No, I don't think there is one strategy that I've seen. I think that every time somebody proposes some new backbone option it seems to distract us in our quest to connect rural Canada. I don't think there is any move by the federal government towards one backbone satellite or fibre. I see lots of proposals to fund fibre. I have seen some discussion about funding going to Telesat to prepay some capacity on their LEO to make it more affordable in rural Canada.
I won't take us too far off the path, but there are some fundamental and very simple questions that we need to ask. I think Mr. Noyes touched on them. How do you subsidize low-income families, first of all, without requiring rafts of proof and more bureaucracy to make the program work? That will just take away from the funding. That's point one. Then, how do you encourage that competition to come? Those are two actually very simple questions with very simple answers. We've proposed this in the past, actually. It's by way of a reverse auction.
You go in and you say, “Who will build in these markets?” There's public competition for the funding. There has to be an open gateway to allow any competitor to come in. To the winner of this final round, the one that is the cheapest, you say, “You have to operate for this many years.” You know what? You have to operate that open backbone for all competitors. Now you are required to deliver service in that market at this level of service to the end-user, but anybody else can come in.
If Mr. Noyes signs up with the competitor running the backbone, the competitor should get the subsidy. Subsidies should go to the service provider that wins the business of the residential customer only if a subsidy is required. That means that if the backbone is operated cheaply enough in a fibre world, then you won't need that consumer subsidy.
In cases where you have families, it would be different in every market. In Nunavut you have five people per home. They need more than $50 because they're satellite-served. I think it's not a matter of saying that $50 should be the number. It should be dependent on the market and what it requires. The proof is simply that you are buying Internet and the service provider is selling it to you. You qualify, and the service provider gets a subsidy from the federal government: reverse auction.