This is the top issue that our rural and northern forums on our board talk about. It's really critical. If any of you have been to our conference you will have heard this on the floor from delegates. We see the need to move away from what's been an ad hoc approach, essentially, with very good programs, ones that we've been advocating for on the Hill here before, but essentially we need to move to this longer-term time frame as we've done on transit and housing, away from three- to five-year programs, where ISED and CRTC operate in different silos. The federal government needs to play a leadership role there.
You mentioned the 50/10 targets. They're not mandated standards. Moving to a model of achieving these by a certain date and having them enforced would be a major change. We also know that folks have an interest in fixed broadband, which is particularly applicable in the north, but in the south and rural areas it's about mobile access just as much as it is about your fixed connection. Those are design criteria.
About the dollars, yes, there's a need for more ambition, so we're calling for $400 million a year as a floor, a minimum, to lever monies from the private sector and provinces, and in some cases municipalities, over a long-term period. We think that would be the right starting point for levelled ambition compared to what we're doing right now.