שנה טובה | Shana tova.

This year, Rosh Hashana, the two-day holiday marking the Jewish New Year 5787, begins Friday evening, September 11 – unfortunately coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the world’s most deadly terrorist attacks.

Over the past few years, I have talked about how Rosh Hashana (literally “head of the year”) is very different from celebrations marking the arrival of January 1 each year. Rosh Hashana is a time of reflection and introspection. We review the previous year, and look ahead to the next.

Much of what I have to say this year is unchanged from last year and I say that with regret – the situation has gotten worse, not better.

The past three years have been unlike any other in my lifetime. For Jews around the world, these are extremely troubling times. Jews in Europe and North America are actively questioning whether it is safe to wear signs that visibly identify ourselves. Canadian Jews have experienced higher levels of antisemitism than just about everywhere on the planet, and it just doesn’t seem to be getting better.

As I noted a few years ago, the first month in the Jewish calendar (Tishrei) is filled with holidays – indeed, they are religious Holy Days. Combined with Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, there are 7 holy days this month: 2 days for Rosh Hashana, 1 days for Yom Kippur and the first 2 and last 2 days of Sukkot. This year, all of those days other than Yom Kippur fall on weekends, meaning that observant Jews will not need to take a lot of time away from the office, other than possibly leaving early on the Friday afternoons. Yom Kippur begins on Sunday evening, September 20 and continues through Monday September 21. Please try to help your employees, your colleagues, your students, by making reasonable accommodations for observance of the holidays. My office will be closed for those holidays.

In 2023, the last day of Sukkot fell on October 7, a day that forever changed the world for Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora. A few weeks in advance of that day, in my 2023 post, I asked if the world was more tolerant than I experienced in my early working years. That was before we witnessed the waves of antisemitism that have continued to rise over the past three years.

Two and a half years ago, I wrote “Defending my identity”, trying to capture some of my feelings on what was then the 5 month anniversary of the horrific attacks by Hamas. October 7, 2023 marked the start of a global campaign attacking Jewish indigeneity in Israel, a global campaign that began even before Israel’s military entered Gaza to respond to the attacks. I encourage you to re-read that piece to get an appreciation of what Jews like me are feeling as we approach the third anniversary of October 7. Warren Kinsella’s book, The Hidden Hand, is “An explosive inside look into the highly-planned and well-funded global propaganda campaign to delegitimize Israel and sow the seeds of antisemitism in the aftermath of October 7th.”

Unchanged from that time is my disappointment in the failures of those in positions of authority to take meaningful steps to address issues within their purview. As I have written before:

I am tired of politicians thinking that the way to respond to antisemitic acts is to write on Twitter that “This is not who we are” or claim that “Hatred and violence against Jewish communities have no place in Canada.”. Condemnations on social media are no match for intimidation by throngs calling “Death to the Jews”. Tweets are ineffective against fire bombings and shots fired at synagogues and Jewish community centres.

Three months ago, Prime Minister Mark Carney addressed a Toronto synagogue saying, “A country in which Jewish day schools require guards, in which synagogues require barriers, in which Jewish children attend school behind perimeters of protection – is a country that is protecting its citizens but is failing its civic compact.”

The Prime Minister said,”The crisis of antisemitism in Canada today is specific, severe, and demands a targeted response.” And what was that response? He struck a committee, a new Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion to be chaired by Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, Marc Miller. Although Minister Miller’s department, also know as Canadian Heritage, is certainly the right home for such a committee, Heritage has the distinction of having the highest percentage of Jewish employees experiencing discrimination (34%). Three months later, the Ministerial Advisory Council has not indicated that any actions have been taken to date.

Schools are opening with no actions taken. Canadian Jews attending services for the Holy Days will pass through security check points, under police guard with synagogues absorbing much of the cost of protecting their members. What was accomplished over the summer?

Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) has provided a shameful case study in how leaders have failed to lead. A report on two campus antisemitic events was commissioned by TMU. The report was released a few weeks ago detailing 8 actionable items recommended by the author, retired Justice Mary Lou Benotto. Rather than acting on the report and implementing any of the actions in time for the start of school, TMU followed the Prime Minister’s approach and appointed a committee to develop “an implementation blueprint”, kicking the can down the road for 7 months. As the Globe and Mail wrote in a banner editorial entitled “The betrayal of Jewish students needs to end”, “No blueprint is needed, just a spine.”

