Why Bell Canada is sounding the alarm in the country

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A major Canadian telecommunications company is calling upon the government for enhanced security protocols to address the growing problem of copper theft.

Bell Canada in a statement recently announced that they had installed aerial alarms to fight against and protect communications infrastructure from being tampered with, as thieves, especially since 2022, have been breaking into telecommunications substations to steal copper cables.

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“(Copper theft) fluctuates with two things,” says Ross Johnson, a security consultant for critical electricity infrastructure in Canada and founder of Bridgehead Security Consulting Inc. “(The first thing) is the price of copper on the world market and the second is unemployment.”

Bell Canada says, that since January 2022, they’ve had nearly 1,000 security incidents targeting Bell Canada’s network, 87 per cent of which were caused by copper theft with the majority occurring in Ontario, New Brunswick and Quebec.

Each instance of copper theft can mean internet and telephone services for entire communities being taken out for hours at a time, limiting people’s ability to work and effectiveness of emergency services while the critical communication equipment is being repaired.

“While the addition of aerial alarms has been successful to date, more still needs to be done in order to prevent these crimes from happening and to enforce stronger repercussions,” wrote Bell Canada in the press release. “Bell is calling on provincial and federal governments to help communications providers improve the resiliency of Canada’s telecommunications networks. Enhancing security protocols is only part of the solution. It’s imperative that the government and law enforcement take decisive, timely action to strengthen laws, increase fines and make amendments to the Criminal Code, reflecting the essential nature of critical communications infrastructure on the security of this country.

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At the moment, the price of copper is above $8,200 per ton and according to Marc Duchesne, vice president of Corporate Security and Responsibility at Bell Canada, part of what makes copper so enticing to steal is that thieves are able to get significant amounts of the metal.

“Copper cables are not all the same,” Duchesne tells National Post. “If you take a larger cable, they’re very heavy, so it adds up very quickly.”

Duchesne said that Bell is taking a multi-pronged approach to combat the issue, the first aspect is the addition of alarms and cameras to make their sites more secure. The second is asking provinces to increase regulation surrounding metal recyclers and make it more difficult for copper cable thieves to sell the stolen cables as well as requiring metal recyclers to record all transactions and not use cash so that people cannot sell copper cables anonymously.

The third prong is asking the federal government to change the way copper theft is charged in the criminal code, Bell argues that stealing under $5,000 of copper cable that is used as part of critical communications equipment is not the same as stealing under $5,000 of something different and the criminal code should recognize the damage and damage caused by disrupting critical communications infrastructure.

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“We’ve established that fighting copper theft is a key priority across the whole industry,” says Duchesne, “(We’re) making sure that we raise the profile, making sure that people understand the impacts, but also on things such as pushing for amendments to the criminal code, so that there’s a very specific disposition in terms of tampering, or vandalism on critical infrastructure such as communication networks.”

Bell Canada also plans to eventually replace their copper cables with fibre-optics cables, which Duchesne noted is an incremental approach and will take years to fully implement as the copper cables are slowly phased out.

According to Johnson, the issue of copper theft does not just result in the service disruptions, but also in the danger that tampering with electrical equipment presents to substation workers as well as the person stealing the copper.

“Electricity always wants to go (to the ground) and if the equipment isn’t properly grounded, if a person touches it, and it happens to be energized, they can become the ground and that’s how people get killed,” Johnson says. “Our biggest concern in copper theft has always been safety.”

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Johnson recalled a time when he was working in Edmonton where somebody broke into the most dangerous part of a substation and was so severely electrocuted that they had third-degree burns from their waist and up.

Johnson noted that substations are safe, if you know what you’re doing and you don’t tamper with the equipment, but the people into to steal copper cable have not been trained and do not know how to remain safe, putting them in serious danger.

“In our line of work we make, package and sell lightning, but people just don’t understand that,” Johnson says. “They don’t understand how unsafe it is… and so they get themselves hurt or they get in trouble as a result.”

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