Ottawa dollars can save B.C.'s old-growth forests
A coalition of conservationists is urging the B.C. government to use federal funds to end the province’s new war in the woods on Vancouver Island, protect old-growth forest and establish targets for endangered ecosystems.
Ken Wu, executive director of the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance, said Premier John Horgan should capitalize on federal funding and align with national and international initiatives to set targets to protect vital land and marine areas.
“It’s a game-changing plan,” Wu told the National Observer.
“Because the province can employ federal money to save these areas if Horgan chooses to do it.”
The B.C. government should adopt Canada’s protected areas targets, and preserve at least 25 per cent of its vital land and marine ecosystems by 2025, and 30 per cent by 2030, said Wu.
Currently, 15 per cent of B.C.’s land area is falls into legislated protected areas, compared to 13 per cent nationally, the alliance said.
The rest of the world is working aggressively to expand protected at-risk ecosystems, and B.C. should follow suit and protect its most valuable ancient forests at the same time, Wu said, particularly as the province boasts the greatest ecological diversity in the country.
B.C.’s participation is critical for Canada to meet its own national and international protected areas commitments, he added.
“Will B.C. join the North American leadership movement to solve the intertwined climate and biodiversity crisis or get left behind as an anti-environmental conservation laggard?” Wu asked.
A total of $3.3 billion to protect land and seas has been set aside by Ottawa in the latest budget, Wu said, adding $2.3 billion is dedicated to terrestrial areas.
B.C.’s part of the funding pie would likely range between $200 and $300 million, which would go a long way to protecting the province’s most valuable ancient forests.
The federal funding comes at a critical time for B.C., conservationist Vicky Husband, renowned B.C. conservationist awarded both the Order of Canada and the Order of B.C. for her work to protect old-growth over 40 years.
“Right now the B.C. government is being pressured by deeply concerned citizens across (the province) and beyond for an immediate moratorium on old growth logging of the last remaining most bio-diverse forests,” Husband said in a press statement.
“This pressure for change also includes support for First Nations who want to protect critical old growth forests in their territory.”
It’s vital B.C. dedicate a significant chunk of the funding to Indigenous Protected Areas, First Nations land use plans, and the acquisition of private lands for protection, the Alliance said.
Also, the province should support B.C. communities dependent on forestry revenue by providing financing for First Nations sustainable economic development linked to newly protected areas, incentives and regulations to grow a value-added, second-growth forest industry, and provide a just transition for B.C. old-growth forestry workers.
While federal funding won’t save all of B.C.’s old-growth, it could protect areas of concern and help end blockades and protests such as those currently underway on southern Vancouver Island and the Fairy Creek watershed, said TJ Watt, a campaigner with the Ancient Forest Alliance.
“The B.C. NDP government has just been handed the keys to ensure much of the grandest, most endangered old-growth forests in B.C. get protected,” said Watt in a press statement.
“Will they keep the door shut or let the solution in?”
Rochelle Baker / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
Rochelle Baker, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, National Observer
Saturday, May 29, 2021
Against Technology -
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 The Boom, The Bust, and Neo-Luddites in the 1990s 19
Chapter 2 The Mythic History of the Original Luddites 45
Chapter 3 Romanticizing the Luddites 77
Chapter 4 Frankenstein and the Monster of Technology 105
Chapter 5 Novelizing the Luddites 137
Chapter 6 Counterculture and Countercomputer in the 1960s 173
Chapter 7 Ned Ludd in the Age of Terror 211
Notes 235
Selected Bibliography 257
Index 267
https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/3397664/Jones-2006-Against-Technology.pdf
Friday, May 28, 2021
Into the Mainstream and Oblivion”: Julian Mayfield's Black Radical Tradition, 1948-1984
by David Tyroler Romine
Abstract
“Into the Mainstream and Oblivion” is a study of the intellectual and political biography
of the African American writer and political activist Julian Hudson Mayfield. As a member
of the black Left, Mayfield’s life of activism and art bring the complex network of artists,
activists, and political theorists who influenced the construction, tactics, and strategies of
social movements during the latter half of the twentieth century into sharper focus revealing
the ways in which black, modernist writing served as a critical site of political, social, and
cultural ferment during the Cold War. Using art to communicate ideas and arguments about
the relationship between race, gender, and political economy, Mayfield and his
contemporaries illuminate the broader influence of black writers on American culture and
politics. In addition, the state’s response to Mayfield’s life of literary activism sheds light on
the ways in which anti-communism worked to disrupt, marginalize, and dampen the effect
of challenges to white supremacy.
