Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. To all of my colleagues, it's great to be back here.
Welcome to our guests. We had spoken previously as well.
Our committee went to the U.S., listened to state and Senate committee hearings, and saw that the U.S. also believes that rural and remote broadband services are critically important. They are looking at different types of solutions.
Of course, as Mr. Longfield just mentioned, FCM are here this week, and one of the key things they are talking about is making sure we have strong broadband connectivity throughout the country. One of the other groups that is also associated with that is the AAMDC, which is focused more on the needs of rural municipalities.
We've had a year to deal with Connect to Innovate. I always go back to what we had started: Connecting Canadians. We've had a year to take a look at Connect to Innovate. At the time, there was a discussion about making sure we talk to different organizations. Ms. Hart, you mentioned 300 organizations you have spoken with, and you have the input from them.
I think the major focus on what's going to happen in the future is what's critical, because we've always wanted to talk about being flexible. We've seen the range going from five to 50. Then in the discussion Mr. Seidl had, you talked about being able to get, I think, 90%—or a certain percentage—of this and that we could probably get the rest of them up to speed within 10 to 15 years. Well, with this technology, unfortunately, unless you can find a way to leapfrog so that it can be dealt with, 10 to 15 years is not going to solve the problem we're dealing with here.
Looking at some of the discussions you've had on the technical side, are there things we can look forward to in these extremely rural and remote areas that we can use to solve some of these problems?