[Advisors] Now what?

[Garth Graham]

Our new Prime Minister has asked us to take up “sunny ways,” and I’m all for that.  So I checked the Beatles lyrics for the song Good Day Sunshine – “I need to laugh, and when the sun is out I've got something I can laugh about…”  With the change of tone in mind, it’s time to redirect our thoughts and actions.

 Here’s what we know now:

 1. Telecommunities Canada has consistently advocated for community-based broadband and digital inclusion as important dimensions of a national digital economy strategy.  While it remains to be seen whether another opportunity to practice our consistency now exists, it would be a good idea to be ready.  Trudeau has emphasized principles of listening, inclusion, and more open dialogue.  So there could be more fertile ground for our message than we have faced in the past.  But we have no idea what the mix of ministries in the new government is going to look like.

 2. The significant expenditure on infrastructure that’s about to occur does not contain any reference to broadband as infrastructure, never mind community-based broadband.  The infrastructure projects agenda that’s about to be created will be driven by Chambers of Commerce and municipalities.  What methods or resources or allies do we have to influence that agenda?

 3. In particular, what methods or resources or allies do we have to influence that agenda, given that past Liberal Governments were just as guilty of letting the prime carriers dominate “market-based” telecommunications policy as the conservatives?

4. We see digital inclusion as an important element of community development.   But we know that, although certain regional development officers of industry Canada got the point, Industry Canada overall never embraced that concept in public policy.  In part, digital inclusion’s more fundamental nature as social development was a hard meal for industry Canada to digest.  Yet there was no other home for it within the federal government.  In effect, the real locus of digital development programs ought to be provincial, not federal, but the provincial governments’ responses vary widely.  So, would we do this top down, bottom up, or both, or something else?

GG