Finance committee  I already said that I think it's a wise, incremental approach to do the 10%. I think it's an important thing to observe that the Investment Canada Act continues to apply. I also think it's very important to observe that at today's revenue levels, that's a $4.2 billion company tha

Finance committee  I agree with Mr. Bibic and also Mr. Kirby and Mr. Wong. I'm not sure whether I agree with Mr. Coles or not. As a practical reality, that spectrum doesn't have commercial value. The U.S. decision made that clear. As a practical policy observation, I think it's the wrong policy fo

Finance committee  There are a couple of different elements to it. Competition forces innovation, and I think innovation is a big part of the answer to increasing data usage. When you have competition, you have limited resources, and then you get better at using them. Bell, Rogers, and Telus point

Finance committee  Categorically. It's going to continue in that direction.

Finance committee  Absolutely. The simple, practical reality is that the world is going wireless, and wireless requires spectrum.

Finance committee  It gives me an opportunity to observe one thing. The first is that the Investment Canada Act is still in force, and it has application in these kinds of moves. A lot has been made out of the spectre of these foreign companies coming in. The second is the 10% thing. I think it's a

Finance committee  Thank you. Very briefly, Bell, Rogers, and Telus are enormously profitable companies, and they act in their shareholders' best interests and they do a good job of it. Foreign shareholders have exactly the same objective as domestic shareholders.

Finance committee  For Mr. Simms, where he already has Bell coverage, the practical realities are that he will get 700 MHz deployed if he happens to be within the 90% of the population coverage within that licence area in five years—97% after ten years. Again, just to return to the point, the acce

Finance committee  Thanks. Very quickly on that, I think a lot of people probably wouldn't think it was a bad idea if AT&T did come up here. The simple reality is that what we're talking about, what Mr. Bibic is talking about, is 5 MHz of comparative spectrum. They have close to 400 MHz of spe

Finance committee  Very quickly on that, the reality is I don't think that the recently released policy will achieve anything in respect of covering areas that don't already have coverage. That's by definition because the so-called rural build requirement requires you only to cover your existing HS

Finance committee  I don't want to hog the mike, but I'm happy to speak to it. In my view, you've already started to see the impact of competition. I could sit here and argue that competition creates lower prices and more innovation. I don't think that's even debatable. I think people recognize th

Finance committee  Yes. Bruce has put it exactly right; it is meaningless. Let's be clear, no one wants this change more than we do. No one wants the restrictions to be lifted to allow access to capital, and I say to you, absolutely seriously, don't bother making that change. It changes nothing f

Finance committee  It's that you need spectrum and you need capital. We also need capital to get spectrum, which is a distinction between us and the incumbents; they got it for free. But once you've got it, you have to deploy it, and that's hugely capital intensive.

Finance committee  Sir, I want to clarify one thing. When he says “all the rural areas”, what Mr. Bibic means is all the rural areas where you already have coverage, so nothing incremental to that.

Finance committee  Briefly, we will build out rurally when the economic case for it exists, and that is something that can only happen if there's access to capital and the attendant policy decisions that allow us to succeed and flourish so that we can expand. That's what competition is: you look fo