Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you to all the witnesses for coming today and the great discussion here.
Most of my comments will be aimed at Professor Middleton.
Thanks very much for taking the time to be with us today. I really enjoy your work, and I think we really need the kind of help you have to offer on our broadband and Internet in Canada.
You're saying we don't have a digital strategy. Well, I have a goal perhaps we can start with, and that is to increase the productivity of our largest cities, to make sure that our cities are competitive when businesses are looking around the world where they might locate, to make sure Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver are attractive sites to locate business from the perspective of broadband and Internet.
I'm struck by your article, “An Exploration of User-Generated Wireless Broadband Infrastructures in Digital Cities”. You give us four criteria by which we might evaluate, things that companies might find important: usability, reliability, security, and affordability.
I'm wondering about two questions. The first is, when we're thinking maybe from a company's perspective, how do our cities stack up against other cities around the world, perhaps using your four criteria, all of them, or one or two of them? And how can the federal government help to make things better?
I'll turn it over to you and maybe prod as we go along.