Thank you, Doctor, for your very important work in these difficult times for your community. Canadians have every right to be frustrated. In the best of times life is hard without a decent Internet connection. COVID has just added to so many frustrations. To your point, everything's gone digital. For those who are a stone's throw away from a neighbour who's getting perfectly fine Internet access and they can't catch a break, or maybe they have too many breaks in their Internet connections, we've heard them.
What the universal broadband fund is offering applicants is not only to invest in the backbone infrastructure but also to go that extra mile, that last mile of connectivity needed to connect those households with less-than-stellar connections, and sometimes not a decent connection. This last-mile investment, along with investments in cellular and ongoing backbone infrastructure investments, will ensure that everybody has access to this essential service. The rapid response stream of the universal broadband fund, which I referred to earlier, provides those very communities a bit of extra support this fiscal year. If there are ways to connect them through fibre, for example, those funds are being deployed as we speak. Certainly, we're not going to stop until everybody has this access.
I absolutely hear those frustrations. They're real. They're all around me here in my community, too, but we're determined to make those connections as quickly as possible.