The project makes extensive use of archives at the Schomburg Center for Research
in Black Life in Harlem, which houses the archives of Julian Mayfield and many of his
contemporaries. In addition to these primary source documents, this project examines
government documents produced by the extensive surveillance of African American writers
by various government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department
of State, and United States Information Agency. Finally, the dissertation has benefitted from
a close working relationship with the family of Julian Mayfield and oral histories from
contemporaries which sheds light on the complex interplay of gender and class among black
social movements during the latter half of the twentieth century.
THE REVOLUTION WILL BE VIDEOTAPED:
MAKING A TECHNOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE LONG 1960s
Peter Sachs Collopy
A DISSERTATION
in
History and Sociology of Science
Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania
Abstract
In the late 1960s, video recorders became portable, leaving the television studio for the art gallery, the psychiatric hospital, and the streets. The technology of recording moving images on magnetic tape, previously of use only to broadcasters, became a tool for artistic expression, psychological experimentation, and political revolution. Video became portable not only materially but also culturally; it could be carried by an individual, but it could also be carried into institutions from the RAND Corporation to the Black Panther Party, from psychiatrists’ offices to art galleries, and from prisons to state-funded media access centers. Between 1967 and1973, American videographers across many of these institutional contexts participated in a common discourse, sharing not only practical knowledge about the uses and maintenance of video equipment, but visions of its social significance, psychological effects, and utopian future. For many, video was a technology which would bring about a new kind of awareness, the communal consiousness that—influenced by theevolutionary philosophy of Henri Bergson—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin referred to as the noosphere and Marshall McLuhan as the global village. Experimental videographers across several fields were also influenced by the psychedelic research of the 1950s and early 1960s, by the development of cybernetics as a science of both social systems and interactions between humans and machines, by anthropology and humanistic psychology, and by revolutionary political movements in the United States and around the world
https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3451&context=edissertations
I WAS PART OF THE VIDEO TAPE REVOLUTION WITH OUR YIPPIE GROUP IN EDMONTON WHO USED PORTABLE VIDEO CAMERA'S TO FILM MEDIA CONFRENCES ON THE FUTURE OF TV IN THE NEW ERA OF CABLE, DEMANDING FREE PUBLIC ACCESS TO CABLE FOR DIY PRODUCTIONS. WHAT CANADIANS GOT WAS A SHORT DUREE OF DIY ON CHANNEL 10 WHICH ONLY EXISTS AS A DEVOLED CABLE PR CHANNEL
Nostalgia for Infinity: New Space Opera and Neoliberal Globalism
by Jerome Dale Winter
Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English
University of California, Riverside, June 2015
Dr. Sherryl Vint, Chairperson
This doctoral dissertation argues that contemporary postcolonial literature from
and about the Caribbean, Scotland, and India responds to American and British popular
genre fiction, specifically the subgenre known as New Space Opera, in allegorizing the
neoliberal processes, conditions, and experiences of globalization in the world-system.
My project discusses works by postcolonial authors who have yet to receive theoretical
investigation from this perspective, including Iain M. Banks, Karen Lord, and Nalo
Hopkinson, as well as important transatlantic SF authors whose work has yet to be
discussed in terms of globalism including Samuel R. Delany, M. John Harrison, Gwyneth
Jones, Bruce Sterling, and C.J. Cherryh. I argue that these often critically neglected
space-opera novels reconfigure for our times the conventional trappings of traditional
space opera — such as such as faster-than-light starships, galactic empires, doomsday
weapons, and dramatic encounters with exotic aliens — to reflect and refract the global
dimensions of our neoliberal and postcolonial world-system transfigured by
contemporary technoculture. Consequently, I argue that New Space Opera novels address
and intervene in sociopolitical and historical developments specific to the cultures in
which they are written. New Space Opera written from Scottish, Indian, and Caribbean
perspectives interrogates the interweaving of nation-states and transnational culture,
especially in connection with the rapidly accelerating technological, social, and economic
changes facing our planet today
https://escholarship.org/content/qt2n63z8dv/qt2n63z8dv_noSplash_c7c552d04b9e38b239ea82f5e15fa9b1.pdf
"Revolutionary Romanticism: Henri Lefebvre's Revolution-as-Festival", Third Text, 27:2, 2013, pp.208-220.
