AG’s report was ‘opportunity to brag’ about projects: ISED

GATINEAU, Que. — Innovation Canada did not take a critical report of its progress on connecting rural and remote Canadians too poorly, instead using it to “do some education” to highlight all its successes, the department’s director general of spectrum policy said on Wednesday. Last fall, the country’s auditor general ripped into ISED’s handling of its mandate to address broadband access for rural and remote Canadians. The late Michael Ferguson said that there were a number of problems with how the government was handling the digital gap, including the lack of a national broadband strategy, spectrum auction inequities, difficulties for some applicants to compete, and not ensuring Ottawa was getting the best bang for its buck on projects. But on Wednesday, ISED’s Adam Scott put a positive spin on the report. “One of the good things about being audited is it means people are paying attention. The auditor general doesn’t audit things that don’t matter,” he said on the last day of the CanWISP conference on Wednesday. The director general of spectrum policy addressed the points laid out in the report, suggesting that ISED, which has a wide range of different portfolios, was moving in the right direction the whole time. “To be fair to us, we may never have published a national strategy document, but I do want to be clear that we had a strategy for spending every wisely,” Scott said, adding that led to the spending efficiency of the Connect to Innovate program, which initially allotted $500 million over five years to connect 300 rural and remote communities. ISED has said that it will now connect over 900 communities. The most recent budget allocates new money for these initiatives, in a package called the Universal Broadband Fund. Since the report, the government also appointed a minister, Bernadette Jordan, to handle rural economic development. The report’s focus on spending efficiencies “gave us an opportunity to brag a little bit,” Scott said about the task of connecting those hundreds of communities. “So we’re actually pretty proud of that.” ISED noted in documents tabled in Parliament earlier this year that it expects most CTI agreements to be signed by April. The document noted that the demand for the program was “unprecedented,” stating that Ottawa received 892 proposals that requested $4.4 billion worth of funding in total. The entire process, Scott said, allowed the department to “do some education, certainly on Parliament Hill” about how the department licenses spectrum and how it handles money entrusted it to manage the complicated task of connecting those regions. “I’d be lying if I said the audit process is fun,” he noted, “but we also shouldn’t be afraid of them.” ISED has also been working behind the scenes to improve public-facing data on which households get what kind broadband service. The Wire Report reported that the department is interested in releasing more specific data than the 25-square kilometre hexagon zones that are traditionally used to measure the extent of broadband coverage in the country. Under the CRTC’s new rural broadband fund, if one household within that hexagon has a certain speed of broadband, it will not be eligible for subsidies. — With reporting by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

AG’s report was ‘opportunity to brag’ about projects: ISED

News | March 27, 2019

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AG’s report was ‘opportunity to brag’ about projects: ISED

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