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 a

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 extr

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 internation

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

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

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  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” te

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 issue

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 c

Industry committee  Sure. Ed Antecol is vice-president of regulatory of the fixed-line operation, if you look down on the left-hand side, Globalive Communications Corp. So that's legacy business. We've been around for about 12 years now. I am chief legal officer of the fixed-line group of companie

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

Industry committee  What I would suggest there is that you take the fairly broadly accepted leap of faith that competition creates choice, drives down prices, and does all the good things that consumers want and need. That is the stated purpose for the AWS auction that led to our being here today.

Industry committee  I agree with what both Mr. Kirby and Mr. Krstajic said. The reality is that it takes a lot of capital to create a competitive alternative to the existing oligopoly, and the threat of new competition coming in is a very effective competitive tool. It's something that the Competit

Industry committee  Thank you. Certainly that was the recommendation of the TPR report and also of the Red Wilson report. That being said, the presumption that any investment in a company that is a start-up or that has less than 10% is in the public interest would take a lot of the administrative b