Gavin Grindon
13 Pages
1 File ▾
https://www.academia.edu/10706390/_Revolutionary_Romanticism_Henri_Lefebvres_Revolution_as_Festival_Third_Text_27_2_2013_pp_208_220
This article examines Henri Lefebvre's concept of revolution-as-festival, its textual sources and its relationship to contemporary notions developed by Georges Bataille and the Situationist International. It is a companion-piece to the examination of Bataille's revolution-as-festival in Third Text 104, vol 24, no 3, May 2010. The author argues that Lefebvre's revolution-as-festival embodies the multiple methodological ambiguities of his ‘open’ dialectical approach, and his attempt to transplant Surrealist and Dadaist concerns into a Marxian framework. It is, paradoxically, these ambiguities that allow his revolution-as-festival to become a useful concept: firstly as a discursive making-visible and valorization of the art and culture of social movements; and secondly as a term through which to critically re-imagine this art and culture's limits and possibilities. This potential is borne out, not least, in the influence of Lefebvre's essay ‘Revolutionary Romanticism’ on the founding debates of the Situationist International.
“Alchemist of the Revolution: The Affective Materialism of Georges Bataille.” Third Text 24:3, 2010. pp.305-17.
Gavin Grindon
13 Pages
1 File ▾
This article examines Georges Bataille’s notion of revolution‐as‐festival and his attempt, in his writing of the 1930s, to place theories of affect within the framework of Marxist philosophy. Against the various negative characterisations of this project, it looks at Bataille’s ideas in this period in context, in order to understand their vivid contradictions as an attempt to assert a positive project of affect’s utility to the Left, within and against negative categories in early twentieth‐century cultural and critical thought.
"Surrealism, Dada and the Refusal of Work: Autonomy, Activism and Social Participation in the Radical Avant-Garde," The Oxford Art Journal, 34:1, 2011, pp.79-96.
18 Pages
BLM's Patrisse Cullors to step down from movement foundation
A co-founder of Black Lives Matter announced today that she is stepping down as executive director of the movement’s foundation.
![]()
Patrisse Cullors poses for a portrait to promote a film during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Source: Associated Press
She decried what she called a smear campaign from a far-right group, but said neither that nor recent criticism from other Black organisers influenced her departure.
Patrisse Cullors, who has been at the helm of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation for nearly six years, said she is leaving to focus on other projects, including the upcoming release of her second book and a multi-year TV development deal with Warner Bros.
Her last day with the foundation is tomorrow.
“I’ve created the infrastructure and the support, and the necessary bones and foundation, so that I can leave,” Cullors told The Associated Press. “It feels like the time is right.”
Cullors’ departure follows a massive surge in support and political influence in the U.S. and around the world for the BLM movement, which was established nearly eight years ago in response to injustice against Black Americans. The resignation also comes on the heels of controversy over the foundation’s finances and over Cullors’ personal wealth.
The 37-year-old activist said her resignation has been in the works for more than a year and has nothing to do with the personal attacks she has faced from far-right groups or any dissension within the movement.
“Those were right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character, and I don’t operate off of what the right thinks about me,” Cullors said.
As she departs, the foundation is bringing aboard two new interim senior executives to help steer it in the immediate future: Monifa Bandele, a longtime BLM organiser and founder of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in New York City, and Makani Themba, an early backer of the BLM movement and chief strategist at Higher Ground Change Strategies in Jackson, Mississippi.
“I think both of them come with not only a wealth of movement experience, but also a wealth of executive experience,” Cullors said.
