Industry committee  Sure, I'd be very happy to provide my perspective on that. What Mr. Sawiris said, I think, is a view that would be shared in almost any industry across the world. The reality, in my view, is that what we need, as Canadians, is a vigorously competitive market, and the market will determine how many parties would be the efficient way to do that.

Industry committee  It's a bit of an economic question. I thought Mr. Globerman did a very good job talking around these types of issues. If you accept the proposition that capital is required for competition and you accept the proposition that competition creates circumstances that are better for consumers, then it's a very quick line to get there.

Industry committee  If I could speak to a few points very briefly, the first and most obvious issue I'd like to address is this idea that there isn't a level playing field, to use a different sports analogy. In the process we went through, every telecom and broadcast company in Canada structures—

Industry committee  Every entity regulated by these acts governs itself according to these restrictions. There are two components, as I think everyone knows. There's the “bright line” legal test—the number of voting shares, that sort of thing. Everyone meets them. The “subjective control in fact” test is something that is assessed by the CRTC, and the ability of cabinet to vary their decision is already present.

Industry committee  Thanks very much, Mr. Wallace. To answer your first question, the phasing-in question, we have thought about it, as you can imagine. What I would point to is that the Red Wilson report, and before his report the TPR report, spent over a year looking very carefully at these issues.

Industry committee  I'll ask Ms. Wood to speak to this as well. There are several layers to your question. On what is permissible under the existing regime, as you noted and Alek expanded on, there are no fixed limits on the amount of capital that can be injected. It's a question of the structure and the terms of that capital investment.

Industry committee  Certainly we were aware and well advised of the foreign control restrictions found in the Radiocommunication Act and the Telecommunications Act. We knew we would have to comply with them, so we made accommodations at the Industry Canada level. We made further accommodations with the CRTC.

Industry committee  The process we went through with Industry Canada that resulted in the issuance of our licence required certain changes to our initial structure, and we made them. We didn't get any input from the CRTC until the hearing, and when we did we made changes to address their concerns.

Industry committee  Well, it is interesting that although the big three represent a significant a competitive challenge, over the course of their history they have also created a very attractive investment scenario for start-ups. Competition is very direly required, and that's recognized internationally.

Industry committee  I can expand on that a little bit from our own experience. When we were seeking financing for our wireless initiative, we talked to everyone you could possibly imagine. We talked to people domestically and we talked to people outside of Canada. What we're talking about are extraordinary amounts of capital, and it's not simply a question of whether the capital is there; it's whether it will be deployed with you as a start-up in this scenario against the entrenched and frankly oligopolistic incumbents.

Industry committee  Thanks, Andrea. Good morning. This is at least the fourth time in seven years that there has been a major review of the foreign ownership restrictions for telecom. All three previous reviews recommended liberalization of these rules. The Telecommunications Policy Review Panel and the Red Wilson report both recommended a phased-in approach to the relaxation of the rules.