NCF Board of Directors
Minutes of Board Meeting
June 13, 2023
Minutes of a meeting of the Board of Directors
Board members present:
Anis Hanna (gb499) Chair
Peter MacKinnon (fr198) 2nd Vice-Chair
Emmanuel Adenlolu (gc476) Treasurer
Graeme Beckett (aw958) Secretary
Christopher Cope (bz787)
Martin Dubois (al432)
Eddie Villarta (gd683)
Regrets:
Majd Karam (gc029) 1st Vice Chair
Michael Chan (ga869)
Lindsay Carreau (gc034)
Laura Novitsky (gd477)
NCF Management/Staff present:
Executive Director: Shelley Robinson
- Confirmation of Quorum
Quorum was confirmed
- Consent Agenda (45 minutes: questions & comments or corrections)
- Minutes of board meeting April 15, 2023
- Minutes of board meeting March 14, 2023
Motion: To move in-camera.
Proposer: Christopher Cope (bz787)
Seconder: Peter MacKinnon (fr198)
The motion was carried.
- Executive Director's Report
The following portion of the Executive Director's report is open to the public.
Total members:
Jun. 1/23: 4826
May 1/23: 4822
Apr. 1/23: 4817
Mar. 1/23: 4804
Operations:
● Office hours are currently Monday to Friday, 9am-7pm.
● The office has moved from a mandatory to voluntary masking policy for all staff. We are now also
inviting volunteers to work in-office, though this is not required.
● While installing new equipment into our Data Centre on Wed. April 19th, we experienced an
unexpected outage that affected most DSL services for about an hour and affected our email services and website for about two hours. We apologize for the disruption in service. We have looked into the issue and are taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again. To reduce unanticipated outages, all subsequent maintenance work has and will be done overnight, even when we don’t anticipate that member services could be affected.
● We hired a new HelpDesk Analyst as well as three positions funded by the Canada Summer Jobs
program. Welcome to Albert Montano as our newest full-time HelpDesk Analyst. Albert has been
working on the HelpDesk since January, funded by the Youth Employment Skills Strategy and we’re
thrilled he was able to transition into longer term work. We also welcome George Resendes-Awada as our Summer HelpDesk Analyst, Kelly Huang as our Summer Digital Skills Support and Bashir Saidi as our Summer Marketing Assistant. We look forward to working with them!
Communications and Advocacy:
● In March, the CRTC released a notice to review the wholesale internet framework. This includes
reviewing the rates that NCF pays for our DSL and cable internet services and getting faster access to
Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH, also known as Fibre-to-the-Premises or FTTP services.) As part of this
process, the CRTC dropped one of the rates we pay by 10%, related to usage. After years of seeing
how the CRTC made decisions that supported big telecom companies like Rogers and Bell, this is a step in the right direction!
That said, the 10% drop didn’t make much of a difference to NCF’s bottom line as it didn’t affect the
line rate but instead a portion of our usage cost (that had previously been dropped by the CRTC in
2016.) This is particularly the case as NCF hasn’t raised our DSL prices since February 2021. We’re
proud to offer our members this stability during a time of high inflation as part of our work towards
affordable internet and digital equity.
The CRTC review of the wholesale internet system has three main parts. The first dealt with granting independent ISPs like NCF faster access to FTTP internet the same way we are currently able to offer DSL and cable services. This was due Monday, April 24th. You can check out our submissions here:
https://www.ncf.ca/en/high-speed-internet/advocacy/
The second part deals with the wholesale internet system more broadly, including the wholesale rates we pay Bell and Rogers for the service, access to FTTP, and other ways the CRTC can make decisions that promote affordability. These submissions are due Thursday, June 22nd.
We are working on this submission now and ask that if you support NCF’s work and want to speak up for affordable internet, that you send us a letter of support as part of NCF’s submission or submit your comments directly to the CRTC here: https://applications.crtc.gc.ca/instances-proceedings/DefaultDefaut.aspx?lang=eng&YA=2023&S=O&PA=t&PT=nc&PST=a#2023-56
We will be sending more details about the main issues being discussed soon.
The third part of the CRTC review is a public hearing. NCF will ask to appear, as we did during the 2015 CRTC hearing related to establishing internet as a basic service. Only those who submit comments before June 22 can ask to appear at a hearing.
● Our Business and Community Services Manager Andrew Martey Asare took part in an Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) panel discussion on “Government efforts to
expand Broadband Access in the US and Canada” on June 12th and will be presenting at a panel
discussion on Digital Equity hosted by local community org Synapcity on June 15th.
- AGM Discussion and nomination updates.
The online AGM will start June 21, 2023 and run until June 28, 2023.
- 2022 Audit Review for the Board
Motion: To approve the draft annual audited financial statements and provide them to the members for the upcoming Annual General Meeting.
Proposer: Martin Dubois (al432)
Seconder: Peter MacKinnon (fr198)
The motion was carried.
Motion: To provide the Nominations Committee the discretion to nominate candidates at the upcoming Annual General Meeting.
Proposer: Christopher Cope (bz787)
Seconder: Peter MacKinnon (fr198)
The motion was carried.
Motion: To approve the consent agenda.
Proposer: Christopher Cope (bz787)
Seconder: Eddie Villarta (gd683)
The motion was carried.
- Strategic Discussion: (60 minutes)
- Strategic Planning Phase II (Shelley Robinson)
This item was conducted in-camera.
- Date of Next Meeting _________
The next Board meeting is anticipated to be August 22, 2023: Hybrid, electronic and in-person at NCF office.
- Standing agenda item for discussion without staff and review (15 minutes)
- Discussion item (Anis Hanna)
Motion: Thanking staff (draft motion: to be updated)
Proposer: Graeme Beckett (aw958)
Seconder: Christopher Cope (bz787)
The motion was carried.
Motion: To move out of camera.
Proposer: Peter MacKinnon (fr198)
Seconder: Martin Dubois (al432)
The motion was carried.