Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's work and I enjoy sitting with him on the committee so we can have these discussions.
There is a certain danger in thinking that because one country has a particular set of circumstances we need to apply that to our own situation. Let us just focus on the Canadian context for a moment. The Auditor General has said that it could take up to $160 billion to bring the whole country up to the standard that has been dictated through different committee reports and CRTC's own goals. That is an incredible amount of money.
Regarding 5G, I mentioned earlier that industry estimates that it is going to be a $24-billion investment so that Canada can be, while not the first, among the first to adopt that. The ability to have higher download speeds would increase Canadian productivity, which is important to our economy. Both of those things require massive investments. The New Democrats have not been able to answer the question of where that money would come from. They can point to the spectrum, but they have talked about $20 billion in about 14 years. That is not going to pay. If they were to divert money from the spectrum, that would not even help toward investing in 5G, let alone what the Auditor General has pointed out.
I question the policy because it is impractical for moving forward to ensure universal accessibility and the next wave of innovation with 5G.