Well, sure. This is an issue that I think most of our peer countries, most of the developed world, have identified as absolutely crucial to future long-term innovation and economic prosperity, as well as integral to what our education system, entertainment, and culture look like. It plays a role in so many different ways.
I think, as we've seen over the last number of months, whether through Bill C-30, or SOPA in the United States, or ACTA in Europe, the reality is that there's a very important political and participatory dimension here as well.
Unlike most other countries that have developed digital economy strategies, focusing on everything from ensuring widespread access to bridging the digital divide in terms of just basic access to computers, as well as the digital literacy and skills that Professor Steeves talked about, and the policy to ensure that we create the right framework to ensure that businesses start here and grow here, what we've seen in Canada is virtually nothing on that front.
In fact, there was a perfectly good consultation on this a couple of years ago when Industry Minister Clement was minister. There was a lot of feedback on it. We've seen a lot of other countries that have provided models we could look to, and yet there has been no digital economy strategy put forward. Few legislative initiatives have been put forward. I mentioned one, the anti-spam bill, but, 18 months after the bill received royal assent, there is still no finalization of the regulations themselves.
We've seen things like CAP, the community access program, eliminated during the most recent budget at the very time when there was at least an opportunity to look for some private sector leadership. In the United States you've got efforts between the government and large ISPs to provide low-cost computers, and low-cost broadband connectivity to ensure that the poorer parts of our society have access. We don't have any of that taking place in Canada.
So when you come into committee and you start asking what are some of the big policy issues that we have to grapple with, part of the problem is that you've got virtually no leading Canadian companies that are imbuing the kind of Canadian values that we're talking about in what they're doing.
You've got little leverage in trying to ensure compliance, because all of these companies are located outside of the jurisdiction. While that's not to say that you can't do anything—we've seen that there are some measures that can be taken—we'd be on far stronger ground, frankly, if we'd just get on with this issue of trying to set out a framework for the future.