Question Period Note: UNIVERSAL BROADBAND FUND

What is the status of the Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) that was announced in Budget 2019?

• Canadians know that access to reliable high-speed Internet is essential.

• To date, $2 billion of the $3.225 billion in available funding under the Universal Broadband Fund has been announced to bring high-speed Internet access to more than 900,000 households across the country.

• The Government of Canada has also announced significant agreements with the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island to help provide high-speed Internet access to all Canadians by 2030.

• The government is working hard with all provinces and territories to get projects started and serve more Canadians in the coming months.

• Launched in 2019, the Universal Broadband Fund provides $3.225 billion in funding to bring high-speed Internet to underserved areas, including rural areas and Indigenous communities.

• These are large scale infrastructure projects that take time to design and construct. While the government remains on track to provide high-speed Internet access to 98% of Canadians by 2026, and all Canadians by 2030, project timelines may change without notice due to supply chain disruption, labour availability or inclement weather.

• 93.5% of Canadian homes today have access to high-speed Internet or are targeted to receive access through existing program commitments, compared to just 79% in 2014.

• Progress made towards providing high-speed internet access to all households in the country can be found on the National Broadband Internet Service Availability Map and the new interactive High-Speed Internet Access Dashboard.

In 2019, the government published Canada’s Connectivity Strategy and set a national target to provide high-speed Internet access (50/10 Megabits per second (Mbps) to 95% of Canadian households by 2026, and 100% by 2030. With new investments in Budget 2021, the target for 2026 was accelerated to 98%.

With the $475 million top up to the UBF in November 2022, the government has now committed $3.225 billion for the UBF to help reach the national target. In addition, the government has committed up to $600 million to secure new Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite capacity to serve remote and northern communities, and entered into an agreement-in-principle to invest $1.44 billion into Telesat’s LEO satellite constellation, Telesat Lightspeed.

The UBF will support broadband projects that will provide high-speed Internet access to Canadian households, and includes:
• A Rapid Response Stream (RRS) for shovel-ready projects that can provide access to households quickly;
• Up to $750 million for large, high-impact projects that are transformative in nature, for example providing access to large numbers of households or large geographic areas, or will substantially improve speeds being offered; and,
• Up to $50 million for mobile Internet projects that primarily benefit Indigenous peoples.

The intake period for the main UBF closed on March 15, 2021. A total of nearly 1,900 applications requesting ~$9 billion were received. Project selection is underway.

Announced projects as of November 28, 2022, are:

• Rapid Response Stream: The government has announced over $188 million in funding for 197 projects to cover over 97,000 households across Canada, including 20,000 Indigenous households, with improved Internet access.
• Mobile: The government announced a partnership with the government of British Columbia (BC) to provide 100% mobile coverage along BC’s Highway 16, known as the Highway of Tears, by October 2023. The project is made possible by an equal federal-provincial investment of $2.25 million each. This project fulfills a key recommendation of the National Inquiry for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Calls for Justice. In total, under the UBF Mobile Stream, over $3.5 million in funding for three projects has been announced to provide improved mobile connectivity along 277 km of road.
• Main UBF:
o Federal/provincial partnerships have been announced as follows:
 QC: up to 166,000 households through co-funding totalling $920 million
 ON: up to 280,000 households through co-funding totalling $1.2 billion
 AB: up to 200,000 households through co-funding totalling $780 million
 BC: up to 115,000 households through co-funding totalling $830 million
 NL: up to 60,000 households through co-funding totalling $136 million
 PEI: up to 2,000 households through co-funding totalling $20 million