Mr. Speaker, when it comes to issues of foreign ownership, I am generally quite open to foreign direct investment, with certain caveats.
For instance, when it comes to telecommunication, it is generally thought of by the ideologues that when we deregulate it leaves more competition and more competition leads to lower prices. That is not always the case in telco. When we deregulate telco, quite frequently prices get closer to costs. The reality is that in rural and small town communities the costs of providing telco are often higher because the population being served is smaller and the infrastructure costs are still significantly high. As a result of that, there is a cherry-picking that goes on in the cities where there is a bigger market so there is an opportunity to cut prices. Therefore, a cutting of prices will occur for urban clients but there is often a commensurate jacking up of prices in rural communities. I generally favour rational and, in some cases, lower regulations on some of these services if they lead to more competition. My fear is that on some of these measures we could actually see an increase of the prices for access to telco in rural communities.
This leads to another fact. The cuts to CAP that the government is implementing will have a terrible effect on a lot of the communities I represent in my rural Nova Scotian riding. There are communities and libraries in my riding where there is a wait to get on a computer. People cannot afford to have their own computer or Internet access so they go and wait for a long time to have access. Those CAP sites are important and should be maintained.