The BLM foundation revealed to the AP in February that it took in just over $90 million last year, following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man whose last breaths under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer inspired protests globally. The foundation said it ended 2020 with a balance of more than $60 million, after spending nearly a quarter of its assets on operating expenses, grants to Black-led organisations and other charitable giving.
Critics of the foundation contend more of that money should have gone to the families of Black victims of police brutality who have been unable to access the resources needed to deal with their trauma and loss.
“That is the most tragic aspect,” said the Rev. T. Sheri Dickerson, president of an Oklahoma City BLM chapter and a representative of the #BLM10, a national group of organisers that has publicly criticised the foundation over funding and transparency.
“I know some of (the families) are feeling exploited, their pain exploited, and that's not something that I ever want to be affiliated with," Dickerson said.
Cullors and the foundation have said they do support families without making public announcements or disclosing dollar amounts.
In 2020, the BLM foundation spun off its network of chapters as a sister collective called BLM Grassroots, so that it could build out its capacity as a philanthropic organisation. Although many groups use “Black Lives Matter” or “BLM” in their names, less than a dozen are considered affiliates of the chapter network.
Last month, Cullors was targeted by several conservative-leaning publications that falsely alleged she took a large annual salary from the foundation, affording her recent purchase of a southern California home.
In April, the foundation stated Cullors was a volunteer executive director who, prior to 2019, had “received a total of $120,000 since the organisation's inception in 2013, for duties such as serving as spokesperson and engaging in political education work.”
“As a registered 501c3 non-profit organisation, (the foundation) cannot and did not commit any organisational resources toward the purchase of personal property by any employee or volunteer,” the foundation said in a statement. “Any insinuation or assertion to the contrary is categorically false.”
In 2018, Cullors released, “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir,” which became a New York Times bestseller. She has also consulted on a number of racial justice projects outside of BLM, taking compensation for that work in her personal capacity.
She and the BLM movement have come a long way since its inception as a social media hashtag, following the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida.
Cullors, along with BLM co-founders Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, pledged then to build a decentralised movement governed by consensus of a members’ collective. In 2015, a network of chapters was formed, while donations and support poured in. Garza and Tometi soon stepped away from day-to-day involvement in the network to focus on their own projects.
Cullors, who has arguably been the most publicly visible of the co-founders, became the foundation’s full-time executive director last year purely out of necessity, she said.
“We needed her,” said Melina Abdullah, who leads BLM Grassroots and co-founded, with Cullors, BLM’s first-ever official chapter in Los Angeles.
“George Floyd was killed and the whole world rose up,” Abdullah told the AP. “I would like her to be there forever, but I also know that that’s not feasible. The real test of any organisation is can it survive the departure of its founders. And I have no question that Black Lives Matter will survive and grow and evolve, even with the departure of our final co-founder in a formal role.”
On Oct. 5, St. Martin's Press will release Cullors’ latest book, titled “An Abolitionists Handbook,” which she says is her guide for activists on how to care for each other and resolve internal conflict while fighting to end systemic racism. Cullors is also developing and producing original cable and streaming TV content that centres on Black stories, under a multi-year deal with Warner Bros.
The first of her TV projects will debut in July, she said.
“I think I will probably be less visible, because I won’t be at the helm of one of the largest, most controversial organisations right now in the history of our movement,” Cullors said.
“I’m aware that I’m a leader, and I don’t shy away from that. But no movement is one leader.”
A co-founder of Black Lives Matter announced today that she is stepping down as executive director of the movement’s foundation.
Patrisse Cullors poses for a portrait to promote a film during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Source: Associated Press
She decried what she called a smear campaign from a far-right group, but said neither that nor recent criticism from other Black organisers influenced her departure.
Patrisse Cullors, who has been at the helm of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation for nearly six years, said she is leaving to focus on other projects, including the upcoming release of her second book and a multi-year TV development deal with Warner Bros.
Her last day with the foundation is tomorrow.
“I’ve created the infrastructure and the support, and the necessary bones and foundation, so that I can leave,” Cullors told The Associated Press. “It feels like the time is right.”
