Minister of Public Safety Ralph Goodale was on hand Tuesday to announce a new internet infrastructure project that will help improve connectivity in central Saskatchewan.

The Federal government is contributing over $11 million, while Toronto-based FlexNetworks will also be contributing just under $4 million to the project.

Goodale said choosing communities to do these projects is based on a technical assessment, and whether or not they have any access to internet like the rest of the country.

“At the moment, our assessment is that access is available to about 85% of communties across the country,” Goodale said. “We want to get to 90% by 2021, 95% by 2026 and then full coverage by 2030.”

Chief Operating Officer of FlexNetworks Kris Eby said there’s nothing that they’re not already used to when it comes to completing this project in the province.

“It’s 530 kilometres in total, 330 kilometres of a backbone, and you can kind of see on the map, so it goes from Saskatoon to Regina, and 80% of that will be a plowed application.”

Mayor of the resort village of Thode Alan Thomarat said at the moment, he is forced to use a mobile hotspot on his phone for internet.

“We see all of these communities, the census metropolitan areas around Saskatoon and Regina are growing consistently and it’s young families that are going to populate these communities for years,” Thomarat said. “We need these services.”

The project is expected to be completed by March of 2022, but FlexNetworks has committed to getting the project done three months before that deadline.