SHAWVILLE, QUEBEC | What sense can we make of all today's talk about "investing in infrastructure,Ó "bringing Canada into the 21st Century," and "building a knowledge-based economy," when much of the area surrounding our national capital does not even have hi-speed internet?

It's as if we're discussing bullet trains and plug-in cars while outside people are traveling by in horses and wagons.

West Quebec's rural Pontiac riding is held by one of the most influential MPs in the government, the present Foreign Minister, Lawrence Cannon, and yet much of Mr. Cannon's riding cannot access high-speed internet -- in fact, much of the riding doesn't even have cell phone service.

How exactly is the knowledge-based economy to be built without efficient Internet access?

How is education to be boot-strapped into higher success-rates, quality graduates, and equal access to learning -- without efficient Internet access?

How is business to be conducted, orders placed and received, and information exchanged . . . without universal cell phone service, not to mention the net?

We know the answers to these questions, yet we accept leadership on all levels that will not act upon this big hole.

What this hole means, evidently, is that we cannot keep waiting for the "private sector" to do us the big favour of providing common communications services. The private sector is not in the business of doing favours; so telling us to wait is not leadership.

Whatever the business model used to deliver services, it has to have a strong guiding hand from the people it serves, the community. Otherwise, unless there's money to be made, and big money, we won't get the services.

It could be a consortium of service providers and phone companies, it could be a cooperative network, guaranteed by government -- there are smart people in these hills, valleys, and streets. We shouldn't stick with an arrangement that is now proving its limitations and inability to deliver. The private sector has shown itself to be only one tool among many tools for creating a dynamic yet self-sustaining economy.

What is true for the Bloc Québécois in central Gatineau is true for the Conservatives in Pontiac and the Liberals in Hull-Aylmer: it's absolutely unacceptable that significant areas of these ridings, Mr. Cannon's in particular, have no high speed internet and, although residential, have areas where cell phones won't even work.

Hi-speed Internet access is cheaper than building a highway, and if rural high-speed doesn't make money, like a highway, it is still better than not having it, like a highway.

The future is built on Internet use, but not necessarily on highways. We want our MP and MNAs to act beyond the box, to deliver the "infrastructure of the future" and the foundation for a knowledge-based economy and society.

Are the rural MP and MNAs going to be satisfied, walking away from their ridings here, muttering, "so what if I didn't even get them the Internet, I patched the pavement." This is infrastructure; it requires government delivery.

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Copyright © 2009 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/03.09