Thank you, Madam Chairperson.
Before I even start, I just want to apologize. This ties in very well with what I'm speaking about today, because my Internet connection is leaving a little to be desired today. Hopefully you can hear me and I'm clear, even if perhaps my voice doesn't match my lips.
I am Adrienne Ivey, a farmer and rancher, a mother of two teenage children and an agricultural advocate. I farm near Ituna in east central Saskatchewan, where we raise beef cattle as well as crops such as oats and canola.
It is very suiting that I'm speaking with you today, as this is a very important date. Today is Canada's Ag Day, a day to celebrate the healthy, nutritious and sustainable food grown across the country as well as the farmers and ranchers who grow it, but I'm not here today to speak on the good work we are doing as farmers. I am here to speak on the trials of remote rural living, which is especially disconnected during these extreme times of a global pandemic.
In these days of staying apart to stay safe, it has never been more apparent just how removed rural Canada is from the rest of our great country. Lack of connectivity has deeply affected our rural populations in ways never experienced before. As with many issues brought forward by COVID-19, rural women have been disproportionately affected by this.
At home on the ranch, we have struggled with reliable Internet and cellular service since long before the advent of the iPhone. As we watched technology develop and expand throughout our lives, we would never have guessed that decades later we would still be struggling with basics like online banking.
I reached out to the rural community to talk to them about this topic, and I was shocked at just how vast of an issue this is. From just outside of Vancouver to the prairie provinces like Saskatchewan, to the Atlantic provinces, rural women are struggling with connectivity. The stories from across Canada are eerily the same. Working from home combined with online learning has turned a bad Internet situation into a complete disaster. As mothers, it is devastating to watch our children struggle to keep up with their classmates online solely because of a lack of connectivity.
Beyond our children, we have more opportunities than ever to educate ourselves as women, but only if you can access the courses and webinars online. I have shuttered my agricultural communications business as I cannot count on a reliable connection, and for the limited data that we do have access to, I need to stockpile it for the days and weeks that our kids may require that data for online schooling. Knowing how much data I'm using today just to speak with you is very much top of mind, but this conversation is important.
In pre-pandemic days, any large Internet requirement, whether it be sending or receiving large files, virtual presentations or something as simple as FaceTime with family would mean a trip to the city to borrow a restaurant's or business's Internet. Just picture that for a moment, driving a hundred kilometres just to send a file. That is normal for rural living.
The next issue is the current cost. After paying hundreds and often thousands of dollars for equipment and installation, the monthly cost of rural Internet is enormous. For our household alone, we balance four cellphones as well as a satellite provider just to have enough data for the basics. Our cost for that is $600 a month, yet for that cost, we often run out of data and cannot perform the most simple of online tasks.
As a society, we have some brilliant ways of maintaining our lives while social distancing: virtual health care, online therapy, Zoom social gatherings, virtual gyms and places of worship and ordering groceries online. While that is a list to be proud of as a country, sadly, it is a list that strikes anxiety into the hearts of rural women. We cannot access most of these things on any given day.
Moving forward, Internet and cellular service must be viewed in the same light as electricity, as a basic necessity of life.