60% of Connect to Innovate applicants still haven’t heard back

More than two years after the deadline to apply for funding through the federal government’s Connect to Innovate rural broadband program, the majority of those who submitted applications have yet to find out whether they were successful. The government received 892 applications, an Innovation Canada spokesperson said in an email responding to a question from The Wire Report asking how many applicants have been informed if they were chosen. “To date, the applicants of the 174 applications that have been announced publicly are aware they have been selected. Another 186 have been notified that they did not pass technical assessment and will not be considered further,” the email outlined. That indicates only 360 of the 892 organizations vying for funding have been informed whether or not they’ve been successful -- leaving 532 who are still waiting to hear back. The application process closed in March 2017. “Wow… that’s actually worse than I thought,” Robin Winsor, CEO of Alberta-based internet advocacy group Cybera, said in a phone interview. “That’s a lot of people in limbo still,” Chris Allen, a director at the British Columbia Broadband Association (BCBA) said. “That’s surprising to me.” The 2019 budget included an $85 million top-up for Connect to Innovate as part of $1.7 billion in new rural broadband funding to be spent over the next 13 years. “Budget 2019 committed additional funds for Connect to Innovate (CTI), and the department will draw from the remaining existing applications in the disbursement of this additional funding,” the ISED spokesperson said. “Further announcements of successful CTI applications under the initial CTI funding, in addition to successful applications that will be selected under the CTI top-up announced in Budget 2019, will be made throughout the spring and summer of 2019,” the statement added. Allen said he was hopeful the CRTC’s rural broadband fund, which will begin accepting applications in the coming months, will “learn from past mistakes that way and be able to deliver a program that will actually get funding in people’s hands and get Canadians connected much quicker than Connect to Innovate certainly did.” Other issues with the Connect to Innovate program were flagged in a critical auditor general’s report in the fall. Allen pointed out in a phone interview that it would have taken ISED time to sort through applications that asked for much more funding than was available -- $4.4 billion in total, while the program had a pot of $500 million. The government said in documents tabled in Parliament in January that demand for the program was “unprecedented,” and the applications took time to review. The challenge with delays is that projects are put on hold while companies wait to find out, Allen said. “That just stalls development completely and leaves… at the end of the day, the actual rural citizens, stuck in this limbo.” Lisa Severson, communications and stakeholder relations officer at the Eastern Ontario Regional Network (EORN), noted there is increasing demand for better connectivity in rural areas. “Demand continues to grow,” she said in a phone interview. “How people use the internet has changed. Ten years ago, people didn’t stream their television services through broadband.” Severson said residents in EORN’s region are asking about fibre-to-the-home connectivity, and about when they will see speeds that meet the CRTC’s basic service standard of 50/10 Mbps. Winsor said what’s really needed is a comprehensive strategy for rural broadband and connectivity -- something people, including former CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais, have been calling for for years. “It’s not so much any individual program’s problems, because any individual program’s going to have some problems,” he said. “It seems to me that the most important thing is to get the broadband strategy done. And then you know where you’re going, then you know where the pieces fit.” Winsor also pointed out that technology is changing quickly -- for example, when Connect to Innovate started, using low-earth orbit satellites to provide connectivity was “not nearly as viable.” “With low-earth orbit solutions coming in within the next couple of years, the picture is changing again, but if you’ve got a big picture, then you know where that fills in,” he explained. Another issue with long delays for programs is that “you end up shooting for a target from the past,” he said. Connect to Innovate projects have a minimum 5 Mbps speed requirement, which Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains admitted was the “bare minimum” even at the 2016 program launch. The government now aims to have 95 per cent of Canadian homes and businesses meet the 50/10 Mbps standard by 2026, with that number reaching 100 per cent by 2030. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca

60% of Connect to Innovate applicants still haven’t heard back

News | May 9, 2019

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