Cullors’ departure follows a massive surge in support and political influence in the U.S. and around the world for the BLM movement, which was established nearly eight years ago in response to injustice against Black Americans. The resignation also comes on the heels of controversy over the foundation’s finances and over Cullors’ personal wealth.
The 37-year-old activist said her resignation has been in the works for more than a year and has nothing to do with the personal attacks she has faced from far-right groups or any dissension within the movement.
“Those were right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character, and I don’t operate off of what the right thinks about me,” Cullors said.
As she departs, the foundation is bringing aboard two new interim senior executives to help steer it in the immediate future: Monifa Bandele, a longtime BLM organiser and founder of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in New York City, and Makani Themba, an early backer of the BLM movement and chief strategist at Higher Ground Change Strategies in Jackson, Mississippi.
“I think both of them come with not only a wealth of movement experience, but also a wealth of executive experience,” Cullors said.
The BLM foundation revealed to the AP in February that it took in just over $90 million last year, following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man whose last breaths under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer inspired protests globally. The foundation said it ended 2020 with a balance of more than $60 million, after spending nearly a quarter of its assets on operating expenses, grants to Black-led organisations and other charitable giving.
Critics of the foundation contend more of that money should have gone to the families of Black victims of police brutality who have been unable to access the resources needed to deal with their trauma and loss.
“That is the most tragic aspect,” said the Rev. T. Sheri Dickerson, president of an Oklahoma City BLM chapter and a representative of the #BLM10, a national group of organisers that has publicly criticised the foundation over funding and transparency.
“I know some of (the families) are feeling exploited, their pain exploited, and that's not something that I ever want to be affiliated with," Dickerson said.
Cullors and the foundation have said they do support families without making public announcements or disclosing dollar amounts.
In 2020, the BLM foundation spun off its network of chapters as a sister collective called BLM Grassroots, so that it could build out its capacity as a philanthropic organisation. Although many groups use “Black Lives Matter” or “BLM” in their names, less than a dozen are considered affiliates of the chapter network.
Last month, Cullors was targeted by several conservative-leaning publications that falsely alleged she took a large annual salary from the foundation, affording her recent purchase of a southern California home.
In April, the foundation stated Cullors was a volunteer executive director who, prior to 2019, had “received a total of $120,000 since the organisation's inception in 2013, for duties such as serving as spokesperson and engaging in political education work.”
“As a registered 501c3 non-profit organisation, (the foundation) cannot and did not commit any organisational resources toward the purchase of personal property by any employee or volunteer,” the foundation said in a statement. “Any insinuation or assertion to the contrary is categorically false.”
In 2018, Cullors released, “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir,” which became a New York Times bestseller. She has also consulted on a number of racial justice projects outside of BLM, taking compensation for that work in her personal capacity.
She and the BLM movement have come a long way since its inception as a social media hashtag, following the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida.
Cullors, along with BLM co-founders Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, pledged then to build a decentralised movement governed by consensus of a members’ collective. In 2015, a network of chapters was formed, while donations and support poured in. Garza and Tometi soon stepped away from day-to-day involvement in the network to focus on their own projects.
Cullors, who has arguably been the most publicly visible of the co-founders, became the foundation’s full-time executive director last year purely out of necessity, she said.
“We needed her,” said Melina Abdullah, who leads BLM Grassroots and co-founded, with Cullors, BLM’s first-ever official chapter in Los Angeles.
“George Floyd was killed and the whole world rose up,” Abdullah told the AP. “I would like her to be there forever, but I also know that that’s not feasible. The real test of any organisation is can it survive the departure of its founders. And I have no question that Black Lives Matter will survive and grow and evolve, even with the departure of our final co-founder in a formal role.”
On Oct. 5, St. Martin's Press will release Cullors’ latest book, titled “An Abolitionists Handbook,” which she says is her guide for activists on how to care for each other and resolve internal conflict while fighting to end systemic racism. Cullors is also developing and producing original cable and streaming TV content that centres on Black stories, under a multi-year deal with Warner Bros.
The first of her TV projects will debut in July, she said.
“I think I will probably be less visible, because I won’t be at the helm of one of the largest, most controversial organisations right now in the history of our movement,” Cullors said.
