Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  When we talk about last mile, we're talking about that portion of the network that goes from the backbone to a residence, and I guess in your case to farms. Past programs have looked at five megabits per second, which now, with new technologies and new demands, has become less re

Industry committee  Thank you very much.

Industry committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Good morning as well to all members of the committee. My name is Susan Hart, and I am the director general of the connecting Canadians branch, Innovation, Science and Economic Development, which administers two rural and remote broadband programs,

Industry committee  Satellite is a technology-neutral program. Although fibre is really going to be the focus, satellite technology is eligible under the program. In terms of the LEOs, this is still kind of in very early prototype phases. I can turn to Luc to speak more about LEOs.

Industry committee  We define “rural”—and we use Statistics Canada data—as populations that are fewer than 30,000 people. Our maps highlight the communities that are eligible. Most of those communities are far smaller than that. They're actually about 100 or 150, and some are fewer than 100, but the

Industry committee  That Xplornet project is a connecting Canadians project, but it is not satellite. It is the technology we refer to as fixed wireless, so that's where you'll see towers with radio technology going to receivers on the households. That's what we called fixed wire technology. Luc,

Industry committee  That project won't be completed until well into 2018. There's also another connecting Canadians project that touches your ridings from Tuckersmith. It's very small. It was a fibre-to-the-home project. It's also completed, and I think it impacted about 30 to 50.

Industry committee  You are correct that for the first program, connecting Canadians, the projects will end by March 2019. For connect to innovate, we have quite a high volume to assess. Just to elaborate a little bit, we're involved right now in the screening and assessment. We look at various th

Industry committee  We're targeting to be able to brief the minister toward the end of the summer. The assessment will help to inform him on a selection of projects.

Industry committee  I think it would be some time toward the end of the summer.

Industry committee  The projects initially are what we call “conditionally approved”. They're conditionally approved based on us finalizing the due diligence with the applicant in negotiating a contribution agreement. We will do the final checkup to see if they actually have the financials to do it

Industry committee  The time frame, I think for all of that work, is taking us into the fall now.

Industry committee  We did not set a speed target when we designed the program. I just want to say, I gave goZoom as an example because it's a completed project, and there are not that many completed but we do have some that are remote. Having said that, the program is focused on new backbone. Brin

Industry committee  If I think of Nunavut, we have a number of applications for Nunavut. Whatever is selected, it's not going to hit 50 megabits per second. We will be looking at the scalability of the technology. Part of our comparative criteria is to look at if it is scalable to do something bette