Posted at 5:00 a.m.
“The first thing I thought of when my car stopped moving was, do I have a network bar? »
Valéry Bélisle will remember May 3, 2022 for a long time. Leaving at 5:30 a.m. from Rivière-Saint-Jean, in Minganie, the young woman set sail for Sept-Îles, which is 150 km west of there, on route 138, in order to arrive on time for the start of a week-long course.
But halfway through the journey, the worst happens. Did she feel unwell? Did she doze off for a second? Valéry Bélisle cannot say. When she regains consciousness, she finds herself in the opposite lane, towards the stone ditch that overlooks a sandy beach, one of those for which this region is famous.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY VALÉRY BÉLISLE
Valéry Bélisle had an accident on May 3, 2022 not far from the Bouleau River, in Minganie.
“Instinctively, I sped the wheel and found myself rolling over the rocks. I remember everything, the blows, the metal cracking, until the tank comes to the bottom,” she says, in an interview with The Press.
Without network
Still in shock, as the music from her cellphone rings through the speakers of her car, a now gutted Mazda 3, her first instinct is to wonder if she can pick up the cellular network.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY VALÉRY BÉLISLE
The Mazda 3 of Valéry Bélisle, gutted
The answer to her question, however, comes quickly: she has none. It is that in Minganie, as in other regions of the province, access to the cellular network is very limited. With the exception of a few villages where it is difficult to connect to it, the approximately 420 km that connect Sept-Îles to Kegaska are almost completely deprived of it.
The way my car had fallen, no one could see me from the road.
Valery Belisle
“I quickly assessed my options. My back was starting to hurt. I tried to open my door, but it was stuck. I finally succeeded by kicking it. Coming out of there, I climbed the rocks, to go to the side of the road”, explains Valéry Bélisle.
After about thirty minutes of hoping that a car would come by to help her, she obtained the help of two men who took her to the hospital in Sept-Îles. Diagnosis: a broken vertebra, some bruises and scratches.
“Unacceptable in 2022”
Having left to look for her daughter’s personal effects, Josée Brunet says she had great difficulty in locating the place of the accident. She is categorical: “If she didn’t manage on her own, no one would come looking for her. »
The one who is in her third term as mayor of Rivière-Saint-Jean sees it as another example of the urgency of providing the region with an adequate connection to the cellular network. At a time when more and more tourists are going to the North Shore, “it is unacceptable that in 2022, we are left like this,” she said.
What’s more, the company Telus submitted bids in the spring of 2020 for two different projects on the territory of the MRC de Minganie in order to connect it to the cellular network as part of the launch of the Broadband Fund, to fill the gap digital technology in Canada,” says Josée Brunet.
But after being pushed back from fall 2020 to 2021, the response from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to this request for funding is still lagging behind.
A matter of security
So much so that the region’s federal MP, Bloc member Marilène Gill, wrote a letter to the regulatory body on April 28 to urge it to make a decision.
Ironically, she mentions the risk that the absence of a cellular network represents for the Minganois. “Deprived of a cellular network on large sections of Route 138 which connects the various municipalities, you will allow me to be worried about the users who use this road. I dare not imagine the worst: that a citizen is unable to contact the emergency services to help him, ”she writes there in an almost premonitory way.
In interview with The Press, the elected official confirms that she is still awaiting a response from the CRTC. Herself a victim of the lack of cellular network in Minganie when she broke down 17 km from the village of Rivière-au-Tonnerre during the election campaign last fall, she knows the issue well.
“It’s a matter of security. Today, if the police, firefighters, paramedics go on the road and receive a call, they no longer have a connection with anyone,” she explains, recalling that the pager service (pager) provided by Bell until 2019 made it possible to overcome this problem.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Marilène Gill, Bloc Québécois MP for Manicouagan
The municipalities themselves try to provide spaces where there is a network, but it is the responsibility of the federal government. Everything is ready to be deployed, all that is missing is the authorization from the CRTC.
Marilène Gill, Bloc Québécois MP for Manicouagan
The CRTC did not respond to an email sent late Thursday afternoon.
A priority for the regions
Far from being limited to the Minganie region alone, the lack of cellular coverage is felt in the four corners of the province, to the point that the Quebec Federation of Municipalities has made it a priority issue.
The Association, which brings together 1,000 municipalities, is asking the Legault government to take the lead in the file by establishing a map to identify the areas that remain to be covered.
“This in order to ensure the safety of citizens throughout the territory, especially since the end of the pager,” said the president of the FQM, Jacques Demers, also mayor of Sainte-Catherine-de-Hatley.
Such a card would have made it possible to quickly connect all households in the province to high-speed Internet, according to the FQM.
In his last budget presented in March, the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, reserved the sum of 50 million for the question of cellular coverage, but Quebec has not yet specified what exactly this sum will be used for.