INTERNET DISCONNECT
Lack of access an obstacle in Kinley
KINLEY The six fathers of the Kinley Curling Club look out over the village hall, their fading portraits a potent reminder of how much has happened since the community was founded more than a century ago.
Pinned above the door to the village office in the corner is a handwritten notice, a warning that those who rent the facility for weddings or funeral luncheons are liable for any damages. It is dated Nov. 6, 1945.
A few things have changed over the years. These days, village administrator Lynne Tolley works in the cramped office on a laptop computer, a necessity in an age when documents are largely electronic.
But Tolley, 78, actually runs the picturesque community of about 60 people south of Highway 14 between Asquith and Perdue from her apartment on Saskatoon’s west side, about 55 kilometres away.
Why? Because the village office is not connected to the internet.
“It complicates things,” said Tolley, whose role includes tax collection and enforcement, remitting education property taxes, preparing financial statements and compiling council meeting agendas and minutes.
“We try to work around it because that’s what we have to do. We’re required by the government to do these things, and therefore we do them as best we can.”
Kinley Mayor Doug Harder has spent almost four decades living in the community west of Saskatoon and has served as mayor on and off for the last 20 years or so. He agreed connectivity is a challenge in the community.
While satellite internet is available in the village, it’s expensive — Harder figures $100 a month or so — and unreliable. Even on a good day, the bandwidth doesn’t approach what is available in the city.
“We’ve never really considered putting internet into the town hall, because it’s so much more convenient and reliable for (Tolley) to just do that stuff in the city,” Harder said.
Tolley and Harder both noted that the village has to be judicious with every financial decision, given its roughly $30,000 annual tax base. Tolley said her one-day-aweek schedule makes bringing the office online unjustifiably expensive.
As a result, though, the Village of Kinley doesn’t have a website and can’t provide electronic copies of documents to people who request them. Tolley says there’s only one option for people seeking documents: “Come to my office and ask me to see it.”
Cellular service is as much of a problem as internet. If you do manage to get a clear connection, you don’t turn your head, Tolley said. Harder agreed, saying sometimes the only way to send a text message is to stand by a kitchen window.
Asked whether that’s a problem in an age when people expect access to documentation to be instant, Tolley says she doesn’t think so; people aren’t asking for information and most people in the village know what council is up to.
“I don’t think that it’s particularly onerous. Frankly, people know what’s going on all the time anyway. Councillors walk out of the council meeting and anything that happens they’ll talk about — even when they’re told not to,” she said.
Justin Longo, a Regina-based assistant professor at the Johnson Shoyama School of Public Policy and an expert in open government, suggests the situation might not be that simple.
A lack of requests for public records may not reflect a lack of interest, but rather the high barriers to access in some communities, including the need to go to an office to obtain physical copies and fees associated with those requests, he said.
Just because people aren’t asking for records doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in their communities, Longo said, adding that citizens have a right to know what their government is doing with their tax dollars on their behalf.
“You don’t have to be upset about a particular issue to be interested in what’s going on, what decisions are being made on your behalf with your money. If you make it difficult for people to do that … that’s when you’re going to say, ‘It’s just too much of a bother.’ “
It’s not clear how many communities across Saskatchewan also struggle with access to cellular service and high-speed internet, but the heads of the associations representing the province’s local governments agree Kinley is not the only community experiencing problems.
Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) president Ray Orb said there is a “fair amount,” while his counterpart at the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA), Gordon Barnhart, agreed it is “not uncommon.”
“There are many small communities in Saskatchewan that just plain don’t have that connectivity at all,” Barnhart said.
“If you’re not on high speed, you’re on dial-up, let’s face it, unless you have a good satellite coverage. So, if you wanted to download a document, you’re going to have to sit down and have a few cups of coffee,” Orb added.
“It could take up to an hour to download a large document. Some documents you can’t even download. You simply have to drive somewhere, to a bigger centre, to be able to do that. So there’s a real sense of frustration.”
There are a few different options for internet access in most rural and remote Saskatchewan communities. Sasktel is by far the largest internet service provider in the province, but there are other, smaller, providers as well as options such as satellite internet.
According to Sasktel spokesman Greg Jacobs, 99 per cent of the province’s population now has access to the Crown corporation’s 23-year-old high-speed internet service, either through a hardline or wireless — the latter of which is a costlier option.
Jacobs said Sasktel has hardlines in approximately 457 communities across the province, reaching a total of about 429,000 households. However, Orb and Barnhart maintain connectivity remains a challenge in some municipalities.
Barnhart said the lack of highspeed internet is “an issue that they just have to cope with.”
“And until we can get more coverage across the province, these municipalities are going to have to cope with what they have,” he said.
Barnhart and Orb agreed that a lack of internet access can make local governments less transparent than they ought to be; both said their associations have lobbied at the provincial and federal levels for greater high-speed internet access in rural and remote areas.
“I mean, 10 or 20 years ago, this wouldn’t have been an issue because everyone would have been dealing with paper. So it’s a change and we’re hoping that internet connectivity can be improved and expanded over time,” Barnhart said.
Harder said the notion of amalgamating with the local rural municipality has been floated before; such a move could ease the administrative burden shouldered by the town and save Tolley from working out of her Saskatoon home. But that idea was rejected by the village, Harder said.
It’s not surprising; amalgamation has long been a controversial idea in much of rural Saskatchewan.
“It may seem strange that a small town like us, that we would maintain our administration, ( but amalgamation) really takes away your voice as a village. Then all your services are provided by a much larger group,” Harder said.
“And so we’ve really worked hard at maintaining our status so we’re managing our own business. That way, we control, in terms of our community members, how our tax dollars are spent.”
Longo questioned whether amalgamating a few small jurisdictions would do much to aid transparency, noting that a website with public documents might be offset by a reduction in the “person-to-person transparency” found in the smallest communities where people tend to simply talk with one another about what is happening with local government.
At the same time, Longo continued, running the smallest municipalities is “hard to afford, not just financially — it’s just hard to sustain over the longer term, so there is an argument toward amalgamation.”
Tolley, meanwhile, said it’s exceedingly rare for anyone to come to her office and request a local government document. Asked when it last occurred, she replied, “It’s never happened in Kinley.”
“I don’t think there’s a huge demand for all of our information. But for somebody who does want it on the internet, it isn’t there.”