implementation details are guided by Canadians.
Canadians should be able to trust the information provided to them, and Bill C-288 helps make this possible. These proposals will help close the gap between what Canadians expect and what they actually receive for service. To those who say that these decisions should be entirely left to the CRTC and policy directives, I say that the issues relating to connectivity are too important to be ignored by legislators. Yes, there are technical aspects that can be left to the regulator, as Bill C-288 does. However, I believe that, as parliamentarians, we have a duty to improve connectivity for Canadians. This includes legislating clear guidelines and requirements on this matter, as Bill C-288 does.
The proposals in this bill are not new and have been successfully implemented in other countries. Since my bill was introduced, the United States Federal Communications Commission mandated a broadband service disclosure label, an initiative that reflects the contents of Bill C-288. This was a direct result of the legislated Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act).
Australia implemented clear standards for advertising with typical speeds during peak periods, and in the United Kingdom, internet service providers state the average speed that at least 50% of their customers receive during highest-usage hours.
I will also mention the importance of competition. We can all agree that more competition is needed in our telecom sector. To improve competition, we must allow Canadians to compare accurate information.
In closing, I want to share that in June 2021, the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology published its seventh report and recommended the following to the House of Commons:
That the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission require Internet service providers to make information available to consumers on the usual download and upload speeds they can expect during peak periods so they can make more informed purchasing decisions based on accurate and transparent information, thereby improving the industry’s competitiveness overall.
Not one party dissented in that report. On April 26, 2023, the House of Commons acted on this recommendation by unanimously passing Bill C-288 at third reading.
Now the Senate has the opportunity to act on this important issue and help pass this bill into law. I am hopeful that you will seize this opportunity for Canadians. Canadians expect us to work together to pass Bill C-288 quickly so they can benefit, because Canadians deserve to know what they are paying for when it comes to internet services. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Mazier, for your opening remarks. We will now proceed to questions from senators.
Senator Quinn: Thank you, Mr. Mazier, for being here. It’s an interesting topic.
If the current system is advertising speeds “up to,” I understand that you can go to another level of service and pay more in order to have access to the higher speed. I’m really thinking about rural, remote and Indigenous communities. If they change it so that they say, “We can’t go ‘up to’ — this is what we have,” will that not drive people to have the higher-cost service versus the providers making the service available to those remote areas so those extra costs aren’t incurred? I’m trying to figure that out.
You’ve mentioned Australia and other places. I’m wondering what their experiences have been there. The second part of the question is this: Have consumers in those remote areas or areas where the “up to” service hasn’t been what it’s advertised to be, have they been driven to pay more?
Mr. Mazier: Those are two really good points. You’re understanding the urgency, the difference in what we’re seeing and the cost. I talk about competition, but I think we have to back it up a little bit.
Right now, they’re offering you a service. Canadians — in rural areas, remote areas or downtown Toronto — cannot discern or decide on the difference between two different services. Everybody is offering 50/10. Everybody does that. That’s the standard in Canada. They can offer it, and you can pay it, but you’re not getting that service.
There are a lot of complaints and data showing that they at times they cannot, especially when it’s the internet in rural and remote areas. They don’t have the infrastructure to support many customers. The bigger companies or the companies that will go and service somebody out in a rural area, they don’t have the infrastructure to support when they have more customers. We call that oversubscribing, and the whole system starts slowing down.
You’re paying for the higher service, but they can’t physically get it to you. That practice needs to stop. You should be made aware when buying the service that it may slow down at seven o’clock at night. This is why we talk about typical speeds consumers can expect at any given time when they are using the internet.
With respect to the Australian experience, it’s very positive, actually. They did a review. They implemented it in 2017 or 2018, I believe. In 2019, they did a review and the results were positive. The complaints were down and the customers were more satisfied because the expectations were set. They knew exactly what kind of service they were buying.
Senator Quinn: My follow-up question is this: When this bill, hopefully, is passed, will the CRTC have the ability to cause providers to increase the service, if you will, at the current advertised rate? What they are doing now is almost like false advertising. Should they not fix that and cause the companies to adjust whatever it is they have to in order to ensure that service is there at that cost?
Mr. Mazier: This bill would force the companies to provide the customers what service they can provide. Right now, it’s theoretical; it’s just the best guess. In theory, it should work, but it doesn’t really, so there’s no guarantee.
This would guarantee or at least have the ability to send a different signal to the consumer that’s buying it so they can decide, “If I can go with a local service provider and know it’s there 24-7, that’s who I’m going to go with.”
Senator Quinn: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Senator Martin, the sponsor of the bill.
Senator Martin: Thank you, Mr. Mazier, for the work you have done on this bill. I have a few questions related to what you’ve mentioned in your testimony.
You talked about the United States. My colleague asked you a question, and you mentioned Australia’s experience. Can you expand on what the United States implemented? Was there any pushback from the regulator in the U.S.?
Mr. Mazier: Good question. Thank you for picking up on that. The U.S. is probably one of our best examples, especially since they’re in North America. We think the same way. They took a very proactive approach. They did legislate it in. That was step number one. They told the regulator, “This is what we need you to do.” The regulator actually stepped up. They went with a nutrition package type of template. I don’t know if I’m allowed props or not, but this is what it looks like in the United States right now. It’s just like the side of food packaging; they just changed the different criteria.
Interestingly enough, in their criteria, among the many other points they used for consumers, the typical download and upload speeds are on that label. The regulator got it and put that in the regulations.
I’ll just state how the regulator approached this. This is from the chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission. She said:
This is important because you shouldn’t have to be a lawyer to know just what is in your internet service plan or an engineer to understand just how your provider is treating your data. Broadband nutrition labels are designed to make it simpler for consumers to know what they are getting, hold providers to their promises, and benefit from greater competition . . .
This is exactly what Bill C-288 does.
The Deputy Chair: Could you leave this document with our analyst? It will be easier.
Mr. Mazier: Yes.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Senator Martin: We’re in a good place where there are examples, like the United States, Australia and the U.K., and we are maybe looking at either replicating or combining some of those models.
Mr. Mazier: In some ways, we’re at an advantage. We can learn from their mistakes and, especially, the regulators. Far too often, we forget what the regulator, if given clear direction from legislation, can do. If we give the regulator the ability, away they go to do their job properly.
Senator Martin: We seem to be behind the ball, or behind others, and it’s something that we need to do. It is a timely bill. Has Parliament considered addressing this issue before? You’ve thought to bring this in and you’ve said it’s closing the gap so that consumers can make these informed decisions. I’m curious why we hadn’t done this already.
Mr. Mazier: I was first elected in 2019 and actually got drawn very high in the private member’s bill draw that time. I was fiftieth, I believe. This time, I was fortieth. It was meant to be. That is why I am sitting here today. It was a good bill. Some other people thought it was a good bill, too, so it should be here. It all sort of started with the industry report. That’s where the attention set in and we said, “We should do something with this.” I acted on that report. Bill C-299 was the first bill and Bill C-288 is the second iteration with a few changes.
Senator Martin: Thank you.
