Joanne Levy to the Canada’s Rural and Remote Broadband Community conference

Kelowna, British Columbia
November 13, 2025

Joanne Levy, Commissioner for Manitoba and Saskatchewan
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)

Check against delivery

Introduction

Good morning and thank you, everyone, for joining us today.

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the traditional, unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan people. I thank them and pay respect to their Elders.

It is a pleasure to be here with you to provide an update on our ongoing work at the CRTC. I am joined today by colleagues from the Commission, including members of our Indigenous Relations and Telecommunications teams.

We have gathered here to discuss connectivity in our rural and remote communities and how we define it. I look forward to discussing how we can work together to achieve our shared goal of full connectivity for all Canadians – especially in our traditionally underserved communities in rural, remote and Indigenous areas.

As a Commissioner for Canada’s communications regulator, I am pleased to be part of an organization that is contributing to a collective, government-wide effort to achieve this important goal. 

The conference program also mentions innovation and opportunity, and how both are key ingredients to helping us get there.

We couldn’t agree more. The CRTC is doing its part to foster innovation, both in how we help connect rural and remote communities and in the telecommunications marketplace more generally.

With that in mind, I would now like to turn to some of that work.

Connecting Canadians through the Broadband Fund

As you know, the CRTC is a quasi-judicial tribunal that regulates the Canadian communications sector in the public interest. We hold hearings on broadcasting and telecommunications matters and make decisions based on the record of our proceedings.

In addition to that core work, we have also been part of a broader funding landscape that includes departments such as Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada as well as provincial and territorial governments. We are collectively working toward the goal of all Canadians having fixed broadband Internet access by 2030. At a minimum, we want their service to include download speeds of at least 50 megabits per second and upload speeds of 10 megabits per second, as well as access to an unlimited data plan.

Our most recent public data shows that about 750,000 Canadian households still lack access that meets this standard, and that rural, remote, and Indigenous communities are affected disproportionally.

Numbers help us understand the scope of the problem, and we know that each of these numbers represents a story.

For example, a rural Internet user in the North told the Competition Bureau that the lack of connectivity they and their community experiences “results in feelings of isolation and as though we aren’t a part of Canada.”

I am sure some of you in the audience today can relate. It is a sentiment that we are doing our part to help eliminate. 

The CRTC’s Broadband Fund, established in 2019, plays a key role in this effort. Through it we provide funding to projects across Canada designed to improve Canadians’ access to high-speed Internet and cellphone services. It is entirely funded by the industry and has provided more than $750 million in funding to date in Canada’s rural, remote and Indigenous communities.

It is helping to provide Internet or cellphone services in more than 290 communities and build more than 5,500 kilometers of fibre across the country. These new lines are connecting essential institutions such as schools, health care facilities, and community centres.  

Our third and most recent call for proposals was focused on projects that would help overcome the unique challenges our rural, remote and Indigenous communities face. We asked for projects that would address gaps in network coverage, such as increasing satellite capacity or improving transport infrastructure. To give you one example, our largest single investment to date came from this call, and will build a 1,300-kilometer fibre link to Nunavut from the Nunavik region of Quebec that is critical to connecting roughly 4,200 households in four Nunavut communities.

Another investment made this past January will help bring high-speed fibre Internet to communities like Upper Liard in the Yukon as well as Jade City and Good Hope Lake in northern B.C.

It has also funded important projects across our country’s north, in the rural and remote areas of Quebec, Manitoba, and Alberta.  

We are currently preparing to launch a fourth call for applications. Stay tuned for more details.

Broadband Fund review and public participation

The Broadband Fund is supporting critical projects, and will continue to do so through our future calls. But we know we could further improve it. So in 2023, we initiated a review to find ways it could work better, faster and more effectively.

To find out how to achieve this, we consulted the public. 

Launched in March 2023, our consultation brought us input from dozens of individuals and organizations. We heard about barriers to the Broadband Fund application process that Indigenous applicants experienced, as well as issues with the time it took applicants to apply for and receive funding.  

So last December, we took steps to address these issues. We announced improvements that will streamline the application process and make it easier and faster for funding to be awarded. We also improved how Indigenous groups can engage with the CRTC and our processes and improved Indigenous consent requirements for projects built within those communities.  

This review is still ongoing. Among other things, we are currently considering ways to include network reliability components in the application process. We also want to further collaborate with Indigenous partners. This includes developing a separate Indigenous stream of the Broadband Fund designed specifically to support these communities.  

These improvements to the Broadband Fund, and those that are still to come, are a direct result of interested Canadians and Indigenous peoples participating in our proceedings.

