I would like to underscore what Ms Persofsky has said to us about the collaborative role of governments and industry in finding solutions to e-comm's challenges. From Canada's perspective, we have enjoyed many fruitful collaborations of this nature.

The creation of CANARIE as an enterprise to lead in the development of broadband applications in this country is one very good example. CANARIE is an industry led consortium of 120 private and public sector parterners across the working together to develop next generation Internet technologies and applications. CANARIE is currently implementing Ca*net 3 - Canada's Optical R&D Network and the most advanced Internet in the world.

In this regard, we are proud to tell you that CA*net 3's main corridor , the Ottawa - Montreal - Toronto corridor, has now been operational for 24 hours.

There is another uniquely Canadian initiative at the showcase that I would also like to highlight. It's the Community Storefronts electronic commerce demonstration project. It involves hundreds of small businesses and non-profit organisations across the country selling products and services and doing fund raising using a state-of-the-art e-com security systems. We believe it's the only project of its kind in the OECD.

There are several business partners involved this program including DoP@y eCommerce Solutions, the Royal Bank, and GE Capital Information Technology Solutions, HP, and Strategic Profits Inc. and their partner Open Market.

Today we are announcing the exapansion of the program from the four sites that we announced last June to an additional 10 sites across the country.

I know that many of you can provide other excellent examples of how government and business can work together to provide technology that removes the need for legislative or regulatory solutions to particular electronic commerce issues. I hope we will have the opportunity to share some of these success stories.

I would now like to bring this plenary session to a close. But I would ask that non-Ministerial delegates remain seated for a moment. This will give my Ministerial colleagues and I time to gather [WHERE?] where Ms Persofsky will lead us to the Showcase and the presentation in the Inner Ring.

Thank you.