Senator Richards: Thank you for being here. Our summer home is on the Miramichi, down the river. We have a terrible problem with our internet provider. We traffic off a pole that’s 20 miles away. There’s another across the bay which might be more effective but is completely used up — we can’t get on it. What I’m trying to say is a lot of people are going on Elon Musk’s Starlink or whatever it’s called. Is that the future for remote areas, his kind of service? Is that what’s going to happen in remote areas? You can’t seem to get the internet providers you need. Ours shuts down at peak periods all the time. We can get on, but it’s very slow. I’m just wondering how that works.
Our summer place is in Miramichi, New Brunswick. It’s not in the back of the world, but it is rural. I’m thinking of people in northern Quebec, northern Ontario and Nunavik. How will that work?
Mr. Mazier: Your situation is a really good example of what Canadians are experiencing right now. What are you paying for your internet service?
Senator Richards: Too much, and too much for the cellphone — too much for everything, really.
Mr. Mazier: Right. So they are selling you a service right now in theory. You’re supposed to be getting a service, so why aren’t you? You bought it. Meanwhile, you have Elon Musk, or another competitor, saying, “We’ll provide you service.” The problem is they’re sending you the wrong signals about how to decide. You think it will be better, but there’s no guarantee because it’s all based on theoretical speeds. Because Elon Musk is from the United States and they have these standards, chances are, he’ll probably start operating to these standards. But we don’t know that. As a Canadian regulator, that’s something else the CRTC has to consider when they’re designing this. That’s up to the regulator.
If any consumer is buying a service in Canada here, they should be aware of what the typical upload and download speeds are when using the internet. If you knew that going in, would you have bought that service?
Senator Richards: We have no choice; that’s the thing. Where we are, we really have no choice. If we want internet, that’s our provider.
Mr. Mazier: You were told it was 50/10 service, right?
Senator Richards: Yes.
Mr. Mazier: What if you were told it was 5/2? You’d say, “Why am I paying $160 a month for this? If I can’t get the service, surely there should be a deal in this for me.”
Senator Richards: I hate to go on, but there’s a psychological trick here. The provider will say, “Well, it’s your fault. If you were here, it would work better. If your house were here, you would have great service. Unfortunately, where you are, unless you cut down your trees, you’re not going to get the service that we’re providing. That’s not our fault; it’s your fault.” That’s the psychological thing they do. A buddy down the road has Elon Musk’s Starlink set up in his yard. It seems to work fine. He gets what he wants.
My main question is still this: Is this what rural communities must face? Or will there be a service through the Canadian government or within the Canadian mosaic itself that will take care of this?
Mr. Mazier: This is for the consumer. This bill is arming the consumer with accurate information that industry must provide. Expectations are set going in — “Look, we can only get you this speed.” I think you would have had a different experience and approach with your internet service provider if you had had that conversation, versus them saying, “Here’s our bill. Go ahead and pay it. Sorry.”
Senator Richards: Okay. Thank you.
Senator Dasko: Thank you, Mr. Mazier, for coming here today to explain your bill. I was going to ask how industry might have been persuaded, but that would have been a really silly question. Why would they do it? Of course, they have an interest in keeping things as they are.
The CRTC has a lot of powers to take on these kinds of activities and rules. Why are they not doing it on their own? Why do they need a bill? Have representations been made to the CRTC on this topic? Have parliamentarians, citizens or consumers gone to the CRTC to complain about this? Why hasn’t the CRTC taken it on as its initiative?
Mr. Mazier: There’s a complaints commissioner. I don’t have the testimony in front of me, but he did speak in favour of this type of approach when it comes to internet bills or internet with consumers.
As far as the industry or the regulator stepping up, they haven’t been given any clear direction. The CRTC is directed by legislation. This is a clear path for how they move forward in this conversation, and it is modernizing and catching up. This gives them the ability to look at the U.S. and different models. Under the public hearing section in the bill, we took great lengths to give the CRTC clear direction on how this would work and how it would go about doing this. A lot of things go on in the CRTC. It gets a lot of direction from a lot of different people, including government. It’s not legislation, though. I think we have a real ability to do our job as legislators and make this work for our CRTC so it can go forward and, hopefully, embrace it like the FCC did down in the United States.
Senator Dasko: This is certainly one approach, but the CRTC, as I was saying, has the ability to regulate in a lot of areas under general legislation that’s already in place.
Mr. Mazier: That’s the other thing: They’re allowed to offer theoretical speeds. The internet companies are not breaking any laws. That is allowed in Canada. As a legislator, I think that needs to stop. The best way to stop it is through legislation. That way, you don’t get governments in there saying, “Let’s do a little thing here and there,” and then it sits up on a shelf somewhere. Then the CRTC has no teeth, and it’s public speaking points versus actually doing something for consumers.
Senator Dasko: Thank you. Is it possible that the companies would still be able to advertise using “up to” language in the public-facing ads and promotions they do and have this in the fine print, just like you showed us that fine print? The fine print is way in the back of the website somewhere or in the back of the contracts that consumers have with the companies, yet they’re still doing this kind of advertising. Do you know what I mean?
You might be able to get up to whatever the high speed is at three in the morning, as you said. Is it still possible that they can continue to use the language in advertising, even though they provide the correct information in the fine print? I’m just being suspicious.
Mr. Mazier: As a businessperson, I don’t know why you would tell that to the consumer. They don’t say, “This is potential. Here’s a theoretical speed.” They don’t say that in the brochures. In fact, the fine print is the theoretical speed. It’s the “up to” speed. The big thing is 50/10. That is the big advertisement. That is what the government has set down for regulations. They’ve set that as the goal. The providers have said, “Sure, we’ll do that. We’ll advertise that, but we won’t get there. We’ll get there when it’s good for us.”
Senator Dasko: I’m just being suspicious. They could have the correct information in the fine print and still use that kind of language in their public-facing brochures.
Mr. Mazier: I don’t think that would bode very well for industry with respect to public perception. You tell me what kind of service I’m going to buy, and I’ll make my decision.
Senator Dasko: Here it is in this little piece of paper. That’s all I’m saying. I’m just suspicious.
Mr. Mazier: This will put an end to a practice that is basically outdated. All the other industries across the world are stepping up, and I can’t see why our Canadian industry shouldn’t. We know it’s the best industry in the world, so it’s time to start acting like that.
Senator Dasko: So they won’t be able to do that anymore, even though they could.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Cardozo: Welcome, Mr. Mazier. It’s always good and encouraging to see a private member’s bill move along and come this far. It’s really part of our parliamentary system that we have to see more of these come through successfully. You’ve chosen a very interesting issue to address.
Full disclosure, I was a CRTC commissioner — in a different life a couple of decades ago, so I don’t carry water for them anymore, but I’m still really interested in how the system works. I’m quite intrigued by and interested in the fact you’ve chosen to do legislation.
My first question is this: Would you not see the CRTC’s role as doing this on their own, without having to be prodded? Alternately, would a cabinet directive be an approach that could work?
Mr. Mazier: There was a policy directive set forward by this government, and it didn’t codify it into law, so that was one problem. It wasn’t legislated. You would know better how the CRTC deals with directives versus laws, right? That’s one thing.
