The House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology will study the Rogers Communications outage that left millions of Canadians without communications for more than 15 hours last week.
MPs on the committee unanimously agreed to investigate what happened at a special meeting on Friday.
The July 8 outage affected Rogers mobile and Internet service users, knocking out ATMs, crippling the Interac payment system and preventing calls to 911 emergency services in some Canadian cities.
The committee will hold at least two meetings by the end of the month and will invite representatives from Rogers, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne to testify.
He wants answers about the cause of the outage, its impact, and best practices for avoiding future outages and for better communicating with the public during such emergencies.
In an email, a Rogers spokesperson confirmed that company executives would attend the hearings.
“We will work in collaboration with the members of the standing committee […] to provide details on the cause of the outage and the steps we are taking to improve the reliability of each of our networks in the future, including through formal mutual support agreements,” explained the carrier. word.
Laurie Bouchard, spokesperson for Minister Champagne, said his office was aware of the invitation and would “continue to work with the committee.”
In an email, a CRTC spokesperson said he would respond to an invitation from the committee “in a timely manner.”
Champagne called the outage “unacceptable” and ordered the country’s major telecommunications companies to enter into agreements to provide emergency roaming services, help each other during outages and follow a communication protocol to better inform Canadians in the event of an emergency.
He gave them 60 days to come to an agreement.
The CRTC is also investigating the outage.