Thank you, Chair, and my thanks to the witnesses for being here today.
I want to use my example before I go on to present a question. I've had a BlackBerry—members of Parliament have had BlackBerrys for years. You find out how important this tool is. It's not just a phone—you can communicate, research, do it all. It's a great Canadian technology.
My wife had a flip phone. It quickly became more and more obsolete. All it can be used for is phoning. To try to text on a flip phone is extremely difficult. I told my wife I'd try to figure it out and show her how to do it. It is really hard compared with a gadget like this. I bought her a BlackBerry and traded in the flip phone. She's now able to text.
My guess is there are a lot of Canadians who are getting into the technology, which means that we have a need for additional capacity within the system. It's going to continue to grow exponentially. There are a number of us around this table who have a background in municipal government. I was on city council for 14 years. One of the challenges we had was people coming to a council meeting as we were considering a new tower. There was a lot of opposition whenever new towers were coming into the community.
To be able to make this happen and continue to grow capacity for this changing technology, from what I'm hearing, we need to have additional towers. That's one of my questions. Objections to towers include health issues and the devaluing of property. Mr. Easter is losing calls; maybe he needs some more towers or maybe he needs better technology to provide that service. I don't know what the issue is. I'm really happy that you have a protocol through the chamber that will allow you to take a serious look at this and provide accurate information.
So what would you say to a person who doesn't want an ugly tower in his community and believes it will devalue his home? What would you say to that?