There was nothing about mandating the public hearings, so there was no exposure. The government just decided in the back room, “Here, this should be good enough,” and really, they did not address typical upload and download speeds. The real heart of this bill was not even addressed in that directive. Those are the kinds of directives we receive from governments. This is why it needs to be legislated. You can probably answer this better than anybody else. If you’re given clear directions through legislation, the CRTC can do its work, but a lot of the time it’s not given that mandate, and that’s where the train falls off the rails.
Senator Cardozo: When a policy directive is given, the cabinet is somewhat restricted in that it can’t be too prescriptive; it has to leave the actual regulation to the agency. But on some things like this, you would think the commission should, of its own accord, want to ensure speeds to people in rural areas. It seems to me it has the power to do this. What your bill is doing is telling them to do it and saying they have to do it and make sure it’s available, rather than them just having the power to do it.
You mentioned the United States. Do you have any thoughts about how this kind of approach has worked in Australia and the European Union? What feedback have you received from the telecom industry in Canada?
Mr. Mazier: I’ve reached out. When we were looking at this the first time with Bill C-299, I was quite taken aback that this was actually a practice in the telecom community, offering theoretical, or “up to,” speeds. That’s like going to a gas station, wanting 50 litres of gas, getting 10 and then paying for 50. There’s no other industry in Canada that sells their goods like that. Yet they’re allowed to do that. That was where I thought, “No, this needs to be addressed. This is pretty important.” It gives the consumer more power and allows the industry to say, “Here is what we sell you. Here is what we do in Canada.” That’s why I thought it was so important.
As far as hearing from different groups, to make this bill up, we wanted to make sure it wasn’t — I don’t want to say stepping on any toes, but rather moving in the right direction. We didn’t want to have the telecoms industry rising up and saying, “We can’t do this.” Any time we push in a direction, they’re going to say something about it, but I think this is pretty acceptable.
We talked to researchers about how the actual internet works, and why they need the ability to shape and firm, but from that come consequences; your speeds slow down. So we had to balance out the legislation.
We thought the best way was to let the experts figure it out in public consultations and hearings and let the CRTC do its job. That’s why subclause 1(3), and all the way down on all those points, is giving the CRTC a lot of directives, a lot of latitude of what they even find from consumers and industry, and where they can come together so they can offer consumers better information and service.
Senator Cardozo: I may be a bit biased, but my sense is that when given that kind of directive, the CRTC is one of the best organizations in terms of public consultation. There is a ton of consultation going on all the time. The important thing is to make sure that consumers are at the table too, and I hope that they will be.
Mr. Mazier: It’s written right into this bill, under, I think, subclause 1(2). It’s very short, regarding the information required:
A Canadian carrier that offers fixed broadband services shall make the following information available to the public, in the form and manner specified by the Commission:
(a) service quality metrics during peak periods;
(b) typical download and upload speeds during peak periods . . .
And then the service quality metrics during peak periods, those allow them to actually add more. That’s the technical part, where the CRTC can go in and add to this list all they want. That’s why I gave them the power and latitude to see what they can really do for the legislation and for consumers.
Senator Cardozo: They are certainly mandated to take care of consumers’ needs in large part.
Mr. Mazier: Honestly, I don’t think there’s necessarily a lot of legislation that talks much about public interest. This is one bill that is hopefully leading the way in changing that tide over a bit.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: I’m going to take this opportunity to ask a question. Thank you again for being here. Certainly, this whole complex system is hard for consumers to navigate.
In the winter of 2023, Minister Champagne put out an announcement on his direction to the CRTC, and that direction, which was quite stringent, appears to be similar to your bill. The direction includes new rules to improve competition, consumer rights and consumers’ access to information.
How do you see the two regimes coexisting? Does your bill replicate some of what the government announced, or is there a clear difference between what the government wants to do and what’s in your bill?
[English]
Mr. Mazier: I believe you’re talking about the policy directive in 2023.
The Deputy Chair: Yes.
Mr. Mazier: As I mentioned before, it doesn’t speak to what the bill is trying to get after. There is no ability for public consultation. That’s a red flag. It’s not codified in law. It’s a directive that came out of a minister. That’s fine, but the CRTC has a lot of other things to do. Their mandate is not to appease the government or certain ministers in certain ways. There was a bunch of people in a back room that basically made a decision, and he came out with the decision. It’s not treated with the seriousness of legislation. Also, it does not talk about typical download and upload speeds, which are at the very heart of this bill. So the directive can absolutely coexist, but it doesn’t address the problem.
The Deputy Chair: There’s a double — there’s no —
Mr. Mazier: No, it can sit there as a directive and will be there to support this type of initiative, but it needs legislation to support it.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you for clarifying that. I will ask you another question along the same lines.
[Translation]
The CRTC launched a broadband measurement project in 2015 to measure actual broadband internet performance, including connection speeds and latency, in Canadian homes.
The project sought to measure performance. Does your bill differ from the measurement policy, or are there similarities?
[English]
Mr. Mazier: I’m referring to the latest one, 2020, which is measuring the broadband in Canada. The problem with that study was that there were only 2,000 people across Canada who did it voluntarily. Furthermore, it was on fixed-line internet, not wireless internet, and it involved only 10 metropolitan areas that were not on wireless at all. It was a narrow pool and did not focus on rural Canada or anybody outside of metropolitan areas. Basically, they forgot about 80% of where internet is provided in Canada.
So, while this report did say that everything is fine, and the internet companies will point toward this, it didn’t represent the rest of Canada by far.
The Deputy Chair: The CRTC has many new duties with Bill C-11 and Bill C-18, which have just come in. Will this bill cost new money in terms of hiring people? Because there are already quite a lot of activities and consultations at the CRTC. How do you see that evolving? Obviously, the CRTC has new people now because of those two new bills. Do you think this can be done with the current number of people? It’s a question of capacity, too, at this point.
Mr. Mazier: Yes. Governments introduce legislation; that’s what we do. We do that as legislators every day.
Senator Cardozo, you can probably answer that as easily as anybody. I hope that legislation will become a higher priority than directives. While they’re busy — and I understand that — at least this will be on an equal playing ground when they’re looking at Bill C-11, or Bill C-18, or whatever government bills come in. That’s the key difference. We think it’s important enough, as members of Parliament, as senators, as legislators, that this needs to be covered by legislation and not simply policy directives that can be put on a side desk and dealt with some other day.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Senator Richards: Thank you again for being here. What you’ve said is absolutely true. I’ve been here seven years, and those in power often forget that 80% of the country, unfortunately. I’m from that 80%.
How much collusion is there between service providers in this country to maintain the kind of status quo that enables them to officiate like you’re saying?
Mr. Mazier: I think this will go a long way in being able to notice it. Right now, we have no direction as to whether it’s going on or not. We can suspect it all we want, but we have no way of proving it because there’s no difference in service. They’re all telling us that they’re going to offer us 50/10. If someone says, “No, I’m going to offer better service to my customers,” that’s a win for the consumer. The industry can figure it out. The marketplace will figure it out at the end of the day.