Which brings me to how you fit in to help in defending my identity.

In resigning from British Columbia’s provincial NDP caucus, Selina Robinson wrote, “I don’t need your hugs and your emojis. What my community needs however, is for you to stand up to antisemitism.”

Call out hate when you see it online. Tell your elected officials that antisemitism isn’t just a problem for Canada’s Jews. Demand action. Grow a spine.

And as I have indicated, every once in a while, I’d be OK with a hug.

I’ve observed that the journey we travel over the course of a year often takes some detours, presenting challenges along the way. “It is rarely a smooth, incident-free trip. Sometimes, it feels more like we are riding a roller coaster. Still, we press ahead, continuing to approach each day with a positive outlook, moving forward one step at a time.”

May the year ahead be marked by good health, by personal and professional growth, and may it be a year of peace for all. Shana tova.

Earlier this week, I wrote a piece talking about the urgency of significant changes to government policy needed to drive an increase in telecom capital investment in Canada.

I quoted Monday’s report from National Bank Financial that warned “regulators have been over-zealous in their adversarial approach to pressuring carriers on pricing strategies, wholesale access, and administration fees. This has triggered a reaction by carriers which have accelerated headcount reduction, rethought capital allocation priorities, and reduced spending on their networks.”

The CRTC has updated its Communications Market Report data to include information collected through the first quarter of 2026, confirming what carriers have warned as I discussed in “CRTC’s regulatory hypothesis is failing” (May 12, 2026) and “Promoting investment” (April 14, 2026).

Wireless Capex in 1Q26 was $510.85M, down more than 35% from the $800.80M two years earlier and less than half the Capex level in 2Q24 ($1,114.60M). Wireline Capex was $1.78B in 1Q26, down 25% from 1Q24. For months, we have heard calls for regulatory reform in order to encourage private sector capital investment. Four months ago, a Globe and Mail editorial called for “Ottawa to remove the obstacles that currently deter companies from investing in this country.”

Six months ago, CRTC Telecom Vice-chair Adam Scott spoke at an event hosted by Scotiabank. CRTC data was already showing a decline in telecom capital investment as I wrote at that time. Vice-chair Scott said “A good regulator, like a good builder, will adjust to conditions on the ground. We will need to, and are in fact required to, actively gather the evidence that will inform us as we go.”

The conditions on the ground are showing that the regulatory framework is failing to support investment. Canadians are looking for Ottawa to incentivize investment across all sectors in the economy. Telecom capital investment is foundational for AI and the digital evolution of every other business.

As National Bank Financial warned earlier this week, “Without a course correction from Ottawa and its regulators, declining network investment precludes a strong foundation on which to build.”

A couple recent reports highlight policy considerations to drive investment in connectivity. The Canadian Telecommunications Association has a piece, “Canada’s Connectivity Future Depends on Sustaining Investment”, and CTIA released “Wireless & AI: Driving the Future of Innovation”.

For years, I have repeated the line “Canada’s future depends on connectivity.” There may be an increasing demand for investment in connectivity, but how does it get funded? What policies can create the right environment for such investments?

Over the past four decades, the wireless industry has evolved from voice to text to mobile broadband to 5G-enabled infrastructure. But the next decade will be defined an even more consequential evolution as it fuses (and infuses) wireless networks with artificial intelligence. CTIA’s report argues that AI and wireless are more than parallel innovation tracks; they are becoming a single, interdependent system, and policy must treat them as such.

Meanwhile, Canadian data shows that even as networks become more essential, the investment environment underpinning network investment is becoming more fragile.

Taken together, the reports demonstrate that North America’s digital future hinges on more than innovation. What policy frameworks will enable and encourage long-term capital investment?

CTIA warns that AI traffic will strain existing wireless networks before the decade ends, potentially creating a drag on the economy if spectrum and infrastructure gaps aren’t addressed.

The bottleneck emerges from AI’s migration out of the data centre and into devices, sensors, vehicles, and industrial systems. What began in research labs moved into hyperscale data centres. The next wave will be found in autonomous agents embedded in smartphones, robots, drones, and industrial equipment – systems relying on wireless networks for real-time sensing, coordination, and decision-making. CTIA projects AI-related wireless traffic to grow three times faster than overall wireless traffic, reaching nearly one-third of all broadband usage by 2034.

