Industry committee  Our recommendations—and they weren't even recommendations, but our thoughts about it—were set out in the afterword. We did not make specific recommendations for removal. But we said essentially what I said earlier, that the reasons for maintaining foreign ownership restrictions in the carriage area really are not nearly as strong as they are in the content area.

Industry committee  Mr. McTeague, we're hopeful that the government will move in the other areas in which we made recommendations. We recommended that the policy direction go into place as a first step, because we recognize the complexities of preparing, debating, and implementing legislation to cover the many other areas where we made recommendations.

Industry committee  Well, I'm not sure.

Industry committee  I think it's a separate issue from deregulation.

Industry committee  Mr. Van Kesteren, I think you have half the story right. This is a point my colleagues, when I spoke with them, were asking me to encourage you, as members of the committee, to remember. Our fundamental recommendations were, first, to let the market work where it does—and in most cases it will: telecom markets work better in a less regulated environment.

Industry committee  Yes, we tried to cover those areas.

Industry committee  Correct.

Industry committee  This is a big and difficult question in the telecom area. I think what we said in an afterword to our report is that the reasons that Canada has maintained its foreign ownership restrictions in recent years.... You may recall that we didn't have foreign ownership restrictions in the telecom area until 1987.

Industry committee  I have watched telecom markets for 30 years now, and I believe the competitive market works better than the old regulated monopoly market we had.

Industry committee  Telecom markets are very dynamic. There are small players that have grown to be very successful, if they find the right business model rather quickly. People always point to Google, but there are many others who have found a way to use existing networks to compete very effectively.

Industry committee  In a competitive market, I think there should be two or more players who compete to provide customers with high-quality, low-priced services. In the telecom markets, you can measure this by looking at what's happening in other countries. If our prices in Canada became much higher than European or American prices, for instance, or the roll-out of new services or new technologies were slower, then I think we'd worry about it.

Industry committee  There's a concern less about re-monopolization than duopolization. There's a concern we'll end up with two big players, the telephone companies and the cable industry. We talked about that quite a bit on the panel, and there is a concern. We think it's the job of government policy, and the way we recommended is to ensure that barriers to competition for third and fourth and fifth entrants are removed, and that includes getting lots of spectrum out there for new competitors to allow them to enter the market, empowering the CRTC to allow new competitors to access utility poles and share tower space and all that.

Industry committee  I think if you talk to experts around the world and telecommunication economists, they will generally agree that where there are truly essential facilities—that is, facilities that cannot be economically or technically duplicated on a reasonable basis—there should be some mandated wholesale access to those.

Industry committee  Yes, we did our best to reflect what we learned in the report. There is a trend, certainly on this side of the ocean, towards pretty substantial deregulation. The Americans have gone much further than we have in Canada in some areas, particularly the area of abolishing their mandated wholesale access regime, so there's a trend toward deregulation.

Industry committee  They've relied much more on a competition-based regime. And yes, in the U.K., for instance, in many areas they've moved strongly towards deregulation.