Senator Richards: Hopefully. Thank you very much, sir.
The Deputy Chair: Senator Cardozo, the former expert on the CRTC.
Senator Cardozo: I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.
Your example of paying $50 for gas and getting $10 worth is an interesting one. At this committee, we deal with transport and communications. To some extent, we have a similar example with transportation, where you buy a ticket to get you from here to Vancouver at 10 o’clock, but you don’t get there until 11 o’clock or 12 o’clock, so you don’t quite get the service you pay for sometimes. We’re a bit familiar with that, but not a lot of sectors do that.
Regarding your earlier question about the additional cost to the CRTC, I think it may not be large since it’s the kind of question that the commission can ask of providers. That is a check box kind of answer that they have to provide every so often. It may not be a huge cost for them. But could the telcos turn around and charge consumers more? Could they say, “We’re going to give you this extra guarantee —” as opposed to guaranteed service “— and it’s going to cost you this much more.” Do you have any concerns about that — under the heading of “be careful what you wish for”?
Mr. Mazier: The word “guarantee” is not typical. Service guarantee is a range. It can be 50; it can be a range for what you can normally expect for speeds while using the internet. That’s why the word “typical” is used. The CRTC and industry can get this figured out. If they can do it in the U.S., Australia, Europe and the U.K., surely we can get it figured out here in Canada.
As far as the cost to industry, they already have this information. They report it to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, or ISED, so it’s not going to cost them anything.
Senator Cardozo: We’re not forcing them to provide the service, but rather information about the service.
Mr. Mazier: Exactly.
Senator Cardozo: Can you share anything with us about this kind of service in Australia and the EU?
Mr. Mazier: I haven’t been to Australia. I know more about the U.S. because we live beside them. We looked at how Australia went about developing their model. They’re under a different model, with different ownership models, as well, but it was still the regulator and the legislators that made the law the way it is. It worked and was beneficial to consumers. That was the biggest win for everybody, namely, that it included typical upload and download speeds. That was the key to the foundation of the whole discussion.
These countries, including the U.S., are now looking at what else they can look at with respect to information on what consumers are looking for. Service providers need to realize that the information is there. Consumers look for it, and now have different requirements because more information is being transferred over the internet. The sky is the limit, once they start asking. Consumers have the ability to ask for different information from their service providers.
I see this bill as kind of the foundational experience for us in Canada, and we can build on it, just like Australia did. They’re already looking at doing more with respect to the internet.
Senator Cardozo: At the end of the day, if a telco comes back and says, “We promised a certain level of service and we ended up providing less —” That’s all this bill is doing. It’s not necessarily getting consumers a better service.
Mr. Mazier: They will say, “We told you we’re going to offer you 50/10 in theory. We’re now going to tell you the typical speeds you can expect while using the internet.”
Senator Cardozo: If they didn’t provide those speeds, they have to report that.
Mr. Mazier: Yes. It is found in paragraph 32(g), in Part III. This is all under the Telecommunications Act, so there are some teeth there, but we thought we would put this in pertaining to this. It is upload and download speeds, and if you’re not doing that, there are going to be consequences because, again, you have to push them and have some teeth in the legislation. It was recommended by one of our experts, so I thought that was a good move.
Senator Cardozo: Thanks. Internet service is, of course, totally essential for life anywhere. It’s just some people don’t have what is essential. Thank you.
Mr. Mazier: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Mazier, for being here and clearly explaining what your aim is.
[Translation]
That concludes our first panel.
For this morning’s second panel, we have joining us, by video conference, Matt Hatfield, Executive Director of OpenMedia, and Josée Thibault, Assistant Commissioner, Operations and Business Services, at the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television Services.
[English]
And we have Janet Lo, Assistant Commissioner, Legal, Regulatory and Stakeholder Affairs from the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services, or CCTS; and Reza Rajabiun, Competition Policy and Telecom Strategy Expert; welcome to all of you. We will begin with opening remarks of five minutes each, starting with Ms. Thibault.
Josée Thibault, Assistant Commissioner, Operations and Business Services, Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services: Thank you. I am Josée Thibault and with me today is Janet Lo.
CCTS is Canada’s national organization providing a free service to consumers to help them resolve complaints about retail internet, wireless, TV and local phone services. Our structure and mandate are approved by the CRTC, which ensures that our governance and operations are independent of the industry. In simpler terms, we are the industry ombudsman, and we have dealt with over 175,000 complaints since inception. We handle complaints about billing, service quality, adherence to contracts and credit management. We have an enviable track record for assisting Canadian telecom and TV customers, facilitating the resolution of over 90% of complaints, often within 20 days.
We are here to ensure that service providers meet their contractual obligations to their customers. We have the authority to require service providers to fix customer problems and compensate them where appropriate. Our decisions are binding on service providers. We also play a key role in reporting on what drives consumer complaints.
We regularly share aggregated data about the issues we see in complaints to ensure that consumers, the industry and the regulator are fully informed about complaint issues and to help drive positive change in the industry.
We also administer the CRTC’s four consumer codes of conduct, which we use as benchmarks for service provider conduct in investigating complaints. For these reasons, you can appreciate why Bill C-288 is of interest to us, and we thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss it today.
Internet is the second most complained about service, and complaints about insufficient internet speeds fall within our mandate. We track these speed complaints under a category we call “quality of service,” a basket of issues that includes complaints about slow speeds as well as other service issues, such as service outages.
In last year’s annual report, we reported that quality of service is the most frequent problem raised by internet customers, accounting for 16% of all internet problems last year. In our most recent mid-year report, published on April 25, quality of service accounted for 11% of all internet issues reported during the first six months of this current year.
In a recent audit, we found that complaints specifically about internet speed accounted for about 19% of all of the quality of service concerns raised by internet customers, down from 25% last year. In these complaints, customers told us they weren’t getting the speeds they thought they contracted for, or did not understand that the speeds displayed in their plans were the maximum speeds that might be made available to them. In some of these complaints, we also found that the provider offered a lower-tiered plan that may have been better suited to the customer, considering the actual speeds available to them.
Janet Lo, Assistant Commissioner, Legal, Regulatory and Stakeholder Affairs, Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services: Thank you, Josée.
CCTS’s mandate is to determine whether the service provider met its contractual obligations to the customer.
When investigating a complaint, we review the provider’s obligations to the customer, which are contained in their terms of service, policies, the customer’s contract and the CRTC codes of conduct. We note the CRTC codes do not contain any obligations on speeds or performance. Currently, there is no requirement for service providers to include any speed metrics in customer contracts.
When investigating a complaint, we also consider what disclosures were made to the customer about speed guarantees and performance expectations when they subscribed to the service. If we find a discrepancy between expected and actual speeds, we look at whether the customer is on the best plan for their needs. For example, if a customer is on a 100 Mbps plan but is only getting 25 Mbps, we will examine the service provider’s tier of plans and propose a more appropriate plan in light of the actual speeds the customer is receiving. We can also require the provider to reimburse the customer for the difference in cost between the two plans.
We have said publicly, repeatedly, that being informed is the best protection that a consumer can have.
