Thank you very much for the question.
There are a couple of things I'd like to start off with. In Saskatchewan, we were the first province in Canada to eliminate party lines. In other words, every person in the province got to have their own single line, and we were the first province in Canada to do that. We have now come up with a program to guarantee 100% high-speed connection to 100% of the population, and that's at a minimum of 1.5 megs of traffic. Most of the population will get 5 megs, and that's a program we're doing in cooperation with the provincial government.
The one ask we have of the federal government, every time we see them, is out of that 29 first nations communities in the southern part of the province that are part of that program.... However, we are looking for funding from the feds on behalf of those first nations. Interestingly enough, a couple of years ago there was a program that...actually, the first nations in the north, aboriginal communities of the north, are served quite well in this province; the ones in the south aren't. So within three years, 100% of this population will have high speed, at minimum 1.5 megs.
That program--and I'm getting to your answer because it was important to set that up--was put together on looking at what our normal return on investments are, as a corporation, and like everybody else, we look for a return on our investment. Over and above that, we look for provincial contributions. When we looked at the urban centres, they're served quite well, frankly, in the province. It's the rural and deep rural that are not presently served, and the difficulty is getting there. As much as 50% of the capital cost for those areas has to come with some sort of upfront grant and contribution. The problem is the ongoing upkeep and development of those networks, because if we give everybody their 1.5 megs now and then go away for five years, in five years from now that's not going to be enough for them to keep up their economic development in those areas. You have to have a sustainable, ongoing fund to help you do that.
Right now, there is the $225 million broadband initiative that the federal government announced for federal broadband initiatives. First of all, that is certainly not enough money for rural broadband in this province--nowhere near it--nor does it deal with any of the ongoing sustainability of the network.
All we're simply saying is that history has this mechanism that was put in place to serve rural Canada for a local line, essential services, and in fact there's a hearing in front of the CRTC coming up where the big companies are trying to eliminate that. We in Saskatchewan don't think it should be eliminated. If it's eliminated, rural rates could go up as much as $10 a month.