Thank you.
Thank you all for being here today.
People sometimes ask about competing, buying bandwidth off of a major player and then competing against that player. It seems to be a little counter-intuitive at times, and people look at it and wonder why this is allowed to happen.
The reason is, when you have a duopoly, a monopoly, or even an oligopoly where you have major players controlling a market, the only way to get competition is to have competition created. This helps consumers. I believe that's what we're hearing from many of our ISP producers.
So, really, it is a benefit to producers to have that competition. I think that's probably one of the most important things that we have to bring forward. Without the competition, you have a duopoly and basically there's no competition. That's not healthy for the market.
The 2006 policy directive seems to be squeezing small operators out of business. I understand that Bell requested a discount of 25%. You requested 50%. The CRTC ended up giving you 15%, and that was after giving Bell further concessions. The process was driven by the policy directive. The idea was that with less regulation the market would decide the most efficient outcome. Without competitors having fair access through the market, it doesn't have the chance to choose anyone but the major player. I guess that's where we are today.
I understand a Conservative minister gave that policy directive, which neglected the needs of small operators such as yourselves. Were the series of decisions that have been made and given by the CRTC detrimental, or were they beneficial? How did that lead to the situation we're in right now?
Mr. Tacit.