The governments of Canada and Ontario have announced a total investment of $109 million to bring high speed Internet access to over 19,000 homes, businesses and rural communities in Ontario.
The investments were pledged during two separate announcements last week:
- $61 million for six projects by Bell Canada, the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre and the Keewaytinook Okimakanak council to bring high speed internet access to more than 16,000 homes in 47 rural Ontario communities and three First Nations communities in Northern Ontario.
- $48 million for a project by YorkNet, a corporation owned by the Regional Municipality of York, to bring high speed internet access to over 3,800 homes in 31 Ontario communities.
These announcements build on the existing Canada-Ontario broadband partnership, announced in July 2021 to support large-scale fibre-based projects with a joint provincial-federal investment of more than $1.2 billion. This historic investment was said to bring high speed internet to nearly 280,000 rural Ontario households.
The new projects also advance the government of Canada’s commitment to provide high-speed internet access to 98 per cent of Canadians by 2026, and 100 per cent by 2030.
The government of Ontario has also committed to bring high speed internet access to every community in Ontario by the end of 2025, and has finalized agreements totalling more than $2.2 billion for nearly 200 broadband projects across the province, as of Feb. 2023.
So far, 93.5 per cent of Canadian households have access to high speed internet, or are targeted to receive access through existing program commitments, compared to just 79 per cent in 2014, the two governments said in a release.