We've seen a lot of feedback on the policy direction. After we made our proposed policy direction in Parliament in June 2006, we received 71 submissions. It was very useful for us, because in the end, if you compare the first policy direction that we issued last March and the one that is in force right now, that we put in force last December...we made some technical modifications to make sure we are in line with what the industry and the consumers of Canada want. Overall, the recommendations and the advice we received from Canadians was very positive. They want us to do what we must do as a government to issue policy directives to the CRTC and to use the power that we have under the legislation, and we did.
Also, I want to inform you that we did a consultation, but my department also did a consultation with the CRTC to be sure the CRTC would understand what we mean with the policy solution that is in force right now. I think it was useful for us to consult the CRTC. We made some technical changes to the policy direction after that, and also consulted all Canadians on it. So now we have in front of us a policy direction that is in force and that is in line with all the concerns we received.
What we want to do with the forbearance decision is the same thing. The forbearance decision received 175 submissions from people in 30 days, and we also received comments from the industry after this consultation. But you also received a lot of interested groups here before you last week and the week before. What we want to do is take that and be sure that when it will be time to decide on the forbearance decision, we'll have all the input necessary to be sure we're going to put something forward that will always be in the best interests of Canadian consumers.