Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much to all the witnesses for coming here today.
One of the things we've looked at is in the history of telecom. We can look at the long distance example. Back in 1993 the long distance price was 35¢ per minute, and now it's down to about 10¢ per minute. At that time, about 10 billion minutes were being sold; now it's up to 35 billion minutes sold.
At that time, these were the things we were hearing from the opposition: ...the same government that keeps on spinning the same tired line that deregulation is going to save consumers money. We can rest assured that it is not going to save money for the average consumer in the small, remote areas.
That was stated in 1993. Here's another quotation:The average Canadian and the average small business operator in Canada will be the losers.
And here's another quotation about the bill:...it is a document that opens up one very large avenue which is of great concern, and that is the whole process of deregulation, it is a document that essentially harmonizes this with the North American free trade agreement and in the future may put Canadian jobs at risk.
This is what we heard from the opposition back in 1993. The reality seems to be that the exact opposite has happened.
In every country out there that has worked on deregulating local telephony—we're talking about Sweden, Hong Kong, Denmark, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, the U.K., Australia—there has never been found an instance of non-competitive behaviour. We hear that the incumbents are going to be ganging up and are going to be using influence, but it seems that in the world market this hasn't been the experience.
To Telesat, you've mentioned that you are an international company with interests elsewhere in the world. We haven't heard a lot about satellite companies. How many countries are you in and have experience in?