INDU meeting 4 · 2025-09-24 — Committee Evidence — LegisWatch

Summary

The House of Commons Industry and Technology committee met to study the CRTC's work and to begin a study on productivity. In the first hour, the committee heard from CRTC Chairperson and CEO Vicky Eatrides, Vice-President of Broadcasting Scott Shortliffe, and Vice-President of Consumer, Analytics and Strategy Scott Hutton. In the second hour, the committee heard from William Robson, President and CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute.

Vicky Eatrides said the CRTC is moving quickly to provide regulatory certainty, noting that its decision to require online streaming services to contribute to Canadian content is expected to inject roughly $200 million into the broadcasting system each year. On telecommunications, she said the CRTC has allowed competitors to use the networks of large telephone companies to offer more Internet and cellphone options, and that StatsCan data show cellphone service prices fell 16.7% between 2023 and 2024. She also highlighted the CRTC's broadband fund, which has allocated over $750 million to connect nearly 50,000 homes in over 290 communities.

Scott Shortliffe said that under the Online News Act, $100 million is flowing into the news system through a framework that the CRTC administers but did not design, and that an independent body, the Canadian Journalism Collective, decides which outlets receive funds. He noted that the CRTC will present a public report on the act's impact, but that it is too early to draw conclusions. He also said the CRTC is consulting on modernizing the Broadcasting Act to ease the regulatory load on broadcasters.

Scott Hutton said the CRTC has put in place an interim regime to prioritize emergency services during network outages and is now working on technical standards for network resiliency, including informing Canadians about outages and potential rebates. On scams, he said the CRTC works with a small team on civil spam enforcement, but that much scam activity is criminal in nature and beyond its mandate. He also said the CRTC is working with Statistics Canada to resume publishing data on telecommunications affordability by income quintile.

William Robson said Canada's productivity emergency is driven by a decade of weak business investment, with the stock of built capital per worker falling and the gap in machinery and equipment investment per worker between Canada and the United States widening dramatically. He recommended a temporary investment tax credit as a predictable and effective tool to boost investment, and said that lowering top corporate and personal income tax rates would help retain talent and capital. He also argued that reducing the size of government borrowing and spending would make room for more private investment, and that removing internal trade barriers, including in regulated professions and supply management, would improve productivity.

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Witnesses · 4

Vicky Eatrides

Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Opening remarks

Good afternoon, and thank you very much for inviting us to join you today. I would like to acknowledge that we are appearing here on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people. I am pleased to be joined by Scott and Scott, to make things easier or, perhaps, more complicated. Scott Shortliffe is head of broadcasting at the CRTC, and Scott Hutton is head of consumer, analytics and strategy. Before we get into the committee members' questions, perhaps I could share a bit of context about the CRTC and some of the work we have been doing. To start with a quick overview, the CRTC is an independent, quasi-judicial tribunal that regulates the communications sector in the public interest. We hold consultations on telecommunications and broadcasting matters, and we make decisions that are based on the public record. The commission consists of nine members. There's a chairperson, a vice-chairperson for broadcasting and a vice-chairperson for telecommunications, and we have six regional commissioners who are located across the country. The commission is supported by a team of expert staff, who help us make informed decisions. We are moving quickly to make those…

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Scott Shortliffe

Vice-President, Broadcasting, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Opening remarks

It's very important that we support local newspapers in Canada, as well as local radio and television. As the tribunal, we were not responsible for the legislation. We were asked to administer it, so I have to be very careful, because it's not our role either to criticize or to applaud legislation. It's our role to administer it. What I can say is that we do see that $100 million is flowing into the news system, and it is going to a wide variety of news outlets across Canada. That is not to say that means there are not news outlets that are being negatively affected. It's not to say that there is not more that can be done for news in Canada, but what we can say is that our part of it, which is to ensure that the money flows to both print outlets and broadcasting outlets, is happening. We will be presenting shortly a public report on what we've seen to date. We will be presenting annual reports. It is part of the legislation, where we try to assess the impact of the Online News Act. Because we're in the first year—I'll be very frank—there's not much for us to say yet, but we certainly want to have an understanding of how it's affecting the news industry in Canada and where the…

Scott Hutton

Vice-President, Consumer, Analytics and Strategy, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Opening remarks

Certainly the CRTC has been very mindful of what we've seen as a likely growing number of outages and major outages that are having a significant impact on Canadians, so we have put in place a number of different measures, and we are currently doing some work on our regulatory proceedings on a few fronts. Our first area of concern was that, when an outage occurs, there are certainly impacts on Canadians, but there are also impacts with respect to the safety and security of Canadians, whether it's for alerting purposes or for reaching emergency services. Our first step was to put in place an interim regime that we've now finalized to prioritize just that, emergency services in that regime, to make sure, when there is an outage, that all parties in a certain area, the emergency response personnel, the teams and the municipalities, are made aware of that, because they need to be able to react and not be surprised in that particular case. We need to be able to report on that front. Following that piece of work, we are now working in a regulatory proceeding going forward with all of the companies to establish, if I can put it more on the technical side, good practices for network…

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Industry and Technology

Summary

Witnesses · 4

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