House of Assembly
Newfoundland and Labrador

Petition  
Presented May 9, 2011
To direct funding to ensure high-speed Internet services
for students of French Shore Academy
 

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I am pleased again this afternoon to stand and present a petition on behalf of residents of Newfoundland and Labrador. I would like to 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, 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.

Mr. Speaker, it was interesting to listen to the minister give his statement on the MNL symposium last week and it was interesting to be there. It was a very good week.

Mr. Speaker, one of the sessions in the very early stages of the symposium, one of the speakers talked about the importance of communication, basically talking about cell phone service and the high speed Internet as well. How in this day and age it is a given, it is a must – it is one of the fundamentals of doing business; it is one of the fundamentals of education, or really of progressing and advancing as individuals, as communities, as schools, as businesses and anything else that is in the communication field today, as we all, at one stage or another, talked about the importance of communication from that perspective.

In response to that presentation, one of the people in the question and answer portion of the symposium was the Mayor from Hawke’s Bay, Mayor Bennett. He spoke to the disability from a communication point of view that his community is experiencing today because of the fact that high speed Internet is not available.

Mr. Speaker, what is ironic is that there are actually two fibre optic cables that run through the community of Hawke’s Bay, for example. They run straight through the middle and yet for some reason or another there is no access. I realize there is a lot of regulation and so on around all of that, and that is not the concern that I bring to the House of Assembly. It is not the concern of the regulation that governs the process and so on. The concern that I bring is the concern that is in the prayer of these students, in particular, that really represents a concern throughout this Province. That, Mr. Speaker, is the absence of high speed Internet.

I present it again because of the importance of the issue. Mr. Speaker, I would only urge the government again, and the minister who is responsible for this, government members, the Premier of our Province, to ensure that what can be done is being done, and that very soon we will see high speed Internet being available to all of our communities.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That is not good enough to accept that, by the way.

 
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