We decided early on in our process not to hold public hearings as such, but rather to do two things: issue a consultation paper and then ask for input from the general public. We ensured that there was wide publication of that paper and received about 200 submissions from industry, consumer groups, academics, and others—many of the stakeholders in the industry.
We ensured that this process occurred in a transparent manner to keep everyone honest, so that in the second round of comments parties were able to comment on the views expressed in the first round.
We held several quite successful policy forums. We invited some of the top telecommunications experts—regulatory, economic, and so on in the world—to the one in Gatineau. To another in Whitehorse, we invited and helped subsidize a number of community groups and others who were particularly concerned about service in smaller areas.
Then several of us travelled to talk to regulators, policy-makers, and others in the U.S., the European Union—including the United Kingdom, Brussels, France, and Ireland, which is quite a leader in ICT policy—Japan, and Korea. We got a good sense from that.
Then we talked to people in the industry, consumer groups, and others for the better part of a year. We spent a lot of time in off-the-record discussions, which we also found to be very productive.
In the end, we talked to a lot of people.