Mr. Chair, I'm happy to take a stab at it.
First of all, in all seriousness, I married a girl from Miramichi and spent a whole lot of time in Newcastle, so I have to be very measured in my answer here or I'm going to get into a lot of trouble.
I would say to the committee that I think a large measure of the response is the industry department's job. We administer the universal broadband fund. We have a responsibility to spend those monies with the express purpose of hooking up rural and remote regions. I don't know the specifics of the case the member has cited. What I can say, though, is that it sounds like an indicative example of why we are focusing on broadband last-mile connections to households with the universal broadband fund.
It's possible that private industry or others can put in their own fibre optic cable. They're not necessarily under any obligation to serve local households that are near the cable. With the investments we're making through the UBF, the explicit requirement, contractually, is.... We are providing that money to hook up homes.
I'm just looking at the statistics for New Brunswick, for example. While recognizing the concerns that the member has raised—I wouldn't want to invalidate them; there is work to do—we anticipate that by 2026, we'll be at almost 100% coverage of broadband in terms of households in New Brunswick. That has been a big focus of the program. We anticipate that the kinds of problems the member has raised will be solved by the investments being made. If that's not the case, we would want to know about it.
Heretofore, there was not necessarily an obligation to be connecting households. The program is designed to incentivize companies to step forward and connect households that are unconnected.