Dear Fellow Campbellvillians!

First off, I wish you a Happy Easter, and a safe and healthy long holiday weekend! Let's continue to be responsible citizens and follow the advice of our public health leaders.

In this update, I have good news and bad news to share - and I have chosen to share the bad news first, because I want to get past it and focus on the avenues that promise more success:

In my last update, I was happy to share that (Y)OUR petitions had been noticed by Rogers Communications at a fairly high level of authority, and that I had been promised the ISP would have a really good look at whether they would be able to expand their "make more possible" slogan into our community. Sadly, after 3 weeks of "radio silence", the best the Case Manager from Rogers' Executive Response Team had to offer was to point our community to their so called "Rocket Hubs" and their other services available on their website rogers.com. In their words; "After further review, unfortunately we there is no cable plant in the area and it is not currently in any of our plans to offer high speed internet services in that area."

Not only was that an underwhelming result of their review, but quite frankly, it was degrading and insulting to all of us who have surely spent numerous hours of researching possible solutions to our lack of internet speed on all of the big ISP's websites.

So since Rogers doesn't want me as a customer, as can certainly live without Rogers or any of their affiliated services.

Now, here's the good news:
On April 1, our MP Adam van Koeverden made a long-awaited announcement (details of which can be found here: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/government-of-canada-invests-to-bring-high-speed-internet-to-756-households-in-halton-region-850781056.html that will get us a big step closer to our objective. Granted, this move is certainly not a direct result of this petition, however, it may well give the roll-out a bit of tailwind. Not all of us will be so fortunate to get connected in the first phase of this project, but it's a big step in the right direction.

We appreciate that Bell Canada has made the effort to apply for partial funding of this connectivity project to the Universal Broadband Fund, and we would wish that more ISPs would have followed through along this path, rather than leaving our rural markets to be snatched up by foreign companies like Starlink.

I would also like to share a word of gratitude in the direction of our Town Councillor Kristina Tesser Derksen and Regional Councillor Colin Best, who have certainly helped to bring up our demands in the background of the many political platforms they are part of.

I will continue to communicate this petition to Bell, Cogeco and now also the media, because we will apparently only ever see progress if we dial up the pressure on those that can make it happen.

Sincerely,

Chris Glaessel