Thank you for being with us today, Minister. Allow me to thank you kindly for offering to give us 15 seconds. I will be sharing my time, so that Mr. Boshcoff can ask you a question at the end, but before he does that, I have three of my own for you. Perhaps you could then answer all four questions at the same time, if you don't mind.
Minister, in your forbearance ruling you suggested--and I think you also said this in the House--that only the largest and biggest communities would be affected, or there would be deregulation when there was a competitor presence in many of those areas. We now learn that as of the beginning of May, well over 60 communities, many of them smaller than 2,000 to 3,000 in population, i.e. rural Canada, have seen applications by the incumbents for forbearance. I'd like you to explain how your policy now works. We're clearly going beyond the big cities into small cities, in effect snuffing out small competition.
The current range of people who may be part of your expert panel on competitiveness includes members of the industry who have had a stake in the past in managing the Competition Act, like George Addy, and people who are with the oil industry, like Mr. Gwyn Morgan. I'm wondering if you have a concern about whether or not such a panel that you're putting together would have the benefit of being transparent and independent from industry.
We know that the current Competition Act was written by lawyers representing large oil companies. We also know that this committee has done a lot of work on the issue of competition policy in the past, has made several recommendations and has watered down a lot of controversial ones. I'm wondering if you'll take those up.
On the subject of copyright, you are very proud that you have implemented some of the recommendations of this committee. We have 21 others out of the 22 that we'd like you to look at when you have a moment. I don't think having one of 22 is something to be very boastful of, but it's a good start, given that there has been consensus by this committee.
What is your recommendation, and how soon will you implement the recommendation dealing with copyright legislation to make sure those who are pirating and stealing intellectual property of our goods are prosecuted?
I'll go to Mr. Boshcoff for his one question. Then we'll have the minister respond, if that's okay with you.