Louis Lang
Marxist-Leninist Party of Quebec
This is a very important question for several reasons. The communications through a high speed internet service should not be considered a luxury but a necessity for families as well as for businesses of all sizes. An efficient internet connection is needed not only for personal communications but is also becoming an important part of education programs and in some remote areas it is being used as a means of providing emergency medical services with online medicine.
There are many examples that can be given but the bottom line is that people are entitled to high speed internet service for communication needs no matter where they live in Quebec or in the rest of Canada for that matter. At this time this is not being provided as your question implies. The problem is raised at every election, provincial or federal in the past few years but the problem remains.
While the major political parties, who will say anything to get elected, make all kinds of promises about programs and throwing money at the problem, they have not only failed to solve the problem but they have also failed to explain to the people what the problem is.
The main issue facing us in terms of internet service is that this field is dominated by four or five major monopolies (Bell, Telus, Rogers, Videotron etc.) who make the decision about what service they will provide and where and at what price. All these decisions are made based on the making of maximum profit and the needs of the people never factor into it. It is less than honest for the major parties to promise to make investments and establish programs to provide high speed internet equally to all residents in the Pontiac when they know that these monopolies are not regulated in any way so they have the final say about the services they will provide. In fact when they say they will invest hundreds of millions of dollars in internet service this means that this money will be given to these monopolies as a gift but with no regulations in place, there is no guarantee that this will in any way solve the problem faced by people residing in remote areas.
This is not just a provincial issue but a federal issue as well because what is needed is to recognize that this is an important issue of communication to which all people have an equal right. This must be treated like a public service and must be brought under public control. This means government must regulate this service and all companies must be required by law to provide an equal level service to all residents at the same cost. Just like Canada Post is required by law to deliver mail to every address in Canada at the same cost, the same regulations must be put in place to force the monopolies who make millions of dollars of profits to create the infrastructure necessary to ensure that every household in the Pontiac receives an equal level of affordable high speed internet service.

Editor’s note: All seven candidates in the Pontiac riding were asked for comment. Marie-Clarie Nivolon (Parti Quebequois), Samuel Gendron (New Democratic Party of Quebec), and Roger Fleury (Green Party) did not respond back in time for print.