News

Digital Canada 150: Why the Canadian Strategy Misses Key Issues and Lags Behind Peer Countries

In my first post on Digital Canada 150, Canada’s digital strategy, I argued that it provided a summation of past accomplishments and some guidance on future policies, but that it was curiously lacking in actual strategies and goals. Yesterday I reviewed how Canada’s universal broadband access target lags behind much of the OECD (Peter Nowak characterizes the target as the Jar Jar Binks of the strategy). The problems with Digital Canada 150 extend far beyond connectivity, however. In comparing the Canadian strategy with countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom, it becomes immediately apparent that other countries offer far more sophisticated and detailed visions for their digital futures. While there is no requirement that Canada match other countries on specific goals, it is disappointing that years of policy development – other countries were 5 to 10 years ahead of Canada – ultimately resulted in a document short on strategy, specifics, and analysis.

For example, compare the clarity of goals between Canada and the Australia strategy:

April 9, 2014 — 1 comment — News

Digital Canada 150: Why Canada’s Universal Broadband Goal is Among the Least Ambitious in the OECD

The release of Digital Canada 150, the federal government’s long-awaited digital strategy, included a clear connectivity goal: 98 percent access to 5 Mbps download speeds by 2019. While the government promises to spend $305 million on rural broadband over the next five years and touts the goal as “a rate that enables e-commerce, high-resolution video, employment opportunities and distance education”, the reality is that Canada now has one of the least ambitious connectivity goals in the developed world.

Just how badly does the government’s connectivity ambitions compare to other OECD countries? Consider just some of the target speeds from other countries as compiled three years ago by the OECD:

April 8, 2014 — 11 comments — News

U.S. Calls Out Canadian Data Protection as a Trade Barrier

The U.S. Trade Representative issued its annual Foreign Trade Barrier Report on Monday. In addition to identifying the geographical indications provisions in the Canada – EU Trade Agreement, telecom foreign ownership rules, and Canadian content regulations as barriers, the USTR discussed regulations on cross-border data flows. I wrote about the […]

April 2, 2014 — 11 comments — News

Who Needs Lawful Access?: Cdn Telcos Hand Over Data on Thousands of Subscribers Without a Warrant

The debate over Bill C-13, the government’s latest lawful access bill, is set to resume shortly. The government has argued that the bill should not raise concerns since new police powers involve court oversight and the mandatory warrantless disclosure provisions that raised widespread concern in the last bill have been removed. While that is the government’s talking points, I’ve posted on how this bill now includes incentives for telecom companies and other intermediaries to disclose subscriber information without court oversight since it grants them full civil and criminal immunity for doing so. Moreover, newly released data suggests that the telecom companies don’t seem to need much of an incentive as they are already disclosing subscriber data on thousands of Canadians every year without court oversight.

This week, the government responded to NDP MP Charmaine Borg’s request for information on government agencies requests to telecom providers for customer information. The data reveals that the telecom companies have established law enforcement databases that provides ready access to subscriber information. For example, the Competition Bureau reports that it “accessed the Bell Canada Law Enforcement Database” 20 times in 2012-13. The wording may be important, since the Bureau indicates that it accessed the information, rather than Bell provided it. It is not clear what oversight or review is used before a government agency may access the Bell database.

March 26, 2014 — 18 comments — News

Government of Quebec Loses Domain Name Dispute Over Quebec.com

The Government of Quebec has lost its complaint over the domain name Quebec.com. In a unanimous panel decision that included Copyright Board of Canada board member Nelson Landry, the government failed to demonstrate bad faith and raised questions about why it waited 15 years to launch a complaint.

March 25, 2014 — 3 comments — News