Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in today's debate on the throne speech and to respond to a number of statements made in that speech.
Let me point out first off that the session started four weeks late. According to the government, that time was used to prepare the Speech from the Throne.
I should let you know at this point that, like my colleagues, I will be sharing my time. I will be sharing it with the hon. member for Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière. We will both speak for ten minutes.
As I was saying, it is unfortunate that the government delayed the beginning of the session by four weeks in order to draft this Speech from the Throne which, as we all know, could have been prepared over the summer.
The speech is timid and lukewarm in terms of substance. While it is rather lengthy, the speech does not have much substance. It lacks substance.
Of course, there are a few interesting things in there, but there are also serious omissions. Take telecommunications for example.
With respect to telecommunications, the throne speech says that the government will adapt its programs to reflect the socioeconomic realities of rural communities and that it will intensify its efforts to ensure that those communities and all regions of Canada can take advantage of the opportunities created by the new global, knowledge based economy.
We understand what that means. It means that the government wants to connect all rural communities. I am all for it, because it is important. Between you and me, many people still use the phone to talk. Computers are not the only ones to use phone lines. In our rural communities, there are still ordinary people made of flesh and bones who like to pick up to phone to have a conversation.
What is the government doing for these people? Let me tell you what it is doing, or rather what it is not doing for them. In urban areas, the government allows for competition to decrease the cost of local residential phone services. In rural areas, the phone bill has been going up year after year. In some cases, it increased twofold over six years. This represents an impressive inflation rate.
Why is that? The problem is simple. Businesses operating in rural areas have higher telephone bills than those operating in urban areas. The message to these businesses is very clear: if you want to save on communication costs, get out of the rural areas and into the city. I am sorry to say that is an unacceptable message. Rural communities have a right to life as well.
When a company or individual in a rural area wants to have telephone service, the first thing needed is quality service. There are some areas in Quebec, Ontario and elsewhere that are still in the party-line era, with two households to a line and with exchanges that cannot handle electronic signals. In short, they are still in the dark ages, telephonically speaking.
Then there are the long distance costs. There are big savings to be made by major companies with high calling volumes. But an individual—a man or woman who is not just a single user but a rural user on top of that—may find, believe it or not, that he or she is in a municipality where calling city hall is a long distance call. Imagine that.
The throne speech has nothing to say on any of this, but I would go even further. Very recently, just a few weeks ago, the CRTC brought down a decision on high service-cost areas, which to all intents and purposes means the rural areas. The assumption was that telephone companies charge reasonable amounts to their subscribers and therefore there was nothing to worry about.
The telephone companies have raised their monthly rates for local calling beyond a reasonable level. Some families have discontinued phone service. Others, however, cannot and will not, but will give up some other essential instead or will deprive their children of some other essential. It seems that the Speech from the Throne has no consideration for these circumstances, which are worsening poverty.
The government and the Minister of Industry, in particular, through the CRTC, have totally abandoned the rural community. In Quebec the situation is even more tragic. Most of rural Quebec is served by Québec Téléphone, known as Quebec Tel. This company is 51% American owned.
For this reason, the CRTC has denied Quebec Tel the right to expand within Quebec or Canada, but is permitting Canadian firms and even new companies from the United States—AT&T and Sprint— to eat away at the territory of Quebec Tel.
Consequently, Quebec Tel is being eaten away from the inside by this competition, which, to all intents and purposes, is unfair. The Minister of Industry could, with a simple decision, accord Quebec Tel the rights the other telephone companies, including the American companies, enjoy on Canadian soil. This puts both the company and its subscribers, including myself, at a disadvantage. The situation is intolerable and unacceptable and is not even mentioned in the throne speech.
This speech does not deal with the real challenges in telecommunications, challenges that concern the rural community. The country is big. Quebec is big, it is vast. There is air and great open spaces, but the government is literally mocking the people who live in these spaces and who need telephone service.
Wherever I am in Quebec, my hydro bill is always the same: distance is not a factor. The cost of my car registration is the same for a given class of vehicle. My drivers' license costs the same, whether I live in Montreal, Quebec City or Portneuf. So why, tell me why, does the cost of my telephone vary according to where I live?
We had the choice for the telephone of the hydro approach or the airline route approach. The choice was the airline route approach, and the cost has become prohibitive for those who live far away.