MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions?

The hon. the Member for the District of The Straits & White Bay North.

MR. DEAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased this afternoon to be able to stand and present this petition. I will read the prayer of the petition into the record:

To the hon. House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Parliament assembled, the petition of the undersigned humbly sheweth:

WHEREAS we the students of French Shore Academy in Port Saunders from the Towns of River of Ponds, Hawke’s Bay, Port Saunders, Port aux Choix and Eddies Cove West appreciate the facility we currently learn in; and

WHEREAS unfortunately the sense of fairness and equality existing at school is absent on the outside due to essential services not equally available in all our towns; and

WHEREAS the lack of high-speed Internet in River of Ponds, Hawke’s Bay and Eddies Cove West puts some students of our school, or our school, in an unacceptable disadvantage at learning today in the twenty-first century;

WHEREUPON your petitioners call upon all Members of the House of Assembly to urge government to direct funding to ensure high-speed Internet services are provided in these towns to allow equality and fairness for all members of our student body.

And as in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased this afternoon to be able to stand and present this petition on behalf of those students. I believe they are presenting, not only on behalf of themselves as students of the schools, particularly in the Tri-town area of the Northern Peninsula, but their representation of many in the rural parts of Newfoundland, where, today, we still do not have high-speed Internet access.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to live in the urban centres, or the larger rural communities, we are fortunate to have high-speed and we have come to take it for granted. Yet, when you have an opportunity, for example, as I did not very long ago, to stay in the Maynard Inn in Hawke’s Bay, and just as she was actually processing my credit card and the time that I had to wait for that procedure to go through, you recognize just how disadvantaged people are when they do not have the high-speed Internet. Obviously, this is a major setback for students who are involved in distance education, those who are trying to download programs, schedules, and other things from the schools and from their teachers.

If you go into the community, as I said, into a hotel somewhere and you have to hook into the dial-up system, you realize that community is years behind in terms of the accessibility to information and to the procedures that all of us in other communities have taken for granted.

It is an issue, and while we appreciate what has been done, and this petition is not on behalf of those who have high-speed, it is on behalf of those who do not. They feel very disadvantaged, they feel disenfranchised, and obviously, as a student body they are not able to participate in certain programming, in certain activities, to the same degree as those in other communities throughout our Province who have the high-speed Internet capability.

I am pleased this afternoon to be able to stand to bring it to the attention of the House of Assembly once again, to present it to government and say that sooner rather than later we need to have a plan that allows the implementation of high-speed Internet throughout the whole Province.