I have never been shy about my thoughts about Canada’s declining place in our technological world. We have gone from being one of the most respected leaders in technology to being a laggard as we fall behind countries we use to lead. this is something that we could turn around if we had a government that was more interested in being a leader instead of being a lackey to US entertainment industry or Canadian born telecom monopolies.
Or as Michael Geist told the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communication hearing on May 26th
First, Canada is relatively expensive, ranking 14th for monthly subscription costs at $45.65. By comparison, Japan comes in at $30.46 and the UK at $30.63,
Second, the Canadian Internet is slow, ranking 24th out of the 30 countries. It is truly a different Internet experience for people in Japan, Korea, and France, where the speed allows for applications and opportunities that we don’t have. Moreover, Canada lags behind in fibre connections with 0% penetration. Japan sits at 48%, Korea at 43%, and Sweden at 20%. Even the U.S. is at 4%.
Third, when you combine these two – price and speed – Canada drops to 28th out of 30 countries for price per megabyte. In other words, we pay more for less than consumers in almost any other country in the OECD.
Fourth, Canada is one of only four countries where consumers have no alternative but to take a service with bit caps. Almost all other OECD countries have more choice.
I’m not the only one to feel our country is being left behind as there is a real push by concerned groups in this country, the University of Waterloo among them, who want to see this change. Part of that change is a new event called Canada 3.0 which apparently is beginning to snowball, attracting a lot of attention as it attracts over a 1,000 delegates and a growing number of business leaders and politicians.
Prof. Coates said taking a lead in digital media includes everything from developing copyright rules and compensation models for online content, to training and keeping in Canada people who understand this new economy. Among the ideas being floated is something called the Canada Project, a plan to get Canadian content online, starting with the holdings of the national archives and moving well beyond that.
Tom Jenkins, CEO of Waterloo software company Open Text and a driving force behind the conference, argues Canada needs a visionary project to capture the public imagination for what is a dry policy topic. Such a project would play a role similar to the space race, he said, which led to unprecedented technological advances.
As nice as all these positive thoughts might be I don’t believe anything will happen until we see a change in the federal government – but it has to be a change that includes a real desire to take our country out of this technological morass. that will take a lot of backbone and I’m not sure anyone on our political landscape has one anymore.