“I’m aware that I’m a leader, and I don’t shy away from that. But no movement is one leader.”
'Boggling' CRTC flip-flop on wholesale internet rates could mean higher prices for consumers: critics
© Provided by National Post
Telcos threaten to pull rural internet investment after CRTC lowers wholesale rates
It’s a big win for large telecoms like Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Quebecor and Cogeco who fought the new rates through every avenue available to them, arguing lower rates would harm network investment, including in rural areas, where telecom infrastructure is often dated and inadequate. They filed court appeals, petitioned federal cabinet to overturn the decision and asked the CRTC itself to review the decision.
Last year, the Federal Court said the CRTC’s rates stand and though the big telecoms appealed at the Supreme Court, that court declined to hear the case. The Liberal government also declined to overturn or alter the decision.
That left the ball in the CRTC’s court, leaving it up to the regulator to decide whether to uphold the lower rates it established in August 2019. On Thursday, it said it would not, determining there was “substantial doubt as to the correctness” of the 2019 rates.
It said starting another process to review them would take too long, cause too much market uncertainty, and take too many resources away from establishing a new, “disaggregated” wholesale regime.
CRTC chairman Ian Scott said in an interview that the decision won’t lead prices to go up because the lower rates were never implemented, calling that a “false narrative.”
“Why would it go up?” he said. “I’m not buying this – not as a result of the establishment of these rates.” He added that the small telecoms that lowered their prices in anticipation knew the rates weren’t final, and that some of the companies have also raised them back up in the meantime.
“It is up to them to choose their pricing,” he said. “Presumably they all make contingency plans.”
That “disaggregated” regime the CRTC wants to move towards has been plagued by problems and seen no take-up from companies since it was introduced in 2015. Small ISPs said the regime had turned out to be “unworkable,” and the CRTC is currently in the process of reviewing it.
Scott said he couldn’t state when the disaggregated regime would be put in place, but indicated that the delay could be because smaller providers “prefer to have aggregated forever.”
Laura Tribe, executive director of advocacy group OpenMedia, said in an interview the decision’s focus on the disaggregated model is “really concerning,” given that the CTRC first started consulting on it in 2013, issued a decision in 2015 and “six years later we’ve yet to see a single wholesale connection over disaggregated wholesale rates.”
While Thursday’s decision is the final step in the appeal processes launched by the big telecoms in 2019, it doesn’t necessarily mean the fight over wholesale rates is over. Parties who are unhappy with the CRTC’s ruling have the option of filing another appeal in Federal Court, or turning to the federal government again.
How the Liberal government might respond is unclear, given that when cabinet declined to overturn the 2019 decision, then-innovation minister Navdeep Bains issued a statement sympathetic to the big telecoms’ arguments about investment that said the rates were too low.
But the Liberals also campaigned on internet service affordability in the 2019 election, Tribe pointed out. She said the decision “actively undermines” that.
A statement from current Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne said he “will be reviewing the decision and its implications to ensure they align with our policy priorities of affordability, competition and innovation in the sector.”
© Provided by National Post
The CRTC decision caps off a two-year battle between large telecom companies and smaller internet service providers whose businesses rely on wholesale access to the networks of the big telecoms.
A decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission not to lower wholesale internet rates despite saying it would two years ago is a loss for Canadian consumers who will see their internet service prices go up, critics say.
On Thursday, the regulator said it would not implement the lower wholesale internet rates – the rates smaller internet service providers (ISPs) pay big telecoms for network access — after all.
Matt Stein, chair of the Competitive Network Operators of Canada, which represents smaller providers, said the decision came as a shock.
“It is boggling to think the CRTC chose to reverse the decision that they spent three years making,” he said.
Thursday’s reversal will lead “the rates that Canadians pay for internet to go up, in part because competitors in most cases have already forward priced in belief that there will be a substantial decline in rates,” Stein said. That will now have to change, and those increases will lead to rises in internet prices across the board, he predicted.
The decision caps off a two-year battle between large telecom companies and smaller internet service providers whose businesses rely on wholesale access to the networks of the big telecoms. It means the smaller, wholesale-based companies like TekSavvy and Distributel will have to keep paying essentially the same higher rates that preceded the 2019 decision to lower them.