CCTS is not a policy-making or regulatory body, nor do we advocate for industry or consumer interests. But given the number of complaints we see about these issues, it seems reasonable to conclude that making service metrics available to customers when they subscribe to internet service would be a step forward in ensuring that consumers understand the service they are getting, and in achieving an objective that we have always targeted: complete customer disclosure.
In our view, such disclosure would reduce the number of consumer complaints, which is in the interests of both consumers and the industry.
In our work, we regularly see complaints that arise when customers think they are buying something but receive something different. Disclosure of service metrics may help avoid this.
We are happy to answer any questions you may have about our work.
Matt Hatfield, Executive Director, OpenMedia: Good morning. I’m Matt Hatfield, and I’m the Executive Director of OpenMedia, a non-partisan, grassroots community of nearly 270,000 people in Canada who work for an open, affordable and surveillance-free internet.
I’m joining you from the unceded territory of the Sto:lo, Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Musqueam Nations.
OpenMedia urges you to speedily pass Bill C-288. Making truthful reporting of internet speeds a legal obligation is common-sense legislation that will benefit every Canadian.
However, I also want to remind you of how poorly served many Canadians are by our telecom services as a whole, and I urge you to get more involved in improving this situation. Bill C-288 should only be a start, not your end point.
If you follow the news, you know this as well as I do: Canadians have never been more fed up with our many homegrown oligopolies. Permitting our economy to be dominated by oligopolies that crush small competitors and overcharge Canadians has been a conscious choice of many governments over decades, with steadily worsening results. Canadians are finally demanding our government change that dismal status quo.
The competition reform laws that you’ve passed in the last six months, and further measures you’re considering under Bill C-59 and Bill C-352, are a start to reversing that pattern. But knowing how generally frustrated Canadians are, it might astonish you to know that according to a September 2022 survey for Globalive, the single most negatively viewed industry in Canada isn’t groceries, banking or even real estate — it’s telecom.
But is that surprising, when we allow telecoms to report their products like we do? Is there another sector where consumers are forced to live with such inaccurate information about what they’re actually paying for? Do we buy cars with a fuel gauge that only shows the size of the gas tank, not how much gas we have in it? Do we buy clothing that promises it might fit people of a certain size, or food with the assurance that some portion of it might be high-quality? That’s the status quo with internet service.
When Canadians choose between one internet provider and another — that is, where we even have the choice of two providers — the only information we’re currently given is that someone, somewhere, at some point on that network, might have got either a good or great speed. This not only does that not represent the experience we’re actually going to get once we’ve paid our connection fee, bought a router and had a technician come into our home, but rarely represents the experience of our neighbours who are using that service already.
Knowing the speed we’re actually getting makes a huge difference in knowing whether an internet plan will or will not work for us. Matching a telecom’s advertised speed or coming nowhere near it is the difference maker between whether your internet can support one or two parents and a child simultaneously video conferencing from home or not, as many of us learned during COVID.
Canada is still struggling to get that last 10% of Canadian homes, including many rural and Indigenous households, basic internet at the CRTC’s marginal standard of 50 Mbps for downloads and 10 for uploads. This is despite the FCC to our south now setting 100/20 as their standard for what qualifies as high-speed broadband internet.
Bill C-288 tackles one issue very effectively — customers not knowing what they’re actually paying for when they buy internet. When you sign up for an internet plan, you deserve to know what you’re paying for before you buy, and this legislation will make it so. That’s why we’re asking you to pass Bill C-288. It is simple common sense.
However, keep in mind that today we’re treating a symptom, not fixing the root problem. We’re not bridging the enormous asymmetry in both information and market power between telecom companies and their customers; we’re just patching one particularly obvious example of that power. For some Canadians, as has come up in the questions already, Bill C-288 will simply highlight how poorly their only available provider is serving them. That’s why further government investment in infrastructure is important and proactive competition regulation is necessary to ensure all Canadians have access to quality, affordable telecom services.
As we all know, affordable, fast internet is an enormous opportunity accelerator for Canadians. Where it is possible to create dynamic market competition, even on one or two sets of infrastructure, the government should support wholesale and Full Mobile Virtual Network Operators, or MVNOs, rules that give Canadians decent price and service competition. And where the market will never proactively build quality fibre infrastructure — and, across large portions of Canada, it may never — the government must foot the bill and fast-track build-out to make sure every Canadian can use society’s primary communications technology effectively.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Finally, we will hear from Reza Rajabiun.
[English]
Mr. Rajabiun, you have five minutes.
Reza Rajabiun, Competition Policy and Telecom Strategy Expert, as an individual: Thank you and good morning.
I am a researcher and consultant in the area of competition and telecom policy. My research explores how the design of telecommunication policies and strategic behaviour of network providers shape the evolution of internet connectivity that people experience, both within Canada and internationally.
In my consulting practice, I have advised organizations such as the Ontario Ministry of Infrastructure, the Government of British Columbia, the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the CRTC on broadband policy and infrastructure investments. Over the past decade, I have also had the opportunity to represent rural communities and consumer advocacy groups in numerous regulatory proceedings before the CRTC.
Today, I appear as an individual. My views do not reflect those of any organizations with which I have been affiliated.
I appeared before the House Standing Committee on Industry and Technology in its study of this bill in 2023. I will provide context for your deliberations.
First, the problem this bill is trying to address is a common one. As every internet user recognizes, actual internet speeds and reliability that people experience can vary significantly from what one’s internet service provider advertises. Variation and uncertainty about internet service quality negatively affect the user experience and access to vital services and applications. Reliable internet access became even more essential during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Think about the origins of this bill and the COVID pandemic. This bill tries to address a problem that is common for many Canadians, particularly those who live and work outside dense urban centres of the country. The widespread nature of the problem explains the unanimous support for this bill at the House of Commons.
Telecom regulatory agencies in other advanced economies started responding to this problem more than a decade ago. In Europe, for example, transparency and retail contract regulations regarding minimum and typical internet speeds are key elements of the European Union’s open internet regulations, which were adopted in 2015. This bill does not go as far as the European regulations, or even those adopted more recently by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, but represents a step in the right direction in the Canadian context.
It is relevant to recognize that Parliament already provides the CRTC with the authority to adopt measure such as those in this bill. I think that issue came out in the earlier discussion this morning.
For more than a decade, various stakeholders have been asking the CRTC to address these problems. However, the CRTC has consistently refused to take meaningful action. Most notably, in the proceeding held to develop the CRTC’s 2019 Internet Code, the CRTC explicitly excluded broadband speed and quality of service delivery problems from the scope of the discussions in the proceeding. The agency did not provide any reason for doing so.
In my appearance before the House Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, I also highlighted a key weakness with the bill as it was drafted at the time. In particular, the draft bill lacked clear enforcement provisions to incentivize the CRTC to deliver what Parliament expects. I recommended additional language be added to the bill to strengthen its enforcement provision in order to enhance CRTC and internet service provider accountability. The committee adopted this recommendation unanimously, which is now reflected in subclause 3(g) in the current version of the bill before you.
