Branden Leslie

Mr. Speaker, Claims · 12 wordsas I was saying, there is good service in the big cities, Reasoning · 6 wordsand that is the key difference. Claims · 237 wordsWe can stand in this place and make a phone call, but when I am driving down the highway heading from my home in Portage down to Winkler, I know exactly where the dead spots are.¹ When I am on the phone, I will say, “Okay, I have to let you go. I am going to lose you here.” That is not identified on the map. It is one thing to lose a phone call and have to pick it up a couple of minutes later or 10 kilometres later, which is worse than dropping a phone call in a city. Where it really matters is when someone’s home in a rural area has no coverage. They can buy a booster for a bit of coverage right within their own home. Another example is of someone driving a combine during harvest and, heaven forbid, there is a fire, which does happen. They try to call emergency services, hoping they might be able to get there in time to save their $1-million piece of equipment, but find that they have no service. Someone could have an invader on their property in the middle of the night in a rural area, and they hope to call emergency responders, but they leave their house and have no service. It is one thing to be annoyed in a city when we do not have the ability to make a phone call. Reasoning · 21 wordsIt is another thing to have legitimate safety concerns on farms and across rural landscapes across this country. It is unfair. Claims · 46 wordsWe pay the same prices as anybody else buying their plans from any of these big telecom companies, ³and we get, at best, half the service.⁴ In many locations, people simply more or less live without service. I can think of Elm Creek, Miami or Somerset.² Positioning · 13 wordsStanding in town feels like we are living in a third world country, PositioningClaims · 11 wordsyet when I pull up the maps, the coverage is perfect.⁵