Monsef tight-lipped on rural broadband funding announcement

Rural Economic Development Minister Maryam Monsef says “precise timelines” for announcing steps to speed up rural broadband funding are still being worked out, five weeks after saying she would “soon” announce them in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Monsef’s spokesperson Marie-Pier Baril said in an email that the government was “working aggressively” to launch its $1.7 billion Universal Broadband Fund as soon as possible, “ensuring that it will support whatever network infrastructure that is needed to best meet rural and remote connectivity needs, including fibre, fixed wireless and satellite technologies, depending on the region.” Asked when an announcement would be made and why one hadn’t been made already, Baril repeated comments Monsef made to The Wire Report on April 29, when she said the government would “soon” have more to announce about accelerating the pace of their investment. “While precise timelines are being worked out, we recognize the urgency, and we recognize that this is also a big part of stimulating our economy post-pandemic,” Baril said. Conservative industry critic Michelle Rempel Garner said she was “not surprised” that no announcement had been made, given the government’s 2030 target of achieving universal connectivity at speeds of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbpbs upload, the minimum that the CRTC, when it set its universal service objective in 2016, said all Canadians should be able to access. “The economy and how we work will be impacted by COVID, it’s accelerating disruptions that were already underway and the fact the government has been so slow to address this issue is highly problematic,” Rempel Garner said. But repeated government investments in rural broadband had not delivered the required results, Rempel Garner argued, meaning the government needed to “set a clear ambitious deadline with stage-gated metrics to connect every Canadian, and then ensure that that’s being delivered on.” “Rather than just saying ‘oh well we’re spending money,’ they need to be changing the regulatory system, looking at innovative ways to partner with industry, municipalities and First Nation communities to actually deliver on this,” Rempel Garner said. “The fact we haven’t seen a plan to do that is concerning. 2030 is not acceptable, it’s just beyond the pale that we’re even talking about this.” Rempel Garner said she was just a few days away from releasing the Conservatives’ final report about how to fast-track rural broadband, after releasing 14 recommendations last month, when she called for the government to overhaul its approach in order to achieve universal connectivity by 2021. “I think we’re going to have a fairly comprehensive final document to release and I hope the government uses it and I hope they get off their rear ends and actually do something about it because this is vital, not just for the economy as it was before the pandemic, but for the recovery as well.” Rempel Garner also said the Conservative caucus was “fully behind” the plan released last month and expected it to be the party’s position going forward, even after a battle for its leadership has concluded. According to the CRTC’s 2019 Communications Monitoring Report, just 40.8 per cent of rural Canadian households — and 85.7 per cent of Canadian households — had access to an internet service that met the universal service objective. Public Interest Advocacy Centre general counsel John Lawford said fast-tracking particular funding programs would not achieve universal connectivity quicker unless fundamental changes were made to the way the rural broadband file was approached. “There’s this constant idea that you can fix things by adding a new element or promise to what’s really a chronic problem that needs to be addressed in a different way, because what always happens is there’s government money and a CRTC process and it never goes anywhere, so that’s the fundamental thing getting in the way,” Lawford said in a phone interview. “I think legislators should be asking questions about that in committees and stuff, like what seems to be the reasons why we do perpetual reruns of the problem.” OpenMedia campaigns director Matt Hatfield said in an email that the way COVID-19 instantly caused Canadians to rely on their home internet connections “should have provided the kickstart a national broadband plan needed.” “And yet, it has been 12 weeks since the country went into lockdown, and here we are -- still with nothing to show for it. At this point, what little hope rural Canada may have had that the government has a plan to help them through this is fading. Because this is about more than just the pandemic. This is the status quo,” Hatfield said. “It's been 15 months since the government announced its universal connectivity plans, and we still haven't seen any details on the Universal Broadband Fund, let alone actual open applications for rural municipalities, or Indigenous communities to apply to start building.” According to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s website, last updated on May 2, the Universal Broadband Fund will be launched in the “coming months”. Baril told The Wire Report that the UBF, like other previous government funds, would be open to applicants who could deliver a “viable project, including small ISPs, municipalities, and Indigenous groups.” Last month, Monsef told the House Industry committee that the fund would not use the often-criticised hexagon mapping system. --With reporting by Adam Langenberg at alangenberg@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Monsef tight-lipped on rural broadband funding announcement

News | June 5, 2020

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Monsef tight-lipped on rural broadband funding announcement

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