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 in this House again and present a petition
on behalf of the students of French Shore Academy.
I would like to read the prayer of
the petition.
To the Honourable House of
Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in
Parliament Assembled, the Petition of the Undersigned
Humbly Sheweth:
WHEREAS
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 put some students 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.
This is the second or third time I
have stood and presented this petition here in this
House and I will continue to do so because it is not
only for the students who are presenting it but it is an
issue that is so important in rural Newfoundland and
Labrador. I am not sure what all of the other districts
in the Province are doing in terms of the lack of
high-speed Internet but I can assure you that along the
Northern Peninsula in many small communities they have
become very frustrated, to say the least, in the lack of
high-speed Internet access; and not only the lack of
high-speed Internet access but really not having an
understanding or a commitment from this government as to
when they can reasonably expect something to be done
about it.
Mr. Speaker, it is interesting, if
you watch television and look at some of the ads. It was
just yesterday afternoon, I believe it was, as I was
watching the Masters on television and you watch a
mother with an electronic device, iPod, whatever you
want to call it, I am not really sure, but some form of
transmission and turning on the lights back in her home
at some point for her son who is doing his homework.
That is the ability that is out there and yet you come
from there down to a place where there is not even
high-speed Internet available.
When a student in high school
wants to access some records, some program, some exam
materials, whatever the case might be at his or her
local high school, they have to do it through dial-up.
We all know that dial-up is very slow at best. It is
interruptive. It does not always stay connected and so
on and you get through the process of downloading a
particular document at probably twenty minutes in and
then all of a sudden it is cut off and you have to go
back and start the process over again. We take it for
granted, those of us who have high-speed Internet and
have the access to that in our communities. We kind of
forget the day, or have forgotten the day when high
speed was the in thing. That is where many of the
communities in rural Newfoundland are left.
Again, we call today upon this
government to not only identify the problem but to speak
to it and give us some idea of when we can expect this
situation to be corrected.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