In addition to our formal proceedings, we are also creating new ways for us to understand the challenges that communities face across the country. For example, we have created an Indigenous Relations Team within the CRTC designed to ensure the distinct nature and lived experiences of Indigenous peoples are considered across our work. We are also continuing to meet with Official Language Minority Communities and are holding an increasing number of direct meetings with stakeholders across the country.

To sum up, we want you involved in our work. We value your input – in order to make decisions in the public interest, we have to know what Canadians want and need when it comes to telecommunications and the communications sector.

So, I encourage you to engage with us and help inform our decision-making process, now and in the future.

Small cells

Because the decisions we make based on information gained through public engagement cover far more than connecting Canadians and building more fibre through the Broadband Fund.

We are also making changes to the regulatory framework to ensure we use the existing infrastructure we already have more efficiently. We know that as 5G networks continue to expand across our country, thousands of additional wireless facilities, also known as small cells, will need to be deployed. Small cells make it easier for companies to expand their coverage and serve more Canadians. As more companies deploy and offer 5G services to customers, it improves competition and fosters affordable services in new markets.  

Earlier this year the CRTC confirmed a previous decision that allows cellphone service providers to place wireless network equipment like small cells on telephone poles owned or controlled by large telephone companies.  

The decision sets the terms and conditions under which access to those poles for competitors must be granted. We look forward to the rules we have set out helping to boost 5G rollout across Canada.  

Improving network resiliency

And as we support investments to expand networks, we are similarly focused on ensuring those networks are resilient. With the world we live in getting more unpredictable, this is more important than ever, especially in our rural, remote, and Indigenous communities.

So, we are developing a robust strategy and regulatory framework to help reduce the occurrence of service outages and improve the reliability of services. Because Canadians need to know that they can depend on their telecommunications services, whether they are in an emergency situation, in discussions with clients, or simply chatting with friends and family.  

In September, we issued a final decision on outage notification requirements for providers. We also have upcoming consultations planned on measures to improve resiliency, improve outage communication with customers, and explore potential consumer compensation when an outage occurs.  

We would love to hear from many of you in the course of those proceedings.

Affordability and the Consumer Protections Action Plan

While so far I have addressed the expansion of our networks and their reliability, I want to take a few moments to discuss our work to ensure that all Canadians have access to affordable options in the telecommunications marketplace.

Too often, both in the media and through our proceedings, we have heard that Canadians feel like they pay more than they can afford for telecommunications services. It’s one of the problems the government addressed when it directed us, in February 2023, to explore new ways that our decisions could promote competition, affordability, reliability, and consumer interests. So we have taken action.  

In the cellphone market, we created our mobile virtual network operator framework, allowing competitors to operate on the networks of Canada’s large cellphone providers. Canadians are seeing new options in the market, and we are seeing prices for cellphone services decline.  

And when it comes to broadband, we have provided competitors with a workable way to sell Internet services using the fibre-to-the-home networks of large telephone companies. More than a dozen companies are already using this access framework to increase their footprints, and Canadians are seeing increased competition in the high-speed Internet marketplace as a result.  

At the same time, we know that providers make significant investments to build out and maintain their networks. So, in both of these new frameworks, we have maintained incentives for companies to continue to invest. 

In addition to these measures to improve the prices Canadians pay, we are also exploring what we can do to improve the telecommunications shopping experience in general.  

We are doing this through our Consumer Protections Action Plan, which we set up last year. The Plan sets out the public consultations and hearings we are launching to protect and empower Canadians in the telecommunications marketplace.

And to bring this plan to life, we initiated public proceedings that cover everything from preventing bill shock, to limiting fees, to making it easier to compare offers and switch plans.

Decisions from all of these proceedings will be made, just as with the others I have mentioned, after an extensive examination of the public record for each.  

Conclusion

And that, I think, is a good place for me to wrap up today. Our work in telecommunications has an impact on all Canadians, but we know that our work can be particularly meaningful for Canada’s rural, remote and Indigenous communities.

It’s why we are working diligently to connect as many Canadians as possible through the Broadband Fund.

It’s why we are encouraging innovation to make our networks more reliable and resilient as they expand.

And why we are helping ensure that Canadians have affordable options and can navigate the telecommunications marketplace more easily.

And while I am excited about this work and the opportunity it presents, let me leave you with one last request: work with us. Participate in our proceedings, and engage with our teams and outreach efforts.

As I have said, the decisions we make are based on the record of our proceedings.

Help us build that record. Help guide what we do, and how we do it, so that we can better support your communities.

Because when we work with each other, we can achieve our shared goals together.

Thank you.