Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I could only speculate from what I hear about the level of connectivity in certain areas, but the alert system does also issue alerts over radio and TV, so it's a three-pronged approach. It helps, obviously, if your radio is on or your TV is on, so you'll still get alerts. That h

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. It's not really an issue of what's different. What I was trying to say is there are different approaches across the country. Saskatchewan and Alberta, for instance, are the only provinces that give access to municipalities to issue alerts. It's really more tightly c

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  To issue an emergency alert, you need an Internet connection. We provide an interface that a duty officer or someone would log in to. You type in where it's going to go and what the message will look like, and that's really it. Obviously, there's an issue in the sense that you

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I can't remember a request for it. The NAAD system has supported four indigenous languages since it was built in 2010, those being Cree, Dene, Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut. I believe the Inuktitut feature has been used for some of the test alerts in Nunavut, but the others have not

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. As introduced, I'm Kurt Eby. I work at Pelmorex Corporation. I think most of you would know us more by our popular brand names The Weather Network and MétéoMédia in Quebec. These are our primary businesses. What I'm here to talk about is another thing that

Finance committee  I think there was a study by the Competition Bureau that was filed with the CRTC a couple of years ago, where they said that if there was a fourth fully funded national provider, retail rates would go down by 2%. That's from the Competition Bureau. That was their study. That's wh

Finance committee  That is from the Competition Bureau.

Finance committee  What do I think? No. First of all, it is open.

Finance committee  Verizon could come in and buy Eastlink, Vidéotron, SaskTel, and MTS all at once and grow as big as it wants under the current rules, so it is open. I think they were heavily courted by a previous government to come, and they looked at the opportunity to invest and make a return

Finance committee  Right.

Finance committee  Sure. If we are going to talk about Verizon specifically, I would point to the fact that—

Finance committee  Verizon is the most expensive wireless provider in the world. Their rates are higher than those of any Canadian company, and they have more than 100 million subscribers in the U.S.

Finance committee  Obviously, it's something the previous government looked at and made some changes to, and prices did decline. When data usage is increasing by 40% or 50% per year, I can't really think of a lot of industries where what people are using increases by that amount and think that pric

Finance committee  Certainly. Some of the things we've suggested, such as the accelerated capital cost allowance, are going to cover more areas. I've been clear. It's not going to solve the issue and—

Finance committee  Right, I understand that, for sure. It would be for all investment, though, and it would definitely go to urban and rural areas. I think I've been clear in the past that there will be a bit more necessary. The CRTC was clear. I don't want to prejudge what they're going to say in