A Colin Newell Post
As Bob will tell you, Canada (next to Australia… and perhaps Trinidad & Tobago) is the greatest nation on the planet. We bristle with pride as we describe the free health-care and post-secondary education (Free education!? No, wait – that is Ireland!) On top of all of this, Canadians, Bob might muse, are overarchingly polite. We live in a land of press freedom, socialism-lite and an enduring love for all things Canadian and eschew garish behavior and any sudden movements that might draw more than a micro-second of unwanted attention to ourselves.
Reality check: We are a nation of people whose media is controlled by a small handful of families. Fact is, the media is way more open in the United States of America. North of 49, media families control all the newspapers (radio and TV) and a handful of galaxy sized telcos, which control telephone and the internet.
Between the U.S. and Canada, the internet, at least for the time being… is about equal in terms of its accessibility. But for how long?
Our own Tory (your Republican) government (currently in a very shaky minority government) is entertaining the notion of allowing large Telcos to decide which parts of the internet info-pie are good for us.
"Documents obtained by The Canadian Press indicate that senior advisers to Industry Minister Maxime Bernier, who has previously declared a "consumer first" approach, are carefully heeding the arguments of large telecommunications companies like Videotron and Telus against so-called Net neutrality legislation." – link
In all fairness, this discussion is not so much about what you can access but when and how you can access it. The proverbial It being blogs, great and small, and all manner of corporate sites, e-commerce, governmental and non-governmental agencies…
In a worse case scenario (unlikely as this is Canada after all), the Internet (from a Canadian perspective) could be more like a really bad cable channel (as viewed from, say, North Bay, Ontario…)
Unlikely though. America had this discussion ages ago. And flushed it.
And so should we.