Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, for many people living in big cities, a dropped call is an irritant, but then they dial again and it works just fine. For rural families, it can be dangerous. It can mean a farmer cannot connect to the equipment that keeps his or her modern operation running or, worse, cannot make a call if the combine starts on fire. It can mean a family driving on a lonely stretch of highway in a snowstorm has no way to call for help if disaster strikes. For a first responder, it can mean the difference between getting there on time and getting there too late, and the trauma that can follow. In Canada, cell service should not be a luxury or simply a perk. It is basic infrastructure in an advanced nation like Canada. When it fails, people notice, and sometimes, particularly in rural Canada, they pay for it. That is why this issue matters so much. “Spectrum” may sound like something regulators just talk about, but it is the invisible infrastructure behind every call, text, emergency alert and wireless connection that people rely on. It is also a public resource. The public owns it. Companies are licensed to use it, but government is supposed to manage it in the public interest. When spectrum policy works, people get better service, stronger competition and fewer dead zones. When it fails, families pay full price for half service at best sometimes. Signals drop, towers do not get built, smaller companies get squeezed out, and consumers get fewer choices to purchase from. Worst of all, prices stay high, and the same companies continue to call the shots on how this process works. Bill C-268 would require the CRTC to verify the mobile coverage data it gets from Canadian carriers. That matters because every rural resident knows there can be a huge gap between what the coverage map says and what the phone actually delivers for them. On paper, an area may be completely covered and may appear served, but it is not. In reality, that service may mean one weak bar at best, or a call that drops halfway through, or a signal that disappears the moment the road dips or the weather changes. I bet every single rural member of Parliament in this place knows exactly what I am talking about. We know instinctively where the dead zones are in our ridings. We know where we can make calls on the road, where we simply cannot and where, unless we have downloaded it, an audiobook or podcast is going to cut out, too. What matters is not just the stretch of highway where we know service is awful. We know that people stand outside their houses holding their phones up in the air hoping they might get that one bar. People live there, and despite being told they are served, they know they are not. That is why accurate coverage data matters. Rural folks do not need someone or some big company telling them they are covered when their own experience shows them that is not the case. They need a system that measures service as it actually exists in the real world. This bill would force Parliament to take another look at Canada's spectrum policy framework. That matters because the bill's own preamble makes a pretty remarkable admission that Canada's spectrum policy framework has not been updated since 2007. That is not just a long time ago; in the world of telecom years, that is ancient history. This framework predates the smart phone in the world we live in. It predates the app economy. It predates connected farms, remote work and the expectation that people should be able to bank, work, run a business and stay connected from almost anywhere in this great nation. Canada's public airwaves are being managed under a framework that has been sitting on the shelf since the flip phone era, thinking back to when we had to press enough characters 14 different times just to say hello and to have the patience of a saint. Since then, the world has changed immensely, as we all know, and the framework governing our public airwaves was written for a very different country than the one we are living in today. Bill C-268 would require the Minister of Industry to review that framework, report back to Parliament and hear from people who understand the stakes, such as rural municipalities, first responders, the CRTC, telecom providers and spectrum licence-holders, who would all to come to the table to help us understand what the challenges are and how they can be fixed. In plain English, Parliament would finally have to ask whether Canada's public airwaves are being used to connect people or if we are letting an outdated system limp along while rural communities are left buffering and paying full price for next to no service at times. It is amazing that we have become accustomed to this issue. In any other part of life, people would be furious to pay full price for a service if it only worked half the time at best. Imagine buying a new truck and it randomly just stops working while driving down certain roads. Imagine ordering home Internet to be told that it works wonderfully, except if someone tries to use it. Nobody would accept these services, yet with cell service, too many people have been trained to just shrug it off as if that it is just the way it is. People know where the call will drop, so they avoid making calls, and if they live in that area, I guess they just do not make calls from their own house without a land line. They know where they cannot send a text, they know what corner of the house gets that service consistently, and they know that stretch of road where they are just out of luck. Simply, they have adapted to bad service, but that does not make it okay. Even worse, they are expected to accept this from some of the biggest and most profitable telecom companies in the country. At some point, we have to stop treating bad cellphone service like bad weather, as if it just happens and there cannot be anything done about it. This is the conversation that Parliament is long overdue to have, and it is why Conservatives believe this bill should go to committee for study. At committee, members should hear from those rural municipalities and from our first responders, who understand the public safety risks. They should hear from industry stakeholders about the barriers to deployment and from the regulators about how coverage is measured and, most importantly, verified. We need to make sure this work leads to the problem being fixed, however. The last thing we need is another taxpayer-funded paperweight. A spectrum policy that only works on paper does not work, at least for the people I represent. A coverage claim that falls apart the moment someone leaves town is not good enough. For Conservatives, the test is simple. Does federal spectrum policy help get service to people who need it, yes or no? That should be the starting point of this conversation, not whether the consultation process checks every box or whether the department can point to another strategy, another target or another dashboard on some website. The question is whether the person on the rural road, the farmer in his field or his yard, the family at the lake and the small business owner heading through bad weather can connect when it matters most to them. Does it support competition? People are tired of being told to be grateful for whatever service the few companies decide to provide us. Competition is supposed to mean more choice, better prices, better service and a real reason for service providers to have to fight for their customers. If spectrum policy lets the big players sit comfortably on public airwaves while new entrants struggle to gain a foothold, then the system is not working. Does it encourage investment in our country? At the end of the day, speeches do not build cellphone towers, and press releases do not expand coverage. People need this infrastructure. The rules should reward deployment, reduce unnecessary delays and create confidence for companies willing to build, especially in places where the business case is harder. A serious spectrum policy should help to get service built where it is needed, not simply where it is easiest. Does it make better use of a public resource? Spectrum belongs to the public and should not be treated like private property for companies to hoard, because communities will continue to go without the service. If public airwaves are licensed out, people should expect public benefit in return. Finally, does it recognize that rural Canada cannot be treated as an afterthought? Rural people pay many of the bills for this country. They run businesses. They grow our food. They move the goods we all need across this country. They volunteer in fire halls. They drive long distances, they face tough weather, and they keep our rural communities going and our nation going. They should not be expected to accept second-class service. Those are the questions I believe this committee should examine. At second reading, we are voting on the principle of the bill. We believe that coverage data should be accurate and rural and remote connectivity should be taken seriously. That does not mean every word in the bill, as I see it, is perfect. It means the issue is real enough, serious enough and urgent enough that it deserves proper study. We can support sending this bill to committee so members can hear from the people closest to the problem, test the evidence, ask the hard questions and make sure the focus stays where it belongs: on better service, accountability, more competition and public safety. We will also be clear that the government has had years to deal with these problems. Rural dead zones did not appear yesterday. The framework did not suddenly become outdated just last week. People have been raising these concerns for a long time. The bill opens the door to greater scrutiny. The question now is whether Parliament will do more than wring its hands, because in 2026, nobody should have to wonder whether their phone will work when they pick it up to use it and need it most.
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