Again, I agree 100% with regard to affordability being a crucial issue for every single family and every household in Canada. We are all confronted with this reality, and in rural Canada, it's often even more acute because there is less competition.
I would pose this question to the honourable member: What lessons should be drawn from a decade in government where a directive was issued by the then-minister of industry to the CRTC around the prioritization of competition? I think the results speak for themselves. That directive did not work. That effort on the part of the Conservative government of the time did not achieve affordability outcomes that Canadians can appreciate now. We are still suffering from unaffordable plans in comparison with other jurisdictions.
On top of that affordability problem, we have major rural access problems, which is what motion 208 goes to. The amounts of fiscal stimulus applied by the previous government were by any measure inadequate, as you point out, to roll out Internet in rural Canada in any manner that provides for equity in digital infrastructure. That seems clear to me.
I did not seek in my motion, nor am I looking today, to turn this into a partisan issue. I think that governments—present, past and prior to the Harper government—bear responsibility for these inequitable outcomes. On affordability and on access to high-speed Internet and cellphone availability in rural Canada, I think there has to be a recognition that the past policies of the Conservative government didn't work. We owe it to our constituents collectively to work in the present, live in the present and deal with the fact that all of our constituents wanted high-speed Internet yesterday and wanted cellphone coverage yesterday. My constituents wanted it two weeks ago when their houses were flooding and they were trying to put sandbags all around them.