The challenges of delivering services in Canada, with its relatively small population spread out across a huge geographical area, has bedevilled governments since even before Confederation. With the advent of modernity and the telecommunications that have come along with the so-called information age, much is now possible that was not in the past—but there is a catch—it’s still prohibitively expensive.
Canadians received welcome news these past few days when StatsCan released data that shows the cost of cell services has dropped 17 percent in this country over the past year. Cell phone users might be forgiven for not noticing, since they are most likely focused on the rising costs of everything else right now—and despite that drop, we are still at the forefront of expensive cell service plans when compared to services across the globe.
While Canada’s population is mostly confined to within a few miles of the southern border and with urban concentrations more easily serviced than the spread in the North, there is still the huge and sparsely populated regions of the country, particularly in the North, to consider. Compounding the issue is that just like everything else, the cost of building cell towers has nearly doubled in the past few years.
Cell service has become more than simply a convenience in recent years. Access to communication services is a vital component of modern life—but the cost of those services places them out of reach of too many people.
It may be time for the federal and provincial governments to step up and fund the building of infrastructure in the non-commercially viable parts of the nation. By creating a network of towers, readily available to all commercial providers, the prohibitive costs may be ameliorated sufficiently to not only reduce costs for everyone, but also provide coverage where it is not possible for for-profit entities.
As it stands, with the balkanization of cell service among a handful of corporations, bringing coverage to remote and underserviced areas is not viable. Spreading the costs of providing cell services to those remote areas to the profitable urban areas where the bulk of the customers reside raises all bills.
With a national program of telecommunications infrastructure in place, the issue of a lack of broadband access can also be tackled.
Of course, like all simple solutions, the devil is in the chequebook. It would be a massive expenditure, but like all infrastructure investments, there will be a payback in economic activity that will make that investment seem prescient in future generations.
Much of the infrastructure that has underpinned our nation’s prosperity (we are among the wealthiest nations in the world despite the recent escalation in costs we have experienced) was built through government investments back in the 1970s. There was much weeping and wailing over the unsupportable costs of those programs, but here we are, decades down the road, enjoying the fruits of those investments.
It is time for vision—not revision—and rolling up our sleeves to ensure future generations are able to compete in the age of information.
A lesson from fairly recent history: the total electrification of Manitoulin Island was not completed until the early 1950s, when Ontario Hydro deemed it was finally prudent to expand the lines and poles to service rural sideroads and farming communities. That, in the scheme of things, was not that long ago, but who can imagine a world without the ease of electrical lighting today?
