Thank you very much to everyone for being here today.
You know, the committee has heard a lot of testimony over the last year about some of the challenges that rural municipalities face in accessing adequate rural broadband services. We've heard from many witnesses that the larger players are simply not interested in servicing communities since the profit margins are not high enough.
There is just one comment I want to make. Today is Canada's Agriculture Day.
When you mentioned the low-density agrarian settlements, Mr. Field, I guess that's us farmers, because we certainly feel we're missing out in so many different ways. Adrienne Ivey has spoken to the status of women committee on issues of connectivity in rural areas of Canada. Cherilyn Nagle, who has worked very hard on ag issues, has commented that her career has been heavily affected by poor Internet connectivity, and the idea that her kids would ever have to do school online gives her the shivers.
I think that's what we're looking at right now and that's why we are concerned about the plans. I believe, Mr. Field, you outlined some of those issues and the fact that the red tape associated with this certainly needs to be dealt with. We've heard from some of the regional ISPs interested in providing service to rural areas that they face challenges in getting reasonably priced access ratios on to the backbone networks. We've heard from municipalities that we really need to have some type of comprehensive plan.
I'm just wondering if you can flesh out some of those five points that you had before and talk about how we can make sure governments are working together, that they are working with companies, and that we really do get something out to the rural and remote parts of this country.