Human Resources committee  I'm afraid I can only speak to that question from the perspective of the Broadband Canada program. I guess I would say that we have tried to work very closely with all recipients to help them understand the program requirements, as well as the environmental assessments requiremen

Human Resources committee  I'm going to let Shane Williamson address this for Industry Canada.

Human Resources committee  In terms of broadband connectivity, one of the things we've learnt from the program is that every province and territory is different in terms of their needs and requirements, so when you're looking at broadband's connectivity, the first key factor to consider is the population d

Human Resources committee  By the time the program is finished in 2012 we estimate that less than 0.5% of Canadians will actually lack access to basic broadband, which is at 1.5 megabits per second. Those households are scattered across Canada in very low-density areas, and in some cases very remote areas.

Human Resources committee  We have 12 projects in first nations communities, representing just over $30 million in investment, and they will connect just over 15,000 households, approximately.

Human Resources committee  Out of the 5%?

Human Resources committee  It's 0.5%. That represents about 63,000 households, but I can't tell you precisely which ones would be first nations. We could get back to you on that.

Human Resources committee  That's a lot of questions. If I miss one let me know.

Human Resources committee  Certainly. The broadband Canada program is a three-year sunsetting program. On what we have achieved, as you noted, only 14 of the projects are currently completed. The remaining 35 will be completed by December 31, 2011, with a few projects going into March 2012. All of the pro

Human Resources committee  All of the projects are in communities that were designated as unserved or underserved. By definition, urban areas were excluded from the process. In 2009, 100% of urban areas had access to broadband at 1.5 megabits per second. All of these projects are in what we consider to be

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be here today with my colleagues Adam Scott, director of business and regulatory affairs with the telecommunications policy branch, and Shane Williamson, executive director of the knowledge infrastructure program in the science and innova

Industry committee  As Helen indicated, I think the real contribution is making the online environment more safe, so one of the key elements of the anti-spam legislation, in addition to targeting unsolicited commercial electronic messages, is to also target things like malware, malicious software th

Industry committee  Maybe I can just add that other countries that have introduced similar kinds of anti-span legislation—the U.S., the U.K., and Australia—have witnessed significant drops in spam originating from those countries. I think, as Helen pointed out, it's a global problem, and having our

Industry committee  What we do know is that in 2010 the estimate was that 90% of all e-mail traffic was spam. In Canada the estimate was that every Canadian received approximately 49 e-mail messages of spam on a daily basis, on average. So certainly it's significant. Also, that doesn't account for y

Industry committee  That's right.