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 again and present a petition to the House
of Assembly. I will read the prayer of the petition:
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 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 ever humbly pray.
Mr. Speaker, I would like for each
member of the House of Assembly to imagine for a moment
two students arriving at Memorial University or CNA in
September for enrolment. They have just come from high
school, one is from Corner Brook and one is from Hawke’s
Bay, and there are many other communities on the
Northern Peninsula and I am sure in other areas of the
Province as well where that student could be from.
The student from Corner Brook is
used to downloading assignments. They are used to doing
very heavy research on the Internet and so on in terms
of looking for information for assignments and school
work. They are used to video conferencing. They are used
to accessing different types of literature and
downloading photographs and all the other things that
you can do through a high-speed Internet service.
Coming in to register on the same
day is the person who has come out of the school in
Hawke’s Bay - or in Port Saunders or in other areas
throughout the Northern Peninsula and other parts of the
Province, as I said – and that person has never had
high-speed Internet. It has always been dial-up. It has
been a very basic service and they never had the
opportunity to video conference. They never had the
opportunity to interact with their school from their
home and so on.
Mr. Speaker, I think we would
agree today, that puts this particular student at a
great disadvantage at the beginning of their
post-secondary education. Mr. Speaker, that is why the
students have taken the initiative and time to prepare
this petition and to request that it be presented here
in the House of Assembly. They recognize and realize the
disadvantage they have as students in not having access
to high-speed Internet in their community.
Mr. Speaker, despite being a
significant part of the 2007 agreement between EastLink
and the government, the fibre optic cable that was
supposed to be available between Deer Lake and St.
Anthony, which was meant to open up high-speed Internet
to people on the Northern Peninsula, has yet to
materialize. We need to ensure that our young people
have access to the same educational opportunities,
information and communication technologies and so on,
that are available in other parts of the Province.
Again, I stand today, Mr. Speaker,
to urge government to look seriously into this
disadvantage for our young people and for the residents
of many parts of the Province as presented here today.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
