Merci, Monsieur le President. In today's digital world, the Internet is integrated into every aspect of our lives, and we increasingly rely upon it for ever-expanding uses, including social, recreational, educational, health, employment, financial, business, and innovation opportunities. While all communities in the NWT have access to the Internet, the northern part of the territory is still largely connected on outdated, slow, intermittent infrastructure. The southern part of the territory, while connected to the fibre link, lacks redundancy and is subject to outages.
While the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Link Project has been completed, the distribution system in northern communities is still lacking and the residents remain disconnected from the benefits of high-speed Internet access. The user price for northern communication services remains the highest in the country.
Furthermore, 20.3 percent of NWT households do not have Internet access. When looking at households without Internet connection across the territory, the regions with lowest access are the Tlicho and Dehcho, at nearly half of households not connected, followed by the Sahtu and Beaufort-Delta, at 30 percent not connected. Most major highways in the NWT have intermittent cellular service at best. COVID-19 has highlighted the critical importance of ensuring all NWT residents have consistent, reliable, and faster access to information from their homes.
Canada's Connectivity Strategy features two main objectives: that all Canadian have access to broadband at speeds of at least 50 Mbps download and 10Mbps upload; and that mobile wireless services coverage is available where Canadians live and work, and along major road corridors.
Included in the new Universal Broadband fund, the Government of Canada will look to secure advanced, new low-latency Low Earth Orbit Satellite capacity. A process was launched in the spring of 2019 to bring reliable high-speed Internet access to even the most challenging-to-reach rural and remote homes and communities in Canada.
Northwestel's vision aligns with Canada's to bring 50/10Mbps Internet with unlimited data options to every community in the NWT. The company has submitted an application to Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to invest in Fiber-to-the-Home and LEO satellites to deliver on these objectives.
Improving the Internet connection in the NWT must be done in collaboration with industry, and supported through GNWT and Government of Canada investments. Committee acknowledges the GNWT mandate to advance work to support fast and reliable broadband Internet services in all NWT communities and would like to see this work prioritized in response to COVID-19. In support of the efforts to secure funding and produce community business cases, committee is looking for initial costed plans for the development of community distribution systems off the Mackenzie Valley Fiber Link, as well as LEO satellites to the most remote communities.
Recommendation 4
SCEDE recommends the GNWT complete a costed plan to provide broadband Internet connectivity across the territory comparable to the rest of Canada. In addition to the financial costs of extending broadband distribution into all communities, the plan should identify ownership model options, such as public, private, or partnership, for the delivery of broadband services. Notwithstanding Recommendation 5, committee recommends the costed plan be provided to committee by September 1, 2020.
Mr. Speaker, I'd like to turn the final part of the report over to the chair of the committee, the honourable Member for Nunakput. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.