In closing, I note that in practice, gaps between service speeds internet providers advertise and those they deliver depend on, among other factors, how much particular providers invest in network capacity as demand grows over time. Private sector incentives to invest tend to be relatively stronger in Canada’s urban centres than in small towns, hamlets and rural areas. In urban cores, some providers may in fact be delivering speeds that they promise their users, as suggested by CRTC’s broadband test data. However, on the edges of wireline cable and fibre networks outside of urban centres, where network investment incentives are relatively weak, the problem tends to be more pervasive. This undermines the business case for rural fibre deployments by reducing expected take-up rates.
In summary, if implemented in an effective manner by the CRTC, the bill has the potential to benefit consumers, particularly those who live and work outside of Canada’s urban cores. It will also promote efficient investment in delivering high-quality and reliable internet access services Canadians expect from their internet service providers.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear here. I look forward to answering any questions the committee may have.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Thank you all for your opening remarks.
Before I turn the floor over to my fellow senators, I have a technical question, since I’m definitely no expert on download speeds. Is it possible, in 2024, to accurately measure what the bill requires of carriers, in other words, download speeds during peak periods?
Is it possible to take an exact measurement, or is there always a possibility for error. I’d like to know whether what carriers are being asked to do is feasible from a technical standpoint. I would think that, because of certain criteria or factors, it’s not always possible to anticipate speeds. I may be wrong, so I’d like to hear what those who can answer my question have to say. Mr. Hatfield is nodding.
[English]
Mr. Hatfield: This is what the regulation will establish. The numbers might vary somewhat depending on how the CRTC ends up defining how to calculate these numbers, but it’s certainly possible to show what the average performance over the last six months or year has been during certain peak periods within a local area. The numbers will vary a little bit depending on how they decide to define that.
The Deputy Chair: Does everybody agree with that or do you have something to add?
Mr. Rajabiun: I have something to add. That the CRTC actually looked into this a few years ago and developed a methodology. There was a working group. It is a complex network, but there’s a way of summarizing it, and both service providers and regulators can do so. They were going in this direction, but they sort of backed out in 2018-19. They stopped focusing on this element of their mandate.
The Deputy Chair: Do we know why? Do you have an explanation?
Mr. Rajabiun: A change in leadership.
The Deputy Chair: Okay. There’s probably no official reason.
Senator Quinn: Thank you, witnesses, for being here this morning. I know, at least in Mr. Hatfield’s case, it’s an early morning. I appreciate you being here and taking the time.
My first question is for Ms. Thibault. I’m trying to understand the difference between the two levels of service. Mr. Mazier called it “10/50,” if I got that right. Out of the 175,000 complaints, you said service quality was the second most prevalent. What was the percentage? Would it be 50% of that 175,000? Are there complaints about that level 1 and level 10 service and the level 50 service? In other words, does one level of service get all the complaints and the “up to” one respected or fast enough that it avoids complaints?
Ms. Thibault: Thank you for your question. I want to clarify that 175,000 complaints is the number we’ve accepted since inception, and not just about internet. We take complaints about wireless, TV and home phone services.
When we look at internet complaints particularly, what we found in our most recent mid-year report published last week is that complaints about the quality of the internet service accounted for 11% of all internet issues raised by customers.
Then we dive a little bit deeper. We know quality of service can mean many different things, so we looked at a sample of those complaints. We found that complaints about the speed of the internet specifically accounted for 19% of those quality-of-service complaints.
Other types of quality-of-service complaints have to do with intermittent or complete loss of service and then the quality overall of the service. When we’re looking at the quality of service, we’re looking at about 19%.
I’m not sure if that helped clarify a little. There are many layers of statistics here, so I’m happy to clarify further if required.
Senator Quinn: I appreciate that. It does help to clarify in terms of the general order of magnitude. It’s not like you’re getting 100 complaints a day about the topic we’re discussing here, but there are complaints. You may not be able to distinguish between complaints about the 10/50 division of service. Would that be true? Can you distinguish between complaints tied to that lower service — maybe in a rural area, for example — versus service in Toronto?
Ms. Thibault: In the first six months of the current fiscal year, quality-of-service issues were raised over 600 times. We analyze that to be about 1,200 issues per year; of those, there’s a certain proportion that are about those speed issues.
You asked in terms of rural versus urban. We can definitely see a difference where this is disproportionately impacting rural Canadians. For example, when we look at all internet issues, we know about 10% of internet issues are raised by rural Canadians. When we look at quality of service specifically, that jumps up to 16%. We know that this impacts rural Canadians more than other Canadians.
Of those complaints, we cannot say with precision in terms of numbers which are specifically related to being advised that you could get up to 100 megabytes per second, or Mbps, but you’re only experiencing 50. What we can say, from our experience dealing with these complaints, is often customers are unaware that the advertised speeds are the maximum possible speeds under certain conditions, and they may not represent the average experience that they will have.
Senator Quinn: Thank you. My last question is for Mr. Rajabiun. It relates to the last witness. I understand that there’s going to be a requirement to say, “In normal circumstances, et cetera, you can expect this level of service. You will have this level of service.” My question is this: Particularly in rural areas, Indigenous communities and Northern Canada, will the level of service that is to be provided under this bill enough power to allow those folks to have dependable internet? Will it force them to go up a level in service, if it’s available? And if it goes up a level, will that not cost more?
Mr. Rajabiun: That’s a very good question. It also relates to the fact that speeds are still important, and that’s how that market signalling goes. But as the internet has become more essential over the last few years, the stability and reliability of the connection is important as well. This bill allows sufficient flexibility for the CRTC to, for example, start incorporating indicators of that reliability.
Technically, to watch a video, you don’t need that much speed if you’re actually getting it and it’s stable. So 10 Mbps, if it’s a guaranteed minimum, should be sufficient for you. The problem is that market signalling doesn’t give you a minimum, so everybody tries to go higher and higher and push the edges to gain more customers.
This becomes a problem for the expansion of fibre into rural areas in particular. I’ve worked on a number of investment projects in the past few years where, as an investor, if you know there is some cellular broadband service that’s advertising high speeds and you’re trying to deploy fibre and thinking about how much money you’re going to make, that depends upon the take-up rate and how many customers you can find in a particular area. If they’re getting confusing signals from the market, that reduces their incentive to switch to your higher-quality service which would actually deliver the reliable services they need.
This bill is not just a consumer protection measure. It’s also promoting efficient investment in new technologies.
Senator Quinn: Does it open the door for providers? Canada, as I understand, has among the highest rates in the world when it comes to these types of services. Will this allow or open the door for providers to increase costs in the areas that demand or require better service?
Mr. Rajabiun: Provider prices are some of the highest in the world already. If providers are already managing to extract as much rent from consumers as feasible, their pricing at this point is at the edge of demand where the elasticity — if they start increasing prices too much more, then they start reducing demand for their services. They are at the edge of what they could do. The pricing is determined by other factors, not these regulatory matters.
Senator Quinn: Thank you.
Senator Cardozo: First, I have a question on the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services. This is the regulatory body that the or CRTC has set up, or encouraged to be set up by the telecom services. Am I right that you dealt with telecom services and now you’ve expanded to television, on the assumption that it’s the same providers for both?