Not only is this more traffic, it’s structurally different traffic. For the past few decades, data networks were built for downstream consumption. AI flips that model. Devices will upload massive volumes of sensor data, telemetry, and video to the network, edge, or cloud. Machine-to-machine communication is expected to increase eightfold. Traffic may be bursty, event-driven, and unpredictable. Wireless networks will need to accommodate two-way, low-latency, high-reliability traffic, evolving from a consumer broadband platform into an intelligent, bidirectional, AI-native infrastructure.

The evolution of wireless networks – 6G – will be AI-native. 6G is more than a faster version of 5G. It will be built with intelligence embedded directly into the radio layer. Networks will dynamically allocate spectrum, anticipate congestion, authenticate devices autonomously, and coordinate edge-compute workloads at machine speed. Human operators cannot manage this complexity manually. A recent article in RCRTech looked at how TELUS is using its brownfield Open RAN transformation as a foundation for such a more intelligent network.

Every wireless generation has needed more spectrum, but the AI-era demands unprecedented amounts of wide, contiguous mid-band spectrum.

Beyond spectrum, an AI–wireless future requires towers, small cells, fiber backhaul, data centers, and edge compute — billions of dollars in new investment. Wireless carriers and AI companies are already among the largest investors in infrastructure, but government policy is failing to keep pace.

As the Canadian Telecommunications Association’s PwC report highlights, Canada’s wireless price index fell more than 45% between 2020 and 2026, even as prices for shelter, food, and transportation rose sharply. Canadians are enjoying the most affordable connectivity in the country’s history, while consuming more data and relying on digital services more than ever before.

Affordability has come with a cost. TD Cowen and RBC Capital Markets have both warned that Canada may have reached a point where regulatory pressure on prices is now disincentivizing investment. Public market investors are becoming less interested in Canadian telecom stocks, raising the cost of capital and increasing hurdle rates for infrastructure deployment. RBC goes further, arguing that telecom policy can no longer be viewed solely through a consumer pricing lens — not when connectivity has become one of the most important value propositions across all household spending categories.

Yesterday, National Bank issued a report entitled “Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? Without Ottawa Resetting Regulatory Policy, Is Canada Investment A House of Cards.” Indeed, who will guard the guards themselves.

Regulation by ideology is inherently sub-optimal given a myopic perspective that is out of balance for all stakeholders and for the net good of Canada. Government policy toward telecom, which once offered a dual objective of promoting facilities-based investment and competition, has of late skewed disproportionately to the latter. Beyond Ottawa advocating for this swing of the pendulum, regulators have been over-zealous in their adversarial approach to pressuring carriers on pricing strategies, wholesale access, and administration fees. This has triggered a reaction by carriers which have accelerated headcount reduction, rethought capital allocation priorities, and reduced spending on their networks. This report isn’t about outlining Canada’s next steps. It’s about missed opportunities in broadcasting regulation, unnecessary actions by the Competition Bureau, and over-reach in telecom regulation. Without a course correction from Ottawa and its regulators, declining network investment precludes a strong foundation on which to build.

Canadian policymakers need to recalibrate the balance between quality, coverage and price: affordability gains are meaningful, but long-term consumer outcomes depend on sustained investment, not just lower prices. As National Bank writes, “Pressuring telecom pricing down further won’t turn Canada’s networks into diamonds. To the contrary, the foundational layer of Canada’s economy is naturally destined to suffer in the absence of more balanced regulation.”

The next decade of digital innovation — AI, automation, robotics, smart cities, smart farming, advanced manufacturing — will be constrained or accelerated by the health of wireless investment. Spectrum availability, regulatory certainty, infrastructure deployment, and capital investment are issues impacting national competitiveness.

Sustaining world-class connectivity requires sustaining an investment environment for the network infrastructure that makes it possible.

The policy decisions made in the next few years will determine whether investment in Canada’s telecommunications networks accelerates AI innovation — or becomes the bottleneck that holds it back.

A study led by Professor Rob McMahon at the University of Alberta examines changes in life in small communities caused by the arrival of affordable broadband in the remote north. Until relatively recently, residents of fly‑in communities across northern Canada have lived with slow, unreliable, and expensive satellite connectivity, if they were connected at all. The arrival of fast, low‑latency, unlimited Starlink Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite service represented a structural shift in northern telecommunications — one that meaningfully narrows first‑level digital divides. But as the study shows, solving access problems does not automatically resolve deeper digital inequities. The study reveals that improved connectivity may introduce new tensions that policymakers have barely begun to address.

