Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege, as always, to rise and speak on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. It is a particular privilege to speak to a bill such as this one, which speaks directly to one of the most persistent concerns I hear from people in the rural communities in my riding, scattered across Elgin County from Rodney to West Lorne, Straffordville, Vienna and Port Burwell. Oftentimes, they do not have dropped calls because they live in dead zones where they cannot even make a call. They cannot so much as send a text message or load a web page on their phone. Obviously, we cannot have coverage everywhere we go in the country, but we look on the coverage maps that are published by many of the large telecoms companies and realize that much of what is on those maps is pure fiction. They will claim full coverage, as we see across southwestern Ontario in particular, when everyone who lives there knows that is just a joke. I thank my colleague across the aisle from Compton—Stanstead for introducing this very important discussion. I have actually spent some time in her riding in the past, and I know it is very rural. Parts of it are very similar to my own riding. I know her constituents see many of the same challenges that mine do and that members across the aisle have seen in their own communities. It is something we encounter. One of the things I love the most about my role is getting to criss-cross all of these different parts of these ridings and communities where people have to be on the go. Sometimes, it is a great privilege to be in areas where no one can call me. That is sometimes a convenience. Sometimes, it is an inconvenience. I am sure that we have all had periods when the whip could not get a hold of us because we were in an area without cell coverage. Still, for a lot of Canadians, that is incredibly important. I want to explain what cellular service is, fundamentally. We can often trivialize the idea of being connected, and for good reason. In this world, we are overconnected sometimes, but we are not talking about the ability to download a game. We are not talking about the ability to idly scroll the Internet. For people in rural communities, the ability to connect to a cellular network is absolutely critical. As technology evolves, we see farmers incorporating more and more technology into their work that requires cellular connectivity, especially if they are out in the field, far from the Wi-Fi routers they may have in their homes or, increasingly, in their barns. In our work on the justice committee, we heard from Liz Brown of Valora Place, which is an abused women's centre in St. Thomas, about how domestic and intimate partner violence in rural communities can be aggravated by not having the cell signal to make emergency calls. I do not wish to be overly dramatic or alarmist, but sometimes, a lack of cellular connectivity is literally a life-or-death issue if a person cannot get a signal to make a call. That is the case not just in an intimate partner violence situation, but in any emergency. If a person cannot call 911, they cannot get the help they may need in a crisis. We also have, in general, the economic needs of travelling around rural communities. Stores increasingly want to use QR codes to load a menu at a restaurant, for example, or to redeem a coupon someone may have found. These rely on cellular connectivity that, increasingly in rural communities, is not available. One important point I will raise here is that rural communities have, for much of the last 10 years, felt very ignored by the Liberal government. We see announcement after announcement devoted to big cities. We have people in rural communities truly feeling left behind. While there has been leadership from provincial governments and, in some cases, from the federal government over the past years on rural broadband, this idea of rural cellular connectivity seems to have been almost entirely ignored. I go back to two things that I believe need to change fundamentally. One is something that I hope and am optimistic this bill could address, which is the accuracy of coverage maps. The bill would require the CRTC to establish a process to ensure the accuracy of mobile network coverage data provided by Canadian carriers. This means that when people in Sparta, Iona, Iona Station or Dutton look at the coverage areas for a company that might want their business as a cellular customer, there has to be accuracy in those maps. It is important to note that I am not talking about situations where, every once in a while, a call drops in an area. I am talking about perennial dead zones, where the telecoms companies are claiming they offer coverage, but the people attempting to use their phones there are not receiving it. That is a very important distinction. We know that there are always going to be glitches and down points. We know that there are going to be slight variances and variations in coverage from day to day. We know that the weather can affect this. We know that there are going to be technical issues on the coverage maps. However, we are talking about establishing, as a baseline, an expectation that a lot of Canadians have that they are not going to pay for a service they are not receiving, and that they are not going to pay for a service that is not available to them at all points, especially when they may need it most. It is interesting that the bill happened to come up today. Last week, I rose in the House and asked a question in question period about this very issue, which was about what the industry minister would do to ensure accuracy in telecom maps. I was very pleased that the parliamentary secretary to the industry minister rose to answer my question, but he did not actually address the substance of the issue. He talked about affordability, which again is a very important issue, but I would love to see concrete action from the government on the actual question of accuracy in the coverage maps. Here is where I hope we can go if Bill C-268 is referred to committee. The bill requires a process for ensuring accuracy, but that is only the first step. We also have to be able to expand that coverage. In that sense, I hope this can be the beginning of a longer-term discussion about not just identifying where these dead zones are, but also fixing them. I do not wish to be biased, but actually I do wish to be biased towards my part of the country, because it is a beautiful place. However, the regions I am talking about are not even insanely rural and remote areas. We are sometimes talking about communities that are 15 to 20 minutes outside of very large cities, like London or St. Thomas, which are still seeing these coverage dead zones. If we cannot have full coverage in an area as densely populated as southwestern Ontario, we are certainly not going to have it in areas of the country that are far more sparsely populated and far more rural. We know that the telecom companies have tried to respond to some of these concerns by saying that we can move ahead with satellite technology. We have seen Rogers, in particular, Bell as well, advance satellite phones as an answer to some of these problems, but again, if people are near the Canada-U.S. border, as the vast majority of Canadians are, this satellite technology is not available to them. We still have the same problem, which is that we have people looking to a new technology, but that not solving the problem, which is applicable to not just the farmers in my riding, but all the people who live in these rural communities who want to work in these communities, want to study in these communities and, as my colleague for Avalon said a few moments ago, hopefully want to stay in these communities. We do not want people having to leave the place they call home because they feel they do not have the technical capabilities they need to live their lives there, to feel secure there and to feel like they can be on the go and run their businesses there. I want to see from this Liberal government a real commitment to rural communities, like the ones I have the great privilege and honour of representing. I want to see us identify ways to ensure accuracy in telecom coverage maps in rural Canada, but I also want to see us fix and expand those areas where we know the coverage is not there. This is a crucial issue, and it is one that has wide-ranging implications for the economy and business, for connectivity and well-being, and yes, even for public safety and justice. Conservatives will always stand in support of transparency and accountability. I believe that companies have a moral obligation to provide accurate information, and I believe that government, given the manner in which it regulates telecom companies, needs to do its job and ensure this. My question I would like to leave everyone with is this: We have a framework proposed here. What do we do to turn this into real action? That is what I would like to see. I appreciate my colleague raising this issue. It is about time we get some attention for rural Canada from the Liberal government.
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