Government cuts threatens Canada's digital strategy in libraries, community groups
From the Canadian Press at CBC.ca
Libraries, community groups squeezed by cuts to Internet program
March 15, 2010 - Jennifer Ditchburn
OTTAWA - The Conservative government is quietly cutting funding to hundreds of community groups and even hospitals that provide free Internet access to Canadians who might not otherwise have a chance to get online.
Organizations that benefit from Industry Canada's 16-year-old Community Access Program began receiving letters last week informing them that sites located within 25 kilometres of a public library would no longer be eligible for cash.
Groups had been receiving between $4,000 and $5,000 a year to buy computers and other hardware, such as printers and wireless routers; to pay for technical support and skills training; and sometimes to pay for the connection bills.
Organizations that have used the program include employment and youth drop-in centres, English-as-a-second-language programs, libraries, and seniors groups.
In rural areas, such organizations are often clustered in the middle of town and near the local library, meaning they are the most likely to be hit by the change in funding criteria.
In Industry Minister Tony Clement's riding, the West Parry Sound Health Centre administers the funds for 46 different community sites that will likely see their funding disappear because they don't fit the new narrow criteria.
Co-ordinator John Lee got involved with the program from its inception in 1994, when it was called SchoolNet.
He says it's a vital resource for organizations in rural communities where people don't always have access to high-speed Internet or sometimes even a computer.
At the health centre where Lee works, the public computer is used by long-term and emergency care patients and their families. The facility went from one computer to 10 over the last decade, and doesn't know if can keep its program alive.
"This is one of the most successful programs and services that Industry Canada has had," said Lee, who has personally appealed to Clement.
"It's really unfortunate, with the small amount of money, when you consider the larger part of the budget."
Karen Deluca of the Arnprior Public Library in eastern Ontario, said $3,000 is a lot for a small library.
"It's a vital link for everyone. It puts everyone on the same footing across Canada," said Deluca, who sees people come in to draft resumes, download programs, or do homework.
"There are still many rural communities who still do not have high speed access at home."
Industry Canada did not immediately respond to questions about changes to the program, including the size of the cut.
Details did not appear on Industry Canada's website or in the recent federal budget documents, which had been touting the government's new work on a "digital economy strategy."
The Conservatives are spending $200 million on expanding broadband coverage to underserved households in Canada.
Gary Goodyear, minister of state for science and technology, told the House of Commons on Monday that public libraries and 80 per cent of Canadians now have Internet access.
Liberal MP Anthony Rota, vice-chair of the Commons committee on industry, science and technology, wants to know where that leaves the other 20 per cent of the population.
"What this Conservative party is saying basically is that if you live in a large urban centre, then you're important, but the other 20 per cent of Canada, that's not important to this government," said Rota.
"When you start dismissing people, you create a divide in Canada between the haves and the have nots."
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BROADBAND - Economic future
Canada seeing 'failure' on digital strategy - University of Waterloo president says Canada risks getting left behind
March 15, 2010 - By Peter Nowak
University of Waterloo president David Johnston says Canada needs a strategy to encourage digital technologies because they are "as important as the printing press was 500 years ago." (CBC)
U.S. policy makers are set to unveil an ambitious new broadband plan on Tuesday but Canada is seeing a "failure of imagination," says the head of the country's most influential technology school.
"Most people who study the digital field would say that Canada has lost some of the wind in its sails, and that's unfortunate," David Johnston, president of the University of Waterloo, said in an interview with CBC News.
"Without being unduly critical of this government, there has not been a lot of attention paid to broadband, to the digital economy and digital media in the last five or six years."
The Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. equivalent of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), is scheduled to table its broadband plan to Congress on Tuesday. The plan is expected to prescribe measures on how to boost the adoption and use of high-speed broadband internet — the roads and railways of the modern age — and thereby ensure continued economic prosperity.
In Canada, the federal government promised a digital strategy in its Throne Speech two weeks ago that would include a broadband plan, as well as new anti-spam legislation and copyright reform.
But the government delivered few details in the follow-up budget a day later or since then. The government also made waves by suggesting in the speech that it would open up foreign ownership restrictions on telecommunications, but appeared to backtrack in the budget by limiting that plan to satellite companies.
Despite the lip service on the digital economy, Johnston said, the government doesn't appear to understand how important broadband and other information communications technology (ICT), such as mobile phones, are to economic development.
"There's a lack of understanding that ICT is a transforming set of technologies, as important as the printing press was 500 years ago. Because Western Europe understood the transforming qualities of the printing press, it took off. Chinese society, Islamic society and Indian society did not," he said.
"We are at least in that kind of measurable comparison today. Those societies that have a better understanding of the digital economy will prosper very quickly and those that don't will not. We've had a failure of imagination there."
Johnston's comments carry weight in Canadian technology circles. The University of Waterloo serves as a major recruitment base for several of the biggest technology companies in the world, including Microsoft and Google, as well as nearby BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. Johnston himself helped steer Canada to its early technological leadership position in the late nineties after chairing the government's Information Highway Advisory Council.
Productivity a major concern
Canada's productivity gap with the United States, which is already dramatic and growing by about one per cent a year, is particularly worrisome, Johnston said. By allowing the gap to increase, Canadians will have to work harder just to maintain their standard of living.
While productivity is a difficult thing to explain, Johnston likened it to banking. People who have to line up to pay their bills in person with a teller, as they did 20 years ago, are disadvantaged compared to those who do their transactions quickly online. The time spent doing things the old way could be used more productively, whether that means work or leisure.
Johnston said the country's university system must shoulder part of the blame for the lag in Canada's technological mindset. The schools haven't done enough to train students to work smarter, he said, which means that few Canadian companies succeed based on innovation. Of Canada's biggest companies, most are banks, while only BlackBerry maker Research In Motion — also based in Waterloo — has succeeded internationally, mainly because it has focused on innovation.
"RIM has been able to engineer products better than some pretty fierce competition," he said. "Better engineering is just being smarter."
Johnston's comments mirror those of several Canadian technological leaders. Patrick Pichette, Google's Montreal-born chief financial officer, recently told a conference in Toronto that businesses in this country have been slow to adopt the advantages of getting online, and in marketing on the internet.
"Canadian companies do not spend what would be required to actually capture the advertising opportunity; they are staying traditional in their behaviour and mindset," he said in a recent interview with the Financial Post. "Even if they're a medium-sized company and they've never done any of it before, go and learn — whether it's with Google or somewhere else — learn digital advertising, because that's where people live now."
A wealth of data and recommendations that could serve as the basis for a digital economy plan already exists, Johnston said. A 2001 report titled "The e-learning e-volution" by the Advisory Committee for Online Learning suggested 39 courses of action, ranging from the funding of new research and infrastructure to student aid and copyright reform. A 2000 report titled "A time to sow" by the Council of Ontario Universities also laid out a similar plan.
"Ten years ago there was good thinking on this," Johnston said. "We should dust that off and look at it."
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From the Wire Report - The Hill Times
CAP cuts will broaden the digital divide, say critics
OTTAWA—Critics say Industry Canada’s cuts to the Community Access Program (CAP)—at times the only source of Internet access for rural communities—will broaden the digital divide and put communities at risk of falling further behind in the digital economy. ...