Finance committee  First of all, there has been tremendous consolidation in the business. When I think of our member companies as broadcasting distributors, which is television, they are very much up against huge media conglomerates now. There is tremendous upward pressure on the pricing for television programming, particularly sports.

Finance committee  My response to that is that the people I represent are not competing with the Netflixes of the world, so that's an issue that the broadcasters may find an unfairness with, not so much us. Our future on the broadcast side of the business is to find ways to become aggregators who help their customers navigate the tremendous amount of content that is becoming available from all sources.

Finance committee  The short answer is absolutely. This is something we've said to the CRTC. We've said it to government as well. When we look at this, first of all, it's a huge challenge to connect all Canadians. It's a vast geography with a really thinly spread out population. When you think about that, there's probably not enough money to do it all very quickly, so you have to use what you have very, very effectively.

Finance committee  Good morning. Thank you for your invitation to appear today. I'm Chris Edwards, vice-president of regulatory affairs with the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance, known as the CCSA. CCSA represents some 125 cable, telephone, and Internet companies that serve more than 1,200 communities from sea to sea to sea.