Let me try to unpack that. That was quite a lot.
First of all, it's a complex issue, so the regulatory framework needs to be very clear if you're going to make long-term investments for your interests. For us to fibre Red Deer, which is one of the cities where we would like to build in Alberta, it's a $150-million project for us. If we're going to invest $150 million, with an average cost per home or premises of around $2,500 to $4,000—in Alberta there is a lot of buried costs, so it's very expensive—we want to know we can generate a return on that. For that magnitude of investment, you're talking about a 15- to 20-year investment return period on a project, assuming it goes well. You need to know that the regulatory policy isn't going to change when you've made a commitment of that magnitude.
When you're looking at rural investment, we've already invested a very large amount of our own money at no cost to the taxpayer in rural builds. Hinton, Edson, Bonnyville, Wetaskiwin and Drumheller are all fibre towns in Alberta that we've built out. They were much less attractive than building out of Calgary, Edmonton or Vancouver, but we wanted to balance our investment and make sure that we have broad coverage.
There are communities that still don't meet those economic return criteria, and we need policies that will help us bridge that gap so we can make the commitment. We will provide the infrastructure and the skills and resources—and we have them—but we need the federal and provincial funding to align to help smaller communities that don't qualify on those economic terms.