WELLINGTON NORTH – Two residents are calling attention to a recent phone and internet outage they say was caused by a theft of copper from a telecommunications cable.
“I was in panic mode,” Brenda Neal told the Advertiser.
Neal regularly visits an elderly family friend who lives alone south of Arthur.
She said his medical alert device — which had connected over a landline before being switched to wireless — was rendered useless by last month’s outage.
She said she later learned from a technician a cable had been cut for the copper.
“Those people won’t be thinking of people like a man who has a medical alert device and lives alone in his own house,” Neal said of the thefts.
Katie Normet, who operates River’s Edge Goat Dairy, also lost service.
The disruption left her family without a landline or internet to process payments at the farm store.
“That landline is always there,” Normet said, noting cell reception in the area is unreliable. “We don’t want to switch away from that landline.”
Normet said she doesn’t believe telecommunication companies or the federal government are treating the issue seriously.
“It’s a big problem,” she said, adding not enough is being done with “temporary fixes and patches.”
Bell Canada would not confirm the specific incident, but spokesperson Geoff Higdon said a July cable theft “resulted in a service outage for some customers in that general area.”
The company has recorded “more than 80 incidents” of copper theft in the region since the start of 2024, calling Wellington County a “higher-risk area.”
“Instances of copper theft are rising at an alarming rate across the country, including in the Wellington area,” Bell noted in a statement.
Last month, Bell released a national warning, calling copper theft a “serious crime that directly threatens the safety and well-being of Canadians.”
The company said copper theft accounts for 88 per cent of all physical security incidents on its network, with more than 500 cases in the first half of this year.
Ontario accounts for 63% of those incidents, followed by New Brunswick and Quebec.
Bell says it spends about $1 million annually on security, using aerial alarm systems, surveillance and patrols as it transitions its network to fibre optic cable.
Police investigations
Copper and scrap metal thefts in the county are usually investigated by the Wellington OPP’s Community Street Crime Unit.
In July, two people were arrested after allegedly stealing copper wire from telecom lines along Arkell Road in Puslinch.
The same month, three people were charged after allegedly stealing scrap metal in Palmerston.
Earlier this year, about 200 people lost phone, internet and TV service when copper cables were cut from a utility pole near Hillsburgh.
Wellington OPP spokesperson Matthew Burton said thieves are cutting down phone lines for copper, but police have also investigated thefts of large cable spools from hydro and internet companies.
Burton encouraged residents to watch for suspicious activity, such as people working in ditches or parked on roadsides at night.
He noted line technicians rarely work after-hours, and when they do, they’re in clearly marked vehicles.
OPP stats weren’t immediately available, but copper thefts are not new to Wellington. In 2023, thieves in Clifford stole about $234,000 worth of wire.
Calls for tougher laws
The Canadian Telecommunications Association, telecom companies and a federal advisory committee have all urged Ottawa to treat copper theft more seriously.
Police can lay general theft and mischief charges, but the industry says that’s not cutting it.
Companies like Bell and Telus want harsher criminal penalties on the books.
Industry leaders raised the issue at the Senate’s transport and communications committee in December, pointing to high copper prices, rising global demand from the energy sector and the ease of selling metal to scrap yards.
Other countries, including the U.S., U.K. and Australia, have stricter laws and deterrents in place.
Perth-Wellington MP John Nater told the Advertiser he has heard concerns from constituents about copper thefts, largely from construction sites.
“I certainly support stiffer penalties for these specific types of thefts and, more generally, for vandalism to our telecommunications infrastructure,” Nater said in a statement.
Telecom companies also want provinces to require scrap yards to keep buyer records for traceability.
Perth-Wellington MPP Matthew Rae said in a statement he has raised the issue with several provincial ministries, but didn’t provide details.
Both Rae and Nater also used their statements to call for bail reform, suggesting released repeat offenders are sometimes behind thefts.
At the municipal level, Brantford introduced a bylaw last year regulating scrap metal sales, and council there has called on the province to create scrap metal legislation.
None of Wellington County’s seven lower-tier municipalities, nor the county itself, have bylaws dealing with the sale of scrap metal.
