That’s it, all of Quebec is in high gear!

Alert: an ambitious two-billion-dollar government project is about to be completed on budget and (roughly) on time in Quebec. Two years ahead of Ontario, to boot!

What is this ambitious project? Connect 100% of Quebec homes to high-speed Internet (50 Mb/s).

In 2018, the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) promised that every household would have access to high-speed internet in time for the fall 2022 elections. This promise raised eyebrows among telecom experts. After all, Ottawa is aiming for a coverage rate of 98% in 2026 and 100% in 2030. Translation: the CAQ promise was full of good intentions, but unrealistic.

However, by March 2023, Quebec should become the first Canadian province where high-speed Internet will be accessible everywhere on its territory. In comparison, Ontario is giving itself until 2025 to achieve this, British Columbia until 2027.

It is therefore soon over, the time when towns and villages (even near Montreal) were disadvantaged because the internet connection is too slow.

In 2022, access to high-speed internet is not a luxury. It is an essential service and a tool for economic development. If we don’t want to empty our remote regions, they must be able to compete on equal terms technologically, both to keep their residents and to attract businesses. It means having access to high-speed internet.

Telecom companies are competing in speed to connect major urban centers. For more remote regions, as it is less profitable, governments subsidize part of the network deployment. It has always worked that way, and Quebec has continued this formula, this time imposing financial penalties on telecom companies that do not meet the agreed deadlines.

In Quebec, it will cost two billion to connect the remaining 380,000 households between 2018 and the start of 2023*. Telecom companies have invested 900 million, taxpayers 1.1 billion (627 million from Quebec, 464 million from Ottawa). By comparison, Ontario will pay $4 billion to connect all of its remaining homes by 2025.

Last March, 250,000 Quebec households were still not connected. This number will be reduced to 85,000 by September 30, according to Quebec forecasts.

Of these homes, 8,000 are “orphans”, that is to say they are very isolated and it would be too expensive to connect them to the wired network (fiber optics). If they want, we will connect them instead by satellite with Starlink, the company of Elon Musk. Quebec pays for the equipment and provides a subsidy of $40 per month to reduce the consumer’s monthly bill to approximately $100 per month. This choice makes sense.

For the other 77,000 households not served as of September 30 (2.1% of households in Quebec), the contracts have been signed and this should be settled during the fall (62,000 households) or during the first three months of 2023 (15,000 households). In the meantime, these 77,000 households are eligible for Starlink’s government offer from the end of September. (It allows the CAQ to keep its election promise. Quebec expects that about 10% of these households will take advantage of the Starlink offer.)

The most important thing is not so much to determine whether the CAQ kept its election promise to the letter. It’s that Quebecers in rural communities are connected quickly.

And on this question, Quebec – supported by Ottawa and its hundreds of millions – has delivered the goods and deserves an almost perfect score.

No one will take offense at a delay of a few months for the arrival of optical fiber in 2.1% of homes. Especially since Quebec will be the first province to cross the finish line in March 2023, far ahead of the others.

There is also an interesting governance lesson to be learned from this experience. The Legault government has chosen to entrust this file to CAQ MP Gilles Bélanger, who has devoted himself to it full-time. This is an interesting way to revalorize the function of deputy, while several ministers are overloaded. If the CAQ is re-elected with so many backbench MPs that it no longer knows what to do with them, this formula could make children.

* These are households eligible for high-speed internet. For example, a fishing lodge without electricity deep in the woods is generally not an eligible household (and that’s fine).