Mr. Speaker, since this is the first occasion in this Parliament that I have had a chance to speak, I wish to congratulate the Speakers and to say that I will co-operate and respect this office and this Parliament.
I also take the opportunity to thank very strongly the voters in my riding of London West. I appreciate their support and I will continue to work with the dedication and the integrity and I hope the intelligence that they so richly deserve.
I would also like to point out that as we work in this capacity as parliamentarians there is a price in our families. I want to thank my husband and my children and also say to my colleagues across the floor of the House that I hope that throughout this Parliament I can continue to treat them with the respect and courtesy that any member of Parliament deserves.
I am pleased to speak on behalf of Bill C-17 which supports the government's strategy to make Canada a leader in the knowledge economy of the 21st century. Our overarching goal is to connect Canadians, to make Canada the most connected country in the world and to ensure that all Canadians have access to the information highway and the new economy which it supports.
The Minister of Industry has correctly identified this as perhaps the single most important action that the government can take to ensure our success in the knowledge based economy and I believe we all know that in our own ridings.
Underpinning any strategy to connect Canadians to this new economy is a competitive dynamic telecommunications industry. This is a very vital sector to the Canadian economy. It produces already 115,000 high wage jobs, high intelligence jobs, jobs that are in all our sectors across this country. It accounts for 3.36% of our gross domestic product and I see this growing.
If we take these necessary steps to encourage this industry's growth, we can take on the world. If we do not, we can sit back and watch international competitors take our share. There will be no more high quality jobs, no enhanced communications services, no new economy. I know that is not where Canada wants to be.
We are not sitting back. As a government we have moved decisively over the last four years to continue the liberalization of Canada's telecommunications sector. I want to review some of the steps we have taken.
The liberalization began in 1984 with the licensing of competitive cellular telephone service. It moved forward with the privatization of Teleglobe in 1987 and Telesat in 1992, and still it advanced further with the introduction of long distance competition in 1992 and the passage in 1993 of a new telecommunications act.
The process has continued over the last two years with the licensing of competitive personal communications services in 1995 and local multipoint communications services in 1996. Further in 1996 the government set out its policy and principles for the convergence of cable and telephone services, creating one of the most competition driven policy regimes in the world.
This legislation marks the latest stage of this liberalization and clears the way for Canada's participation in the GATS agreement on basic telecommunications which was concluded last February. The agreement covers 69 countries with more than 90% of the world's $880 billion telecommunications market. It covers basic telecommunications services, voice and data, but not broadcasting.
The immediate purpose of the legislation is to implement those changes to Canada's regulatory regime that are necessary. The longer term objective is to foster competition, one of the government's top priorities in this area. We are already a world leader in this sector and we will get more of that market share when we widen it up with very visible rules.
Competition is not an end in itself. We need competition because it fosters innovation and innovation leads to the development of new products and services, more choice at cheaper cost for consumers, Canadians, voters, the people in this country who deserve this, and it creates jobs and economic growth. Still a longer term objective of fostering competition is to ensure Canadians have the advanced technologies they need to gain access to the knowledge economy.
Over the past four years we have developed and initiated a plan to ensure that Canada does take full advantage of these technologies. We are building an information highway where all Canadians can connect at a reasonable cost. We have created those conditions needed to encourage the private sector to build this information highway. Hardware and software developers and suppliers and content developers are now among the fastest growing industries in this nation.
Opening competition in telecommunications services is an important part of our strategy as a government. We know the best and fastest way to build the infrastructure for the knowledge based economy is through open competition. By developing a national strategy for the development of this infrastructure, the government will enable all Canadians to find new opportunities for business, learning and communicating with one another. This can only be good.
Canadians want us to move forward quickly to secure for them the benefits of a new economy. The government is working on a number of fronts to do this. For example, we will have high level talks at the OECD conference on electronic commerce coming up in the fall of 1998. Electronic commerce is not only central to a modern knowledge based economy, it is also the foundation for future growth and job creation.
By creating the best environment for electronic commerce, Canada will become the world leader in this emerging field, generating increased investment in electronic networks and growth in areas such as electronic transactions, multimedia products and online services. The OECD Canada conference ensures we can support, participate in and influence the creation of an open, transparent multilateral electronic commerce regime. The government is also working toward using electronic commerce when doing business with its own clients. By being a model user the federal government can encourage the private sector and other levels of government to adopt the technology. But it does not stop there.
As part of our national strategy, the government initiated a number of programs to ensure that Canadians acquire the tools and skills from the earliest age that they need to prosper in this new economy. These include computers for schools programs through which government departments, businesses and institutions donate surplus computer equipment and software to schools. It includes the student connection program which enables university and college students to help small businesses learn to use the Internet, as my colleague suggested. The community access program connects and will connect every rural Canadian community with more than 400 people to the Internet by the year 2000. And how could we forget the SchoolNet program which connects all our 16,500 schools and 3,400 public libraries in Canada to the Internet.
Across this country students, teachers, professionals, business people and just Canadians are using these facilities because we have to ensure Internet literacy and move forward into the next century which will be different than the last century. The government is going online itself making government services accessible to people wherever they are, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is being done in every department and agency in this country.
None of this would be possible without telecommunications infrastructure and those supports for it. We cannot have that infrastructure without a strong, dynamic telecommunications industry. This bill before us today is a necessary step toward giving our telecommunications sector service companies the keys they need to open the doors to the new world, the world market of vast proportions. Once that door is open we can rely on Canadian expertise, Canadian entrepreneurship in all our ridings to do the rest.
The result will be better telecommunications services. An infrastructure will support us in the next century. I suggest we are on the information highway and we will move forward on that highway together.