Finance committee  Well, the mechanism was very formal where the CRTC evaluated what it would truly cost to deliver the local services in rural Canada. Therefore, the funding to subsidize that was a formula, and it had different bands applied to it. So it was done in a lot of detail back then; you

Finance committee  Thanks for the question. SaskTel actually looked at the Alberta model. We also looked at the B.C. model. The Alberta model, the SuperNet, essentially took broadband to the community, and then the community was to look after the local access themselves. A lot of communities didn'

Finance committee  Yes, demand is another thing altogether. You're right. The B.C. model actually took broadband to the communities and then they proactively encouraged the communities to do it, to take the local access themselves, and they found that a lot of communities did that to start with; h

Finance committee  They actually would go out to the communities and try to set up a program for the communities to invest in themselves or jointly invest in the local access side of it. We went to the Government of Saskatchewan with two models, actually. One was the model where we put in the backb

Finance committee  It's about 10%, we estimate.

Finance committee  Yes, we are talking really rural now. With the development of this network, we are actually getting some of the mines in northern Saskatchewan, particularly the uranium mines, to look at even higher speeds. We are talking about some of the uranium mines in northern Saskatchewan

Finance committee  No, we'd have to get into a dialogue. What we are essentially saying is that we all agree we're falling behind the rest of the world in our delivery of broadband as a country. To get broadband to everybody, not only do you need a provincial strategy but also a national strategy

Finance committee  Do you want me to comment on that?

Finance committee  The only comment I'll make on that, quite frankly, is that the telecommunications industry in Canada—in fact, the communications industry—is alive and well. We're one of the few industries that has continued to invest dramatically through the recession—

Finance committee  —to create jobs and invest dramatically. So my personal view is, don't kill the golden goose here and overregulate and overtax us.

Finance committee  That's a personal comment.

Finance committee  Thank you very much for the question. There are a couple of things I'd like to start off with. In Saskatchewan, we were the first province in Canada to eliminate party lines. In other words, every person in the province got to have their own single line, and we were the first pr

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. I'd like to introduce John Meldrum, who is also with me. He keeps me on the straight and narrow. In case I say something that's not true, he'll jump in. It's very complicated. You have several elements to your question. First of all, is Canada ser

Finance committee  Generally, I would think the urban areas are doing well, quite frankly, compared to the rural areas. Yes.

Finance committee  I haven't read the Harvard survey in detail, but travelling around the world, I would think that the wireless service and the broadband services in the major cities, in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and the 10 major cities, are as good as anywhere in the world. Generally, everybod