Thank you. I'm glad somebody read it.
Canada was never as high as fourth on the connectivity scorecard. I think it's always ranged between sixth and eighth, which it was in 2011, out of 25 advanced economies.
It ranks very well in a number of areas such as business infrastructure and public sector usage and skills. It does lag somewhat on the consumer side, but I think we're looking at the business side, which is the driver of productivity and economic growth.
Where we're lagging, which I think has been picked up in other testimony before you, is in these applications. Shopify is a great example of a firm that builds an application in Canada. But the puzzling numbers for us arise when you look at modern or virtual private networks, for example, ethernet. There is simply less of that in Canada than in the U.S. or the Nordic countries. Compared to other countries such as the U.K., France, and Germany, we do very well in our extent and use of broadband.
The Nordic countries have one great advantage over us: they are small and we have these vast distances. So I think it's much more difficult for us to have that kind of advanced technology compared to Finland, for example.
Our gap with the U.S. is something that we will have to work on in the data. I think the ICT gap that has been identified to your committee is one of the puzzles and explanatory vehicles of the whole productivity gap. It could be something at the managerial level.