Broadband: a forgotten issue for this election?

More than a week has gone by since Prime Minister Stephen Harper pulled the plug on his own minority government, and a commitment to broadband network expansion has received little if any national attention.Not so long ago, deploying broadband across the country to every single household was akin to a national dream, much like the railway in the early years of this country's existence. But today with upwards of 2,000 communities still without high-speed Internet access, it seems like our broadband cupboards are essentially bare with a few regional initiatives in place to complete the job.Gone are the Broadband for Rural and Northern Development (BRAND) and the National Satellite Initiative (NSI), two programs that helped push high-speed Internet access deep into rural and remote communities. The http://www.broadband.gc.ca/ website closed down in August with all funding being brought under a new program.They have been replaced by the $33-billion Building Canada initiative, launched by the governing Conservative Party of Canada last year. While the programs aims to fund a wide range of "national" projects including highway improvement, clean drinking water, public transit and green energy, broadband and connectivity are absent from the national list. High-speed Internet has been relegated to the community category where it will share $362 million with other initiatives such as solid waste management, cultural and sporting infrastructure and local airport improvements.In Ontario, the provincial government is trying to do its part to expand broadband to southern and eastern parts of the province through the Building Canada program. Ontario recently inked an agreement with the federal government as part of this program, calling for both levels of government to commit $3.1 billion to infrastructure spending. As a result of this investment, the Ontario government is now accepting applications to fund a wide variety of community related projects with broadband being one of them.While the Conservative Party has chosen to take a more regional and partnership approach to funding broadband, the Liberal Party of Canada wants broadband to be significantly higher up on the agenda. In July, Industry critic Scott Brison called for an investment of $2 billion in national broadband infrastructure to reach the 20% of Canadians who live in rural areas. He made the statement a few days after the federal government generated $4.25 billion in proceeds from the Advanced Wireless Services spectrum auction, an amount that was nearly triple than anticipated.More recently, Brison highlighted that the importance of broadband went far beyond having faster Internet connections. Building a knowledge-based business in a community without high-speed internet is difficult, he said earlier this month. Investing in broadband would help address this, Brison added.The private sector and academia have also called on the federal government to do more on broadband with suggestions that as much as $1 billion from the recent spectrum auction should go to completing the work of a national broadband network. In a joint article written by telecom consultant Mark Goldberg, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre Michael Janigan and Janet Yale, executive VP of corporate affairs at Telus Corp., the three called on the federal government to make Canada a world leader in broadband by investing $1 billion to make high-speed Internet access "universal and affordable" to everyone.David Johnston, president of the University of Waterloo, has also called for renewed efforts on broadband expansion. He knows a few things about broadband and its importance to Canadian society, too. Johnston headed up the Information Highway Advisory Council and the National Broadband Taskforce, both which helped previous governments determine how to bring the information age to Canadians in all places of the country.Johnston recently suggested that a priority should be placed on broadband and education. "My focus would be particularly on learners, making it possible for students and children from low income families to have the same kind of access as children from middle and upper income families," he said. "I think it's time to bring thoughtful people together again in a national effort to restore Canada's position in ICT (information and communications technologies) in the world," he told Network Letter in June.Despite calls from academia, industry and consumers, save a few isolated comments, politicians have generally been silent on broadband. Their silence comes at a critical time for Canada. It was once a leader in broadband, but has now been surpassed by many countries.The Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation has recently found that Canada ranks at the bottom of the top 10 in terms of access per 100 inhabitants. Seven years ago, Canada was in second place. The country has also dropped in terms of network readiness with the Economist Intelligence Unit's E-Readiness ranking Canada in 13th spot in 2006 compared to 4th in 2001. As well, the World Economic Forum has shown Canada dropped from 6th in 2005, to 11th in 2006 and 13th in 2008 in its Networked Readiness Index.Broadband isn't only about surfing the Internet at faster speeds, it can deliver a wide range of critical government services such as healthcare and education. As Goldberg, Janigan and Yale wrote, broadband must be considered part of Canada's core infrastructure in the 21st century.

Broadband: a forgotten issue for this election?

News | 09/15/2008 6:48 pm EDT

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