[Advisors] Now what?

Wed Oct 28 09:49:49 PDT 2015

A few comments inline before I reply to Garth's original post.

-----Original Message-----
From: advisors-bounces at tc.ca [mailto:advisors-bounces at tc.ca] On Behalf Of Garth Graham
Sent: October 22, 2015 12:18 PM
To: Brian Beaton <brian.beaton at knet.ca>; advisors advisors <advisors at tc.ca>
Subject: Re: [Advisors] Now what?

> On Oct 21, 2015, at 6:37 PM, Brian Beaton < <mailto:brian.beaton at knet.ca> brian.beaton at knet.ca> wrote:

>  ... Are there any community-centric program people left at Industry Canada that anyone knows of? Or is everyone now only interested in finding private sector partners who claim they are the one can best take care of the communities for their programs and projects? Ie... is the public funding / subsidization of the private sector  the only game left at Industry Canada?

Good question, and I would assume “no” as a simple answer to the question of the existence of community-centric people.  However, looking to the future we shouldn’t assume “Industry Canada” continues to exit as federal department.  But, when a new Ministry does get structured, I think your other question, “is the public funding / subsidization of the private sector the only game left?” (without Industry Canada) still stands.

[MG] I would think that if at all possible we should "lobby" to not have IC or whatever a transformed IC might look like have responsibility for community informatics initiatives.  As we all know many of the problems that various folks have encountered over the years has been the result of trying to do what are essentially "social" programs in an "economic" or "industrial" development (admin) framework.  Ideally I think there should be some sort of Ministry of ICT which covers the range of ICT industrial, social, tech programs but particularly focuses on ICT policy where TC programs/policies would figure quite large I think (as per the Red Book…

This morning’s Globe and Mail has two articles in the business section that telegraph how the new department’s take on public policy may get framed…..

1. BCE launches appeal of CRTC fibre networks ruling:

 <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/bce-to-appeal-crtc-fibre-networks-ruling/article26901333/> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/bce-to-appeal-crtc-fibre-networks-ruling/article26901333/

“BCE Inc. is appealing a ruling from Canada’s telecom regulator to the federal cabinet, arguing the decision forcing it to give small Internet providers access to its highest-speed fibre broadband services will lead to lower investment. …. ‘The decision makes it unlikely that large-scale non-incumbent fibre-to-the-home networks will ever be built in Canada, or that many medium and most small towns and rural areas outside of Canada’s largest urban centres will see the benefits of competitive fibre broadband networks,’ BCE said in its petition.”

The prime carriers are already signaling they will build gigabit networks if left alone, and they will definitely not build if they have to carry independent ISPs. How the new government responds will go a long way to answering your second question.  But, as the article explains, if the policy response is to “balance” market forces then there’s no room in that for community-centric development strategies.

The article quotes OpenMedia calling the timing of Bell’s petition a “cynical attempt to see if the new government will cave to requests that the previous government would have rejected.”  Obviously OpenMedia is better prepared to leap rapidly into the policy abyss than TC.  Perhaps TC should be more open to OpenMedia than we have been, given that they occupy a similar policy space to our own, and given that they have reached out to us on occasion.  Speaking for myself, the good thing about OpenMedia is that they have proved a crowd-sourced model of funding policy advocacy can work, and the bad thing is that the model means you have to devote most of your time to crowd-sourcing.  I am not any good at that.

[MG] Anyone with an interest in this should be following the Verizon cases in the US (reference Bruce Kushnick) where there is a very strong attempt to take Verizon to court for having made promises (and received regulated subsidies) to consumers in a variety of areas (and currently most particularly Broadband) without delivering… Billions upon billions are involved.

2. Tech alliance pushes for federal innovation ministry:  <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/tech-alliance-pushes-for-federal-innovation-ministry/article26904576/> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/tech-alliance-pushes-for-federal-innovation-ministry/article26904576/

The other Tech policy advocate that’s fast out of the gate is the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA).  “The recommendation from the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA) includes dissolving Industry Canada and consolidating federal efforts around science, technology and business innovation under a single, senior minister. Such a scenario would dovetail with Justin Trudeau’s stated intention of appointing a federal cabinet on Nov. 4 that comprises a smaller number of ministers who are empowered to implement a transformational agenda.

CATA has enough Liberal connections to suggest that this is a reasonable prediction. But, of course, CATA’s game is exactly “subsidization of the private sector.”  That’s not very transformational.

CATA’s head, John Reid states, ““You need a very clear leadership statement from the top, so we would expect a significant cabinet appointment.”  From TC’s perspective, community doesn’t come “from the top.”  Community is an example of an open complex adaptive system whose structural functions are distributed internally.  It’s neither bottom up nor top down, it’s distributed.  That means we are advocating a different take on innovation from CATA. We are advocating a kind of community development that connects communities to the means of socio-economic development in a digital economy and then gets out of their way. 

I have always believed that the private sector’s self-serving approach to structured innovation is nuts.  The “new” only emerges and scales because someone says, “I can’t stand this any more,” and fixes it.  And usually the appearance of that someone is unexpected.  If you have a grassroots distributed approach to community development, the majority of actions to make things better will self-organize locally, leaving “The Top” with almost nothing to do.  But governance in Canada is not based on an understanding of distributed systems.

[MG] agree… I wonder if it makes sense to try to put together a quick alliance to do some lobbying in our areas?

M

GG

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