Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There are two things. For certain it's in next year's money proposal, but I'm hoping to secure some of the money out of this year's year-end that comes available. So effectively every year we've tried to bottom feed off of those things, if you will. It's not certain if I'll be able to do it this year, but I'm trying very hard to.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think there is an actual financial banking report, finished a couple of years ago, from the initial work. I hope I'm not misremembering that, but the uptake for that is at least that high, if not more. There are 5,000 QINIQ accounts, which is our network in Nunavut. That represents a lot more people, of course, because that's a house, a family could be using that, plus there are other providers, such as Northwestel in Iqaluit here, with DSL.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We do have core funding from both EDT and INAC, and we're grateful for that. It's typically single-year funding. We have about a $300,000 core budget for the office, and then the other moneys from infrastructure are for the program.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I have it in my five-year plan, and I'm bottom-feeding for this year's money from our INAC funders. I'm in discussion for that; I don't have it approved. I also have the commitment or go-ahead from our board. It's part of the approved pieces of work for the vision, so I'm hoping to do that in this timeframe.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The actual user pays $60 a month for a basic account.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, that's spread out over the next several years. That represents a couple of years' budget.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's like renting versus owning, so you're purchasing raw bandwidth over which you're layering the network. There are obviously other equipment costs and things like that, but the bulk of the money is for raw bandwidth. If you invested in fibre and cable, for example, you'd have something concrete in the end.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Exactly. The initial cost of entry is $150 for the account and the modem, and then there's the ongoing $60. You can get higher grade accounts if you're a business, but I would say the majority are in that $60 range.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The subsidy is around $100.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Approximately, yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Actually, that's a blend of two questions. The 100 times increase, if you will, per unit of connectivity spread out over the end-user experience would translate into about triple or more cost. The subsidy is significant. I'm just thinking of my breakdown of the figures, but I think you're looking, in this current infrastructure, to roughly half being for raw bandwidth purchase, matched by the private sector as well.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The next couple of years' budget, with infrastructure too, coming collectively from all the sources, is about $21 million from the feds, through Infrastructure Canada, matched by $21 million from the private sector--dollar for dollar, 50-50.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm just in the process of looking at the Greenland Connect. They spent €90 million to do that. It was 5,000 miles of cable, I believe. I'm not sure what the relative cost would be here, but that gives you an idea, given geography and distance. Plus there's a maintenance cost per kilometre.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm making the presumption, without looking at it fully, that we'd probably try to link into that Greenland Connect, given that it would seem to be the closest infrastructure. I don't know what that entails, politically or legally or anything else, but it does hit Newfoundland at some point, so...

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's a good question. There are a couple of things. One thing I forgot to mention is we're a public-private partnership, and Nunavut Broadband is the conduit to the private sector to build this, so every dollar put in by the government is matched by the private sector. Our model as such is that every dollar is put in first by the private sector, so it's no risk to Canada.