Conservatives call for universal rural broadband by 2021

Under a rural broadband policy platform put out for public consultation by the federal Conservatives, all Canadians would have access to internet service at the CRTC’s basic service standards by next year, a plan panned Wednesday by the Liberal government and the NDP as unrealistic. Conservative industry critic Michelle Rempel Garner released 14 recommendations Wednesday, that she said the Conservative caucus had agreed upon as ways to help achieve the ambitious target. According to the CRTC’s 2019 Communications Monitoring Report, just 40.8 per cent of rural Canadian households — and 85.7 per cent of total Canadian households — had access to an internet service that met its basic service standard of 50 Mbps download, 10 Mbps download and unlimited data. The federal government has pledged that all Canadians would be able to subscribe service at those speeds by 2030. Maryam Monsef, minister for rural economic development last week told The Wire Report the government would be providing more information on how it will accelerate rural broadband funding “soon,” but is yet to detail when it will become public and what measures it will take. Rempel Garner said in an email that the country’s rural-urban divide would only grow larger once 5G networks were rolled out in cities in coming years. “As work rapidly changes and 5G becomes an operating standard, access is quickly becoming both a catalyst for income inequality and a determinant of economic growth. It can no longer be acceptable to say that a wide swath of Canadians have to wait multiple years to be equal participants in education, the economy, leisure activities and more,” Rempel Garner said. In a media release announcing the plan, Rempel Garner said “bold action” was needed to boost rural connectivity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Canada’s telecommunications industry landscape is not competitive enough to incentivize the market to increase speed and access. This is evidenced by the fact that investments in rural broadband by successive governments and incumbent providers over nearly two decades have not solved the problem,” Rempel Garner said in the release. “Investment is needed, but first the system and the regulatory environment need to change.” Asked by The Wire Report why the party had opted for 2021 as a universal connectivity deadline and whether it was realistic, Rempel Garner said Canadians “need a plan that will quickly and ambitiously achieve this goal, that goes beyond the status quo that has failed to achieve this goal after fifteen years.” Rempel Garner did not answer questions about what resources would be needed to achieve the target. The 14 recommendations by the Conservative Party to achieve universal connectivity at the minimum service standards by 2021 include the development of a national broadband strategy, easy access to real time speed information, simple consumer contracts being mandated and a strategy to limit “predatory” regional pricing by preventing national service providers from offering service for a price that is more than 10 per cent higher or lower than that offered in another region. It proposes the creation of a Local Infrastructure Connectivity Fund, where people could receive tax credits for donating money towards local projects, as well as selling spectrum set asides at lower prices. The recommendations also include the extension of some CRTC deadlines, the implementation of a municipal ownership model for some rural broadband projects and the party’s already announced position of providing financial relief to small internet service providers during the pandemic. A spokesperson for Monsef said in an email that the Conservatives’ proposal “relies on unrealistic thinking that individual donations and personal tax credits alone will provide internet to the most remote parts of Canada.” Monsef’s spokesperson said the government was “open to all good ideas” and would “continue to make real investments and real progress to ensure every Canadian has reliable, affordable high-speed internet, no matter where they live.” NDP Innovation critic Brian Masse said in a phone interview that he gave Rempel Garner credit for picking a timeframe for universal broadband connectivity at the minimum service standards, but said the municipal ownership model meant he was unsure it could be achieved by 2021. He also criticised the plan for not promising to overhaul the spectrum auction process entirely and using its proceeds to fund rural broadband, one of the NDP’s long-held policy commitments. Masse and Rempel Garner have both been united in calling for the government to bring forward its 2030 target for all Canadians to have a connection in line with the basic service standards. “The 2030 thing needs to be sped up, but with a country like Canada and having the systems we have right now in place that are such a hybrid, I don’t think you can get to a 2021 timeframe,” Masse said. Masse said he didn’t have his own timeframe as to when the target could be achieved, but said the NDP would have “a little bit more to say about that soon enough.” OpenMedia executive director Laura Tribe said in a phone interview that the amount of attention placed on rural connectivity “reiterates how critical the internet is right now and that we need to act faster than we are right now.” Tribe said 2021 was “an incredibly unrealistic target” if the country continued to move at its current speed in boosting rural connectivity, and said it was “really encouraging” that the Conservatives were showing “more ambition rather than less.” “I think the thing that I would ask people to think about and consider in looking at how we build out national infrastructure for the internet is what do we need and how can we make it happen rather than what is the status quo. Because I think the status quo has got us to where we are right now, and we need it to shift,” Tribe said. Canadian Internet Registry Association spokesperson Josh Tabish similarly welcomed the plan’s ambition, saying it was great to see political consensus that rural broadband redistribution needs to be sped up “whether the targets are realistic or not.” CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this story stated that just 40.8 per cent of rural Canadian households received access that met the basic service standards. — With reporting by Adam Langenberg at alangenberg@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Conservatives call for universal rural broadband by 2021

News | May 6, 2020

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Conservatives call for universal rural broadband by 2021

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