Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his intervention. It is interesting. There are some points that I would like to comment on and perhaps ask questions of.
The Bloc Quebecois has been at pains to point out the difficulties that change brings on people. There is an element of truth in what it says.
However, it seems to me that unless we open the field that these big companies have dominated for so long and allow new technologies to have their place, to have new entries into the marketplace make their play, then we are simply going to be bound by the status quo.
I have heard my hon. colleague mention the number of communities he has in his constituency. I share many of the same concerns that he has. I have rural communities that do not have telephone service or they have the old telephone service that they cannot use for fax communication and for Internet communication. These people are waiting for the lines to bring in the technology that is available to people on modern telecommunications systems and they do not have them. This is not a matter that I am unfamiliar with.
It seems to me, however, that the means for dealing with this is not simply to maintain the status quo, that it must be opened up to the new technologies, that it is not going to be for a very long time that the most distant and most remote parts of our country have the benefit of a land line, a telephone company putting in polls,
stringing wires and doing all the things we have seen done for the last 50 years. That is not going to happen. What we have to do is open up the marketplace so that the new technologies can bring the modern services that will put these points in communication with the rest of the world.
I also listened to the member speak about the difficulties with people not having 911 numbers. This too must be available for people in the same way with the communication means that are possible.
I would like to ask the member if he does not see the new technology and new avenues of competition as really being a blessing that will bring to people in the remote frontiers of our country the means of communication that they have not had in the past? If he does not see that, how does he intend to see these people who are without communication means get them under the present system?
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