Thank you, Madam Chair.
I still think what is vacant in this discussion is what happened to the $21 billion of assets we could have had for rolling out spectrum and putting in terms and conditions to lower costs for Canadians, as opposed to just raking that fund in. There is a $3.6-billion surplus coming in with only $170 million promised per year for the next 10 years and we're hoping this somehow fixes itself, with an aging CRTC that can't get a decision out its door in less than six months to a year and that has an appeals process that can take two years. It's absurd that we think we can do this without changing the direction.
I want to ask a quick connection question related to the connect to innovate program.
A recent response to a question on the Order Paper said that 892 applicants went into this program to connect to high-speed Internet from the government. Of them, 610 applicants have been advised they were not selected. The vast majority were not selected for a government program that was solely intended to create rural and remote broadband and other types of service.
Does anyone want to comment on that program and why it has such a small rate of uptake? Why would it be rejecting such a large number of applicants, given the fact that the whole program was created to have applicants succeed?