Ms. Thibault: Yes, that’s correct.
Senator Cardozo: What you’re dealing with is quality of service, so the other organization — the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, or CBSC — deals with the content of what is on television and radio. Where do you draw the line, with regard to television, between what you deal with and what CBSC deals with?
Ms. Thibault: That’s right. We don’t deal with things in terms of content at all. What we do is look at what the customer was advised they would get — the agreement between the customer and the service provider in terms of the services being delivered, the price and if the customer is getting what they were told they would. If not, then we have the authority to make the customer whole.
Senator Cardozo: If somebody buys a certain package of sports and drama and doesn’t get quite what they’re looking for, would you get into that kind of thing with respect to television?
Ms. Thibault: I mean, we would, in terms of the contract and billing issue, but, for example, if a customer is looking for specific content that isn’t being delivered by their provider, no, that would not be something that we’re looking at.
Senator Cardozo: Coming to this bill, then, this bill will help you adjudicate or review the complaints a bit better than what you can do now, and I assume we’re talking about rural customers to a large extent, right?
Ms. Thibault: That’s right. It would absolutely help us in our work.
Again, our job is to help customers resolve disputes. That’s job number one. That might look like working with the customer and the service provider to ensure that appropriate troubleshooting has been done, looking at what the results were, making sure that they’ve looked at the customer’s equipment and how it’s set up, et cetera. After that, we would look to ensure that the service the customer is getting is what they were told they were going to get.
For example, if a customer signed up for a service that provides up to 100 Mbps and they are regularly only getting 25 Mbps, we would look to see if the provider has a plan in between there. For example, do they have an up-to-50-Mbps plan, and if they do, we would be asking, “Why is this customer being billed for a higher-rate plan?” We have the approach where we would say — if the customer wishes — that the up-to-50-Mbps plan would be much better-suited to this customer, and we have the authority to require the service provider to compensate the customer for the difference of cost between those two plans. We also have the authority to provide additional compensation for inconvenience to customers.
Standards like these help us more appropriately benchmark service provider behaviour, so if there were a requirement to disclose to the customer that the “up to” amount is, say, 100 Mbps, but somebody in their area more typically experiences 50 Mbps, then this would help us evaluate whether the customer is actually getting what they were told they would get, and if not, how to then proceed in terms of how to resolve that.
I would invite my colleague, Ms. Lo, if she has anything in addition to that.
Ms. Lo: No, that was pretty thorough, Josée.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you. We think about this as a rural issue, but I must tell you that over the past eight days, there was a United Nations conference on plastics pollution at the Shaw Centre here in Ottawa, and we had about 174 developing and developed countries from all over the world.
In the Shaw Centre, they were having enormous problems with accessibility to the internet. Here we were on the international stage, the capital city of a G7 country, with 174 countries present, and we weren’t able to provide good internet access. That was a little embarrassing. I don’t know if this bill would cover that. Maybe a whole lot of countries could complain about it.
My other question was for Mr. Rajabiun. One of the things you said was that if the CRTC implements this bill properly, it would work. Could you say a little bit more about that? How would you like to see it implemented?
I think you might not have used the word “properly.” I’m paraphrasing you there, but you said something that meant the same thing.
If the CRTC did not implement this properly, what would that mean?
Mr. Rajabiun: Yes, I think that is close enough. I said if they implemented it in an “effective manner,” that is, in a way that makes the suppliers, the internet service providers, more accountable for what they deliver to their end users, essentially.
I’m not sure if they will be debating the details of how that will be done, so effectively, that can mean having a very narrow view or interpretation of what Parliament is asking, in this case, by having stronger enforcement provisions or by having a more expansive view of it that is more flexible.
For example, the more parameters you include in something like this, the harder it becomes to implement. As you see with U.S. food labels, there are a lot of parameters they have in there. That will be challenging to implement and monitor ex post. If you have only a few parameters like upload speed, download speed, latency and — perhaps — reliability, you could add something about downtime.
This is more of a general motivation for the CRTC to become more sensitive to consumer interests.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you.
I want to comment on a point you made to Senator Quinn earlier about why the CRTC was following this issue and then sort of let it slide due to a matter of — in your view — leadership. I think that goes to the importance of this kind of bill, because it then doesn’t matter about leadership. If this is important, it has to keep getting done.
Regarding the other point about cabinet directives, my view is that the CRTC does take cabinet directives seriously, but if you have a change of government, or a change of administration within the same party, some of those things might get more or less attention — whereas the act is the act, and the agency has to follow that.
Thank you.
Senator Dasko: Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
I hate to go back to the data, Ms. Thibault, but I’d like to clarify, if you don’t mind.
You said there were 175,000 complaints. How many of those complaints were about the internet? Of those, how many were about internet speed?
I know you were giving percentages of various subsamples. Can you tell us what the actual numbers are?
Ms. Thibault: Yes, I can do my best to do that.
I hate to start by answering this question with another percentage, but I think it’s important, because we’re talking about data from over 15 years, so the specific number in any one year or period is going to shift. Sometimes complaints go up, and sometimes complaints go down.
When we’re talking about 175,000 complaints, historically, about a quarter of them have to do with internet services — roughly 44,000, let’s say, over our course. That would be the starting point.
Senator Dasko: How many of those, approximately, are about speed?
Ms. Thibault: In terms of speed — and, again, it’s hard to give approximations in numbers, because it’s going to shift from year to year.
Senator Dasko: Yes, I understand.
Ms. Thibault: For example, during COVID periods, there were likely higher numbers of complaints about internet service.
Generally speaking, we would say that 11% of internet issues have to do with quality of service, to give you a general sense of that.
Senator Dasko: I want to focus on the numbers and not the percentages. Did you say approximately 44,000 were dealing with internet issues?
Ms. Thibault: That’s right.
Senator Dasko: You’re giving approximations, and that’s fine. Approximately how many of those would be dealing with speed?
Ms. Thibault: Right. Talking about —
Senator Dasko: If you don’t have the number, that’s fine, but I’m looking for the number.
Ms. Thibault: Sure —
The Deputy Chair: Her connection froze.
Senator Dasko: This question is focusing on Mr. Hatfield, but anybody can answer it.
I posed a question to the last panel and, Mr. Hatfield, since you provided a bit of humour about the internet providers, I asked the previous witness about the possibility that the companies could still advertise using terms like “up to 50” or whatever, even if they have to provide the actual information in documents. They actually have to provide that to consumers somewhere, but they don’t actually have to provide it when it comes to promotion and advertising.
It’s the same as when we see ads in the paper for clothing; the clothing shop will say “up to 50% off,” and then you go into the shop and there are two items that are 50% off and the rest are 5% off.
We could still see that, could we not?
If anybody else has an answer for that, that’s fine, but I’m suggesting that we could still see this phenomenon of advertising putting the best face forward.
What are your thoughts?
Mr. Hatfield: That could happen, and the CRTC, could decide how aggressively they want to place this, sort of, “nutritional information.” They could say, “Your ads have to finish with it,” or, “It has to appear very clearly on the contract page.” There are ways of making sure that information is in front of consumers.