The research, conducted over two years with a Dene community dependent on satellite communications connectivity, documents dramatic improvements in connectivity. With the arrival of Starlink, device ownership increased significantly, Internet speeds and reliability improved, and restrictive data caps effectively disappeared. By 2024/2025, nearly three‑quarters of surveyed households subscribed to home Internet, compared to just 30% in the survey a year earlier. In measurable terms, the first‑level digital divide (access, affordability, reliability) was substantially reduced.

The research also reveals a divergence between anticipated and actual uses of improved connectivity. Before Starlink arrived, residents said they expected to use the improved Internet access for education, healthcare, and work. A year later, usage patterns shifted toward entertainment, social media, and political engagement. Online education and telehealth use actually declined. The study authors suggested concerns about losing access to in-person healthcare and education services may explain this finding.

Another piece of the study showed that residents’ economic expectations recalibrated. Interest in social media influencer entrepreneurship dropped sharply between the initial survey in 2023 and the follow-up in 2024/2025. More traditional online activities grew, such as banking, buying and selling goods, and promoting tourism. The authors describe this as “a divergence between how respondents anticipated to use newly available online applications (such as for education, healthcare and work) and how they actually use them following 1 year of improved Internet access.”

Most striking is the rise in concerns among users about online harms. Across nearly every category – cyberbullying, scams, misinformation, gambling, explicit content, youth mental health — concern increased significantly. Interview participants described Starlink dishes being brought to cultural gatherings and youth camps, raising fears that online activities may displace land‑based practices. Parents expressed anxiety about screen time, safety, and cultural erosion. The study’s findings echo global research on “adverse digital incorporation,” where improved access can expose marginalized communities to new forms of risk, exploitation, or dependency.

These insights arrive at a critical moment for Canadian telecom policy. The CRTC is actively considering consumer subsidies for northern Internet services, and governments continue to frame LEO deployment as a connectivity solution for rural and remote regions.

The study underscores that infrastructure alone is insufficient. For years, I have been writing about the need to invest in digital literacy. Without community‑led digital literacy programs, culturally relevant content, cyber‑safety training, and governance models that reflect local community priorities, improved access may not provide relief to familiar patterns of inequity. It is reminiscent of concepts I discussed in January in my post about “Digital wellbeing”.

How do we create more sophisticated content consumers?

The lesson for policymakers is clear: bridging the digital divide is no longer just about connecting households. It is about ensuring that connectivity strengthens — not undermines — community well‑being, cultural continuity, and digital sovereignty.

LEO systems like Starlink have solved the technical problem associated with affordable access. Now we need to begin work on tackling the social problems.

Following up on a piece from 6 months ago, I thought it was timely to jot down some thoughts about sovereign AI factories.

In the digital age, compute is national power. As artificial intelligence shifts from software experiment to core utility, a new model is emerging: the sovereign AI factory. These domestically governed, GPU-rich facilities are vertically integrated platforms designed to train, produce, and deploy AI models at national scale—giving nations direct control over the economic, cultural, and security implications of AI.

Calling these facilities “factories” is deliberate. Unlike traditional passive data centres, they operate as active production lines for foundation models, autonomous agents, synthetic datasets, and safety frameworks—closer in strategic function to semiconductor fabs. Globally, governments are recognizing AI compute as a sovereign capability, aligning digital policy and alliances around domestic compute power and standards.

For Canada, the case is particularly strong for sovereign AI factories. While Canada possesses world-leading AI research talent, domestic compute capacity remains severely bottlenecked. This forces Canadian innovators and enterprises to rely on foreign hyperscalers, leaving pricing, availability, and regulatory oversight in foreign hands. Furthermore, sensitive datasets (such as healthcare, justice, and Indigenous knowledge, etc.) are often processed under external legal jurisdictions. A sovereign AI factory reverses this dependency, transforming Canada into a primary producer of intelligence rather than merely a consumer.

Beyond sovereign control, domestic compute accelerates productivity across manufacturing, resource management, and technology. It ensures critical data remains protected under Canadian legal safeguards while enabling secure, trusted deployments for the public sector. Crucially, it also protects cultural nuance: models trained predominantly on global English data risk erasing local context. Sovereign factories allow Canada to build systems tailored to French-language requirements, Indigenous language preservation, and distinct domestic values. Canadian identity by