Five minutes, and five minutes only—I've been saying that quite a bit over the last little while on Bill C-11. It all comes back, I guess.
Thank you, Minister, for being here today. Usually it's just the minister in the hot seat, but with the temperature in this room, I think we're all in the hot seat right now.
I'd like to continue a little on the spectrum. We've been studying, in this committee, e-commerce and mobile payments. One of the things we all agree upon is that without the spectrum, which is basically the next round of infrastructure for this, Canadian consumers and companies will be left behind, so it's an important issue for all of us.
One of the things we've been talking about a lot in this committee is rural areas and how to make sure that rural Canadians get access. Of course, it's great to hear that there will some commitment to rural Canadians and rural businesses, but on this side we'd like to see a little more. We're looking to the ministry to explain or talk about how we can come up with some of these other ideas that others are talking about.
You've given the structure of the rules: incumbents can only buy one block of prime spectrum and there's a limited spectrum available, so it's five usable blocks at only four.
It is quite possible that no operator, none of the telecoms, will fall subject to the rural access rules, and even if one operator does, there will not be competition, and consumers in rural areas will possibly continue to suffer.
Maybe you can give me your comments on that initially.