One important point here is that information on real speeds can be a source of competition between providers. Right now, we might have two providers in an area, both of whom say they provide “up to” 50/10, but if you look at that nutritional information, you can see that one of them is actually providing an average of 35/8 in that region, and the other 5/2. That would probably drive you to pick the 35/8 provider.
That information is currently completely invisible to consumers, and so there’s no reason for companies to actually work on improving their service on that level.
Senator Dasko: That’s a good thought. Thank you.
Ms. Thibault: Coming back to your question about numbers, I would say that we would be looking at 5,000 to 8,000 of these, which doesn’t sound like a lot. I think it’s very important to understand the numbers in context, because as the ombudsman, we are the absolute last recourse for consumers. We are not their first point of contact. In fact, we are prohibited from helping consumers if they contact us first to try to resolve it.
These consumers must go through their providers first. Many of them spend some amount of time there. They escalate their concerns. We only see the tip of the iceberg. I want to caution that in any of the numbers, when you look at them, we need to understand the numbers in that context.
Senator Dasko: Do we have any specific information about any of the demographics? We were talking about rural areas and so on. Do we have anything beyond that? Do we have any information or data on provincial differences or any other kind of background information about where the complaints are coming from?
Ms. Thibault: Generally, in terms of all types of complaints, we do, and we publish that in our annual report, but we don’t have information along provincial lines when it comes specifically to internet or quality of service. The deeper you go, the more that information is aggregated.
But again, in terms of urban versus rural, generally 10% of all complaints come from rural Canadians, but for internet quality of service, it’s actually about 16%. So they have a disproportionate number of internet quality-of-service complaints.
Senator Dasko: Thank you.
Senator Clement: Thank you to all the witnesses. It’s always important to get good, solid testimony. Thank you.
This question is for Mr. Hatfield. I remember you well from your testimony on Bill C-11. You indicated support for this bill but clearly said it wasn’t enough. You mentioned that we would need to be looking at further government investment in infrastructure, but also something around competition.
Can you lean more into the “not enough” part and what we should be doing?
Mr. Hatfield: Certainly.
Essentially consumers need meaningful choice, and having one provider, two providers or even three providers typically doesn’t lead to real competition for consumers’ business. It certainly doesn’t lead to a sense for consumers that companies care about their business, will treat them well and compete to attract them. I think that’s why people hate telcos so much. They know that when they call that business, the back-and-forth they have shows them that they’re not considered important. Telcos know that they can sort of just assume they’ll be there.
To deal with that problem, we recommend the government fully commit to a wholesale internet system, which means a system in which small companies can buy access to infrastructure and sell those services to Canadians. We have a version of that in Canada, but unfortunately the rates are very high, and access for fibre internet — for very high-speed internet — has been basically unavailable to small companies until now. As a result, few Canadians go with those small providers, and even if they’re technically available in their community, for most people, it feels like they only have one to three choices.
Senator Clement: Thank you.
Senator Cardozo: I have one question as well. Regarding OpenMedia, I’m looking at your site, and you note, among various other things, that:
Businesses and governments are vying to control the Internet, what you see on it, and how you use it.
But the Internet was created for sharing and connecting, not for censorship or surveillance.
Mr. Hatfield, could you share your comments about how this bill relates to that objective and what you’re searching for?
Mr. Hatfield: Yes. We do our work within three main pillars: access to the internet, privacy on the internet and freedom of expression on the internet.
Essentially, we want to make sure the internet is as positive and liberatory a space for people as it can be. Once people are on the internet, we don’t want their access to information to be controlled, and we don’t want them to be surveilled. But if you can’t even log on, or if you log on at a totally inadequate speed that doesn’t facilitate your participation with other people, none of those other rights can be fulfilled. We are generally trying to support people to have the best internet experience they can.
Senator Cardozo: When you talk about the government wanting to control, do you have concerns about that within Canada as well? I certainly see it in certain other countries. Do you feel that governments are also trying to control internet use?
Mr. Hatfield: There are risks. There’s a sliding slope that governments can find themselves on where, in many cases, they don’t initially think they are trying to do that. As they develop certain types of measures on the internet — things like website blocking, for example — it is often initiated for something like copyright, but as government gets more and more comfortable using that type of technical approach, then its use can expand to different purposes. For example, blocking speech of different sorts, or potentially blocking misinformation in the future. I don’t think the government has proposed that in Canada, but I worry that we could slide down a slope toward that.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: I have one last question for whoever would like to respond.
This is a bill about transparency, with all the conditions that go along with that. As a result, if all goes well, transmission speeds will be available to the public. Some Canadians, however, will continue to experience inadequate service, in particular, Indigenous communities. Only 42% of people in those communities have minimal connectivity.
Mr. Hatfield, you said that competition was problematic and that the big companies, not little ones, set the prices when it comes to the accessibility of broadband internet. I thought the CRTC had the authority to set prices when they were too high.
Once we have this transparency, what’s the next step? What has to happen so that Canadians in every community have adequate internet service in this vast country of ours — where, I repeat, making that happen is no easy feat and companies’ profit margins are probably a bit lower than they are in very populous countries. What’s the solution?
[English]
Mr. Hatfield: For many telecom services, profit rates are currently higher than they are in most countries, which you wouldn’t expect based on that analysis. I don’t think competition solves all of Canada’s telecom challenges. That’s why I emphasized that there is a role for government build-out. The Universal Broadband Fund is important; we need to see that continue and accelerate. But the way these government plans currently work in Canada for the most part is that the government partners with a telco company — usually one of the big three, Rogers, Bell or Telus. After the government fund is built out, people are still left beholden to one of the big telcos — in rural communities, it’s often just one. The incentive for that company to treat their customers in that community well, to innovate on service and try to attract their business, is low. The government has wrapped them up in a little bundle and handed them over to that telco. That is why we need this fair wholesale system that provides a form of competition — to have 5 or 10 companies in that small community, even if only one company has built up the infrastructure.
The Deputy Chair: Does anyone else have anything to add regarding solving the bigger problems of access?
Mr. Rajabiun: Maybe I’ll add to what Matt said about connecting the build-out in Indigenous and rural communities. This complements that objective in this bill.
The federal and provincial governments have spent a lot of money on rural build-outs since COVID started, but they’re trying to attract private sector investment. The problem for private sector investors, especially large companies, is that they already have mobile networks which are much cheaper for them. They advertise high speeds on those, but they’re very unreliable. Governments recognize that deploying fibre wireline networks into underserved areas is important, but the quality signalling problem remains — that is, private sector investors working with the government will invest less if there are fewer potential customers in a particular area, because some proportion of those potential customers cannot judge who is a better or worse service provider since the information is not accurate.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much for everything. It was really interesting. This is a complicated domain, but you have made it simpler.
[Translation]
Thank you very much. That concludes our second panel.
Fellow senators, please join me in thanking our witnesses for being with us and taking the time to share their expertise today. Thank you, honourable senators.
On that note, the meeting is adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)