Bill No. 2 - Develop Nova Scotia Act. - Second Reading

MS. CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Mr. Speaker, I just a have a few words here on second reading. We have been and will continue to pay close attention to this new corporation, Develop Nova Scotia. I had the chance to meet with Jennifer Angel and hear more about these plans and, to start on a positive note, I would say I think it's wonderful to see some focus on local economic development from this government. Since I was elected, I have been asking everyone I can think of that has anything to do with the Department of Business, "But what about local businesses? Where do they go? How do small local businesses get help from this government?"

I've had a very hard time getting any answer at all to that question and so I am very hopeful that with its focus on place-making that Develop Nova Scotia can be a home for what I feel we lost with Rural and Economic Development when that disappeared.

I think the government really has to take seriously that place-making approach. From my perspective if that is, in fact, the sort of raison d'être of this new Crown Corporation, then I would hope to see this Crown Corporation liaise with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development around school site selection, to liaise with TIR around active transportation and to truly take a holistic look at what that, frankly, buzzword of place-making actually means.

It means creating strong, vibrant local communities that people want to live in. I think we've learned over the years with the concentration of our populations in the urban areas of Nova Scotia that that takes more than any planning guidebook is going to give us. That actually means understanding the communities on the ground and what they need and what it takes for people to live there. Again, I think school site selection is a great example of that process.

I think that there are many concerns. I would echo some of the concerns of my colleague the member for Cape Breton-Richmond. I think we still have a lot of concerns about what this Internet plan will look like. Ten or 11 years ago, the Progressive Conservative government spent $26 million to bring broadband to rural Nova Scotia. We know that that was partially successful, but certainly not at all sufficient. This government is now investing a great deal more money in that project which is important, but there still doesn't seem to be a fundamental recognition - despite the use of the right language - that this is in fact a market failure.

So essentially what we're hearing is, well, we're going to negotiate a better contract this time. But the reality is you're not going to negotiate a better contract when there's nothing in it for the provider and so I am skeptical that this money will be anything more than a give-away to large corporations who will do some of the work and that we'll be in the same situation we're in now in 10 years.

I'm very hopeful that we can look outside the box so to speak, particularly for this government, at a publicly-owned option. I think that taxpayers want to own this particular kind of public infrastructure. Part of the reason for that is because it brings them something that we haven't heard anywhere in this conversation around Internet, which is affordability. People need rural Internet, of course, but they need to be able to afford to pay for it. Even in Develop Nova Scotia's new deck that it's presenting in all its consultations we don't see that word affordability. That's not at the forefront of this conversation. If the Internet is not affordable, it might as well not be there.

Mr. Speaker, we know that people need to be able to access it and we don't have to look any further than another Canadian province, Saskatchewan, to see how successful publicly-owned Internet is. SaskTel gives Saskatchewan the lowest Internet prices and the highest rate of customer satisfaction in Canada and it delivers revenue to the province. It's a revenue generator. 

Mr. Speaker, we look forward to seeing all of this unfold. I look forward to hearing further comments from my colleagues and from the minister and we are cautiously optimistic and remain vigilant as to how Develop Nova Scotia will evolve.