Well, Minister. Thank you for being here.
I know you'd like the deregulation to reduce costs for everyone—for consumers, I'm sure--but sometimes the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and in some cases it's just not working for low-income people. I'll give you two examples.
One is when long distance was deregulated. You sort of did half the job, but not basic access rates that low-income people need. In remote areas, it's almost a matter of life and death, and certainly for economic survival or to get off social assistance. So when long distance rates went down—which you, I, or governments, and wealthy people could afford—the telcos needed to get some revenue from somewhere, so they reduced basic access rates, which were not regulated. Of course the people who could least afford it, those with low incomes, had to pay the bill.
The second example is when a telephone company owns the wires in an area. There may be a number of Internet providers, but when you say, well, we'll deregulate and then we'll get the cheapest, the problem is that the company owning the wires charges the only other providers a rate to use those wires. When that was regulated, at least they had to provide access at a reasonable rate. But deregulated, they think they can do what they want and charge exorbitant rates, which puts Internet access up.
Of course, no one in a remote area can afford to put in those cables or wires again, so it's not working.
I don't know if the minister has a solution to those two problems and how they might be made to work with regulation, because deregulation obviously didn't work.