National wireless providers must sell wholesale access to regional carriers for seven years, CRTC rules
A decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission not to lower wholesale internet rates despite saying it would two years ago is a loss for Canadian consumers who will see their internet service prices go up, critics say.
On Thursday, the regulator said it would not implement the lower wholesale internet rates – the rates smaller internet service providers (ISPs) pay big telecoms for network access — after all.
Matt Stein, chair of the Competitive Network Operators of Canada, which represents smaller providers, said the decision came as a shock.
“It is boggling to think the CRTC chose to reverse the decision that they spent three years making,” he said.
Thursday’s reversal will lead “the rates that Canadians pay for internet to go up, in part because competitors in most cases have already forward priced in belief that there will be a substantial decline in rates,” Stein said. That will now have to change, and those increases will lead to rises in internet prices across the board, he predicted.
The decision caps off a two-year battle between large telecom companies and smaller internet service providers whose businesses rely on wholesale access to the networks of the big telecoms. It means the smaller, wholesale-based companies like TekSavvy and Distributel will have to keep paying essentially the same higher rates that preceded the 2019 decision to lower them.
National wireless providers must sell wholesale access to regional carriers for seven years, CRTC rules
Telcos threaten to pull rural internet investment after CRTC lowers wholesale rates
It’s a big win for large telecoms like Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Quebecor and Cogeco who fought the new rates through every avenue available to them, arguing lower rates would harm network investment, including in rural areas, where telecom infrastructure is often dated and inadequate. They filed court appeals, petitioned federal cabinet to overturn the decision and asked the CRTC itself to review the decision.
Last year, the Federal Court said the CRTC’s rates stand and though the big telecoms appealed at the Supreme Court, that court declined to hear the case. The Liberal government also declined to overturn or alter the decision.
That left the ball in the CRTC’s court, leaving it up to the regulator to decide whether to uphold the lower rates it established in August 2019. On Thursday, it said it would not, determining there was “substantial doubt as to the correctness” of the 2019 rates.
It said starting another process to review them would take too long, cause too much market uncertainty, and take too many resources away from establishing a new, “disaggregated” wholesale regime.
CRTC chairman Ian Scott said in an interview that the decision won’t lead prices to go up because the lower rates were never implemented, calling that a “false narrative.”
“Why would it go up?” he said. “I’m not buying this – not as a result of the establishment of these rates.” He added that the small telecoms that lowered their prices in anticipation knew the rates weren’t final, and that some of the companies have also raised them back up in the meantime.
“It is up to them to choose their pricing,” he said. “Presumably they all make contingency plans.”
That “disaggregated” regime the CRTC wants to move towards has been plagued by problems and seen no take-up from companies since it was introduced in 2015. Small ISPs said the regime had turned out to be “unworkable,” and the CRTC is currently in the process of reviewing it.
Scott said he couldn’t state when the disaggregated regime would be put in place, but indicated that the delay could be because smaller providers “prefer to have aggregated forever.”
Laura Tribe, executive director of advocacy group OpenMedia, said in an interview the decision’s focus on the disaggregated model is “really concerning,” given that the CTRC first started consulting on it in 2013, issued a decision in 2015 and “six years later we’ve yet to see a single wholesale connection over disaggregated wholesale rates.”
While Thursday’s decision is the final step in the appeal processes launched by the big telecoms in 2019, it doesn’t necessarily mean the fight over wholesale rates is over. Parties who are unhappy with the CRTC’s ruling have the option of filing another appeal in Federal Court, or turning to the federal government again.
How the Liberal government might respond is unclear, given that when cabinet declined to overturn the 2019 decision, then-innovation minister Navdeep Bains issued a statement sympathetic to the big telecoms’ arguments about investment that said the rates were too low.
But the Liberals also campaigned on internet service affordability in the 2019 election, Tribe pointed out. She said the decision “actively undermines” that.
A statement from current Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne said he “will be reviewing the decision and its implications to ensure they align with our policy priorities of affordability, competition and innovation in the sector.”
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