Public Accounts committee  We have what's called the national broadband Internet service availability map. You can go and access it. All Canadians can get into the map itself. It's really a searchable map. As I mentioned, it's a summary of the current services by area. An area is typically defined as a 25

Public Accounts committee  It's constantly being discussed with the private sector, and then we verify what that service provision is by talking to the communities and the people. We're constantly doing consultations, really, to verify what it is that we know in relation to spectrum, for example.

Public Accounts committee  To clarify, we are consulting on the tier 5, and no decision has yet been made on how we would move to that tier five. Let me again just give a bit of background. Tier 1 basically is Canada. Tier 2 is basically by province. Tier 3 has 59 regional areas within the higher populati

Public Accounts committee  In terms of the consultations, they're ongoing—

Public Accounts committee  The nuance I'm trying to bring to this is what the Auditor General raised, which we agree with, is that there was no national integrated strategy with a common, agreed-upon goal. We have now reached 50/10, and we have not had a situation before where all the players, whether the

Public Accounts committee  I agree there was no national integrated strategy in that sense, and the Auditor General was totally appropriate to point that out. Very shortly after the CRTC identified broadband as a basic service, the government moved ahead very quickly to work on an integrated strategy with

Public Accounts committee  Because no one could agree on a common technological goal: provinces might have 30 as a goal, for five to one. Technology is always an issue. Various players don't always agree on the extent to which the private sector will go in and solve a situation or where they will invest. A

Public Accounts committee  Again, I guess I am saying that it's not straightforward, but complex. The nuance that I'm trying to bring to this is that all governments in the last 15 years, of whatever stripe, have taken the approach of identifying specific gaps. It's a staged approach. What are the specific

Public Accounts committee  There are issues of coordination, technology, and there are issues of money. As you have just heard, the cost of meeting the 50/10 goal, at least as we currently estimate it, is $8 to $9 billion.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, it's being constantly reviewed and assessed. There are several ways we do that. One way would be this mapping activity that's been referenced, which is in fact shared publicly. We basically look at areas of 25 square miles. We look at the number of people, the households, th

Public Accounts committee  I think the first thing to emphasize is that the federal, provincial and territorial ministers met in October and decided to put a strategy in place. They talked about and agreed on the 50/10 target, a speed of 50 megabits per second for downloads and 10 megabits per second for u

Public Accounts committee  I think it is important for members to understand that since 2001 there has been a staged approach, which is a strategy, to closing gaps in broadband. The strategy has been to identify where there are areas of greatest need and to address those. What has happened as a result of

Public Accounts committee  There was a strategy of staged implementation and—

Public Accounts committee  —now we've moved to a national strategy.

Public Accounts committee  The strategy since 2001, consistent with the Johnston task force, has been to do with a staged approach to addressing the gaps in the broadband service for Canadians. We have had five programs since 2001, contributing $1 billion overall, from a government perspective, to addressi