Thank you for the question and for your hard work, Mr. El-Khoury.
I appreciate the advocacy you've done for your communities since you were elected. I asked my officials, my team, to look it up. There are over 70 infrastructure projects in your riding that you have made happen. They're creating jobs, and they're improving the quality of life for your community. Thank you for that work and your warm welcome.
Certainly COVID has exacerbated existing gaps in our country, particularly the digital divide. Since we formed government back in 2015, we have been able to put forward investments to connect 1.7 million Canadians, and we started adding more to that in our new mandate with the universal broadband fund. It's recently been topped up with another $1 billion through Budget 2021. The broadband fund has a separate stream for indigenous cellular gap projects. Another stream is the rapid response. Shovels go in the ground this construction season, and they end sometime near the end of this year, as close to the end of this year as possible. Another pot of funds is for core projects that take longer than a year.
The goal is to connect every single Canadian to this essential service, and yes, there are different funds with CRTC. The connect to innovate program existed before the universal broadband fund. Indigenous Services Canada as well as the regional economic development folks also help with that process.
The good news is that there's a lot of funding available, more than ever in Canada's history, to connect everybody to high-speed Internet. Yes, there are many cooks in this kitchen, but we need these cooks in the kitchen because each of them has a different piece of this program. That's it. We heard the importance of coordination. Through the universal broadband fund, my department has stepped up to be the lead coordinator amongst all of these cooks to make sure that the process is smoother for applicants and the results are better for Canadians.
To address MP Kusie's question, yes, this is all a lot of work. Thankfully, we have great teams who work with us. Do you know who else works really hard? The moms out there who right now don't have access to high-speed Internet and are trying to figure out how to look after their kids, how to do their work and how to stay safe in this very difficult time. Who else works hard? Farmers, who, like my colleague mentioned earlier, are afraid of droughts and other challenges that come their way in addition to COVID.
Canadians work hard, and it is an honour to work hard on their behalf.