Mr. T.J. Malone:

Ernst and Young, EY, were commissioned by the Department to carry out a server review to see whether the NBI network and the national broadband plan were doing what they were designed to do. That was probably two years ago now, and I believe the report came out last year. It was to determine whether the NBI network was achieving exactly what the Deputy referred to, namely bringing people back into rural communities. We found that it was. There are statistics in the report in this regard. At that time, NBI was still very young and had probably only been up and running for two and a half to three years. My understanding is that EY has been commissioned to rerun the analysis next year because we are five to six years in and the network is almost built. There will be more statistical data available in that new report. There definitely are data to support the metrics in question.