Industry committee  We would completely agree, because what we have been facing—I will repeat—are strategies that have been used by the incumbents to slow down, delay, move forward to contest, go in front of the court, go back to the CRTC, and even go to the government. The Privy Council is now look

Industry committee  I cannot disagree with that. The point of arbitration is precisely to avoid having to turn to the courts. I'm going to ask Ms. Tabet to answer you, Mr. Garon. This is her daily bread. Mr. Lescadres deals with numbers; Ms. Tabet deals with regulation.

Industry committee  What Ms. Tabet will have to say will be very interesting.

Industry committee  As I said a little earlier, we are in no way against competition. If American or European companies want to set up here, the regulatory framework might even seem favourable to them, in a way. Despite everything, there is competition. Videotron has been in Quebec for many years.

Industry committee  We already addressed this, and I talked about it in my speech. The roaming factor is of importance. The CRTC is already aware of all this. It opened an inquiry to figure out what the roaming aspect is. In the European Union, as you know, because of the many countries and becaus

Industry committee  There are radios on top of each other, on the same tower.

Industry committee  To answer your question, I'll quickly summarize the history of the introduction of competition in wireless. At the time, the late Jim Prentice was Minister of Industry when there was an auction process in which we participated. He ensured that spectrum licences were reserved so

Industry committee  We are totally for competition. From our standpoint, competition is good. Competition brings innovation. Competition brings the capacity to serve your customers better. Without competition, the economy does badly. This is not the kind of culture we have in our company. We've alwa

Industry committee  You know, I'm not the Competition Bureau. If I were, I would open an inquiry. Would I be successful? That is another question. This is the kind of environment we've been seeing for so long. With the competition brought in by the fourth operator that we have in Quebec, historical

Industry committee  Jean-François is our numbers guy. He knows everything.

Industry committee  Just to make sure we have the same numbers, you mentioned 2.3 million customers. We have 3.8 million when you combine Videotron and Freedom, and we're growing every day. We look forward to continuing to make sure that we'll be able to serve Canadians as best as possible with, a

Industry committee  We do. However, as I mentioned, we need some help. There's no doubt there is desire and will. We should tell Parliament, and not only the government, to make sure that Canada is not going to be the country in which citizens pay the highest prices in the world. This is not accepta

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the invitation. My colleagues and I are pleased to have the opportunity to discuss the price of wireless services, a key issue for Canadians. A little over a year ago, I stood before this committee to show you that Quebecor was ready to repea

Industry committee  I feel it's important that I repeat what I said earlier: roaming charges make up a significant portion of a customer's bill, and that's even more true today because people use data. No one talks on the phone anymore, or very little. People use their phone to go get data. When yo

Industry committee  They are set by the government, by the CRTC, which determined that roaming would be available at such and such a rate. As I just said, it's been eight years since the rates have changed, and they are now five times higher than in Europe.