Industry committee  I know, and we appreciate your support.

Industry committee  Well, the new entrant in that statement would be someone who hasn't competed in telecommunications. An example of that would be Call-Net getting into the telecom business or what not. These tend to be relatively new players in the marketplace, so there doesn't seem to be a partic

Industry committee  Yes, one of our enforcement priorities and advocacy priorities at the bureau is with respect to health. We think that's an extremely important sector of the economy for Canadians. We have taken a number of our enforcement responsibilities and advocacy responsibilities and given t

Industry committee  Let me come back to that question, because there are different parts of our jurisdiction that will be engaged by telecommunications deregulation. I was talking to you about the consumer complaints we get about false and misleading advertising. That tends to be most of our consume

Industry committee  Let me just say a few words about that, and you can tell me if it's sufficient, or if you'd like to hear from Richard. With respect to our resources in particular, you're right, over the years we've had this constant challenge of attempting to have an adjustment to our base so t

Industry committee  The budgetary process is quite a long process. And it's not for want of trying, it's just that it's a long process to get into that budget cycle.

Industry committee  Are you talking about the incumbent telephone company being able to increase?

Industry committee  Over the years, I think people have looked at this.

Industry committee  As I understand the proposal right now, there would be a freezing of the rates right now, so the rates could not go up. As I understand it from the minister's variation of the CRTC's decision, there would actually be a ceiling imposed.

Industry committee  We are independent of the government, the department, with respect to law enforcement. The crossover comes with respect to policy advice. I'm of two minds on this in the sense that we do have probably the greatest expertise with respect to competition policy. If one wanted to put

Industry committee  It's interesting to look at the evolution of competition in many markets. You're quite right that, generally speaking, competition begins in more concentrated urban markets and what not. Certainly one can see this in telecommunications in general. The introduction of long-distanc

Industry committee  It's early days of that, for sure. If you look at the penetration of Vonage, which is the name of one of these companies, you're going to be seeing that more and more in the marketplace, I think.

Industry committee  As I understand the package that's before the House right now, it's a package that is moving in a direction that would favour market forces, and it deals with various aspects of that. I'm not sure what you mean by “prudent”.

Industry committee  Generally speaking, I would say that the orientation of the various initiatives is toward greater reliance on market forces and the removal of regulation. That's certainly the direction we think we should move in.

Industry committee  These are very hard issues that we grapple with. There's no doubt that it is more expensive to serve people who live in rural areas. Generally speaking, we would support prices that are based on cost. There are other tools that the government can use if they want to redress some