Industry committee  Mr. McTeague knows this has been a hot issue in the Competition Act generally. We have said this is fine with us. Do I think it's necessary? No. But if this is something people think would be helpful to have as a special rule in telecom, that's fine with us.

Industry committee  First of all, it's $15 million for every incident and every day, and it's not a little amount of money. By the way, I think it is as big as the fine in the Competition Act for price fixing, which strikes me as much more egregious behaviour than what we're talking about here. So I think the fine is probably too high, to be honest.

Industry committee  I think there are modifications that could be made to the order to clarify the process. For example, a key issue is that in the three-competitor test it uses the word “throughout”. I think that's a pretty vague word, and it would be useful to try to clarify what that means. I'm not sure what other issues you'd like me to address.

Industry committee  I don't think in local forbearance—because you'd run into the problem that you'd do it, we'd meet the test, you'd deregulate it, then obviously there could be re-regulation under the test. On what I think should be done is this. There was a recommendation from this committee—or maybe Mr.

Industry committee  Can I answer, Mr. McTeague? My answer is that I'm not surprised by that. And that is why in our questionnaire, which we did with Ipsos Reid, we provided enough detail in the question so that consumers could understand the question being asked of them. As I said to you before—

Industry committee  --if you look at all the polls, including the one Ipsos Reid did in December, the results are very consistent.

Industry committee  It's more than PIAC represents.

Industry committee  On the draft order in council? Absolutely not.

Industry committee  First of all, I completely disagree with your characterization of our position. We are the ones, as you may know, who have for a long time urged the government— including your government, I might add, which founded the TPR— to do a comprehensive study, not only of regulations but of the ICT sector.

Industry committee  You were not listening.

Industry committee  I was going to say that of the 30 recommendations in chapter 3, 27 of them, to some degree, are being addressed by what the minister—

Industry committee  Could I answer one other part of it? In my view, it would be very good for this committee to turn its attention to the rest of the report, including the ICT and broadband portions of the report. In keeping with what the panel recommended, the minister is making the changes he can within the current legislative framework.

Industry committee  I square that very easily because of the methodology of polls. It isn't surprising to me, as I'm sure it isn't surprising to you, that in this unbelievably esoteric, convoluted, overbearing type of regulation that we face in telephony in this country, consumers aren't quite aware of it--

Industry committee  The Ipsos Reid one in January, we commissioned. The one I mentioned from 2005, that was done with PIAC, with Telus, with us, and the results are very, very consistent. PIAC obviously didn't like the results, so they decided to do another one.

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Rajotte. Mr. Chair, Bell Canada believes that Minister Bernier’s framework for retail forbearance in local telephone markets is both correct and long overdue. The minister has evidence before him that Canada has fallen behind the rest of the world in a crucial sector of the economy.