Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Amos, for being here today.
You won't get any argument from me or anyone in my riding about the need for rural infrastructure and connectivity. My riding is about 30,000 square kilometres and most of it is a rural area that struggles with connectivity issues from end to end.
As one example, one of the counties had asked for $2 million from the connect to innovate funding stream that came out a year and a half or so ago, for the beginning sections of a broadband plan for their region to provide a lot of necessary services to their constituents. They got $200,000 of their $2-million ask out of the $500 million that was rolled out across the country. That was a disappointment to them and to me, but it also put them in the very tough spot of how to move forward with one-tenth of what their ask was. How do you get things done?
I know you weren't here for this, but if you compare that with the rural crime study we just did, one of the things we looked at through this rural crime study was.... It was all about public safety and there are many areas where people couldn't access law enforcement through telephone service, 911, because there wasn't the infrastructure in place to do that.
Right now some of the people in rural Canada whom I've chatted with since that study on rural crime are wondering whether.... Now we're talking about doing digital infrastructure for rural Canada, but we couldn't give the same attention to crime and it's about public safety. They're wondering about how credible the ability to roll this out actually is.
I guess my question for you, sir, is this. Beyond the connect to innovate money that's been set aside for this and has been rolled out, is there any thought to or do you have any idea of whether the infrastructure bank that's been set up by this government...or how much of that has been rolled out to rural Internet projects?