Thank you.
I'm just trying to review where I left off. I'm going to carry on a little bit with what Mr. Van Kesteren has talked about, because the whole purpose of this committee is not to delay and make things more difficult for our telecommunications people, it's not to take away the advantage for our consumers; it's to give them the best that they can have in telecommunications.
I know my friend Mr. Brison has raised the issue of rural Canada. I come from rural Canada, and I would have to share those same concerns. I think that's why, in terms of the recommendations and the discussions that we've had, there is absolutely a protection for rural areas. It's all about competition. If there's no competition within a designated area, within a rural area, that doesn't meet the criteria, then obviously, Mr. Chair, the regulations stay. There's great protection, and we need to have protection for our rural communities.
One of the things I have learned a fair bit about—and I think all of us have—is that we start to understand the significance of our wireless systems. Are they going to be the answer for everything? Right now, obviously they aren't.
It shocked me the other day to learn that, at least in some areas, and maybe in more areas, 5% of the consumers have absolutely no way of talking other than their wireless. They don't have any wirelines coming into their house, and if they do, they don't buy a phone. I think one of them said their house doesn't need a phone; they're the ones who needs a phone.
Are there concerns about quality out there at this point in time? Absolutely. There are. But in my area where it's maybe not as hilly and as mountainous as some parts of the country, we do have a lot of tree cover. I know trees eat up some of the signal, and I know they block the signal in some areas. But we've gone from where we were five to ten years ago, when you used to carry a phone around in a bag that weighed five pounds, to where we now have them almost as.... The BlackBerry that I have is now out of date, and I've only had it a year. They now come a lot smaller than this. So we obviously need to be cognizant of the changes that are going to happen.
I want to go to Mr. Crête's first recommendation. Those are the things we want to talk about today. He talks about defining regions and moving them into the larger regions for local exchanges. He used the example that there are 102 LIRs in Quebec, which I guess are local interconnected regions. Can we work with those? Some suggestions are that having larger ones may not be as good as having them broken down into smaller ones. With smaller ones, you don't get caught with a.... You may have an urban area within that region that will have great service—