Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for appearing in front of us today to talk about this important issue. I think our ridings of South Shore—St. Margarets and rural Wellington County and the rural Halton region are very similar.
I would encourage the government to focus not only on accessible Internet for rural areas, but also affordable Internet. When we say that only a third of Canadians in rural areas have access to high-speed Internet, I think that's better and more accurately termed as a third of Canadians in rural areas have access to affordable high-speed Internet. Many more than that have access to Internet, but they choose not to put it in place because it is far too expensive.
I mentioned this in the last committee meeting and I'll emphasize it again. If you're living in the city of Guelph, you can get 100 gigabytes of high-speed Internet a month for $49.99. You can get unlimited high-speed Internet in the city of Guelph for $69.99. If you live a mile outside the city of Guelph in rural Wellington County, if you want 100 gigabytes of high-speed data, it will cost you about $300 per month. If you want 200 gigabytes of high-speed data, which is not unreasonable for a family of four with kids in high school who need to access online resources to do their homework, you're paying $500, $600 or $700 a month for that. Obviously, that's too expensive and out of reach for most rural families so they choose not to put it in place, because who's going to pay $600 a month for 200 gigabytes of data? That's $7,200 a year plus tax. It's far too expensive.
I think that is the bigger issue than actual accessibility to Internet in rural areas. It's the number one complaint that I've heard in the north Halton region and in southern Wellington County. They say that yes, they can get Internet, but how are they supposed to pay a monthly bill of $500. Especially, as you know, in the Maritimes you don't have access to natural gas, and neither do we, and you're paying $1,000 a month for oil heat. The marketplace isn't working for those rural customers.
Unfortunately, we didn't do what western Canadians did and roll out natural gas across all the Prairies to every single rural residence, and we didn't do what Bell telephone did and roll out Internet access, high-speed Internet, to every single rural household when we were rolling it out in cities. Now we have this problem where most rural families don't have access to affordable high-speed Internet. As I said, who's going to pay $600 a month, plus tax, for 200 gigabytes' worth of high-speed Internet access?
I think that is just as big an issue as making sure high speed is available. I bring that to your attention because I really think that's just as important, if not more important, than actually having access to high-speed Internet.