First of all, thank you.
As I mentioned, on the intellectual property report, your feedback and guidance were extremely helpful as we articulated the government's first national IP strategy. In the new knowledge economy, it was long overdue.
With respect to investments in high-speed Internet connectivity in rural and remote communities, that's still a priority for our government. That's why we introduced—and it's in the estimates as well—the connect to innovate program. This is a $500-million program to provide that fibre backbone infrastructure.
The neat attribute about this program is that it actually leverages private sector funding. Overall investment will be over a billion dollars. It will help over 700 communities, including really remote and rural communities, but we're looking to build upon that. We announced for example, LEOs, low Earth orbit satellite technologies, that can help, again, those rural and remote communities to deal with the latency issue.
We're looking at technology. We're looking at traditional funding in fibre. We're looking at partnerships with the private sector. We've also been working very closely with the provinces and territories to make sure that we have better program alignment to maximize those opportunities as well. It continues to be an important issue that our caucus raises. We'll continue to make those investments.