CALEB NICKERSON
L’ISLE AUX ALLUMETTES
March 3, 2021
While it seems that the power outages in Allumettes Island have largely subsided, the region has been hit with numerous breaks in their telephone service since the start of the year.
Allumettes farmer David Gillespie has been tracking the power outages in the region for more than a decade and said that he had also started to track outages of his Bell landline, noting at least 10 days with interrupted service since the start of January.
Gillespie said that the issues with Bell have been . . .
going on since he moved to the region in 2006. The first winter he spent on his property, the landline was cut by a plow truck and not fixed quickly.
“My line was dead when the snow plow severed it the first winter, for two months I had no phone,” he said. “They had the gall to bill me and threaten with a collections agency if I didn’t pay them for no service. So I called the CRTC and that got noticed, they credited it, gave an extra month and brought crews here.”
Since that inglorious start, Gillespie said the issues for him and his neighbours have been constant.
“If [you or] I ran a company like that … can you imagine? It would be out of business in no time,” he added.
This year he has counted at least 10 outages, but acknowledged that the issue isn’t as easy to track as the area’s electrical interruptions. He said that there is typically a heavy amount of static or a loud hum and no connection, something that affects people all over the island, not just on his road.
Since his internet service is too poor to handle video calls, Gillespie said his landline is a vital resource for his work on international committees on agri-tourism, as well as his only option for basic emergency services.
He said that he had spoken with an engineer from Bell about the situation, who had told him that the area is serviced with aging equipment, which is increasingly difficult to maintain.
“We’re at the tail end so they often have to cannibalize old equipment to bring up here to fix things,” he said she told him.
Allumettes councillor Louis Lair has also been affected by the shoddy service and told THE EQUITY in an interview on Feb. 22 that he plans to bring a resolution on the subject to council. He said that it will recognize the issue as one of the priorities for the municipality and will ask the authorities in higher levels of government to work with Bell to remedy the situation.
“This creates a public security issue, if my phone goes dead, I don’t have 911, I can’t call police or ambulance or fire, nothing,” he said. “I’m recognizing the fact that the landlines have not been maintained the way they should have been, restricting residents to public security and requesting Bell Canada really invest in this problem.”
He said he had put forward a resolution on the subject at an earlier meeting this year but was disheartened by the lack of follow up.
In an email chain that Gillespie sent out to local officials and media, Pontiac MNA André Fortin replied that he had reached out to his contacts at Bell and “asked them to investigate the situation and to elaborate a plan to rectify this unacceptable situation.”
Gillespie said that since telecommunications is a federally regulated industry, he was waiting on a response from MP Will Amos on the situation and had included him on the group email.
THE EQUITY reached Amos on Feb. 23, and he stressed that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) should handle any complaints regarding telecommunications service, not individual politicians.
“We’re well aware of the challenges. We received confirmation from Bell yesterday that the problem had been resolved,” he said.
“I understand that a complaint is going to be made to the CRTC and I think … the simple answer is, and people do need to understand this … the resolution of service-related matters is not achieved at a political level. As a member of parliament, I can accompany and I can provide information to constituents like Mr. Gillespie, and … we can liaise, we can make sure that Bell is getting that information, but any sort of complaint about the nature of the resolution of the problem, the jurisdiction under Canadian law lies with the CRTC.”
In a follow-up email on Feb. 25, Gillespie said that Bell had been working in the area extensively and that a short-term solution had been found.
“The problem with my neighbours has been temporarily resolved by placing a new cable above ground on top of the snow and be dealt with next spring or summer,” he wrote. “The main cable underground had been exposed and damaged in many places over many years now and has now been bypassed altogether. That should resolve their problems.”
He added that they continue to experience interference on the line, but was hopeful that solutions would be found in time.
In regards to the overall telecommunications and internet issues in the region, Amos pointed to the millions in federally and provincially subsidized internet projects that were announced for the riding in 2018 and 2019, though he added that implementation has been slower than he would like.
He said that while these projects were a great first step, more needed to be done, and pointed to the Connexion Fibre Picanoc project championed by the MRC Pontiac and MRC Vallée de la Gatineau, which recently submitted a proposal to the CRTC’s Broadband Fund for $57 million to offer affordable internet service to thousands of residents in the region.
“That’s why the Connexion Fibre Picanoc project is so important, because we cannot have gaps in coverage,” he said.
“There is clear direction,” he continued. “Did we want internet yesterday? Yes. Do I share people’s frustration with how slow this happens? Absolutely, and COVID-19 has only put an exclamation point on that. But it’s my number one priority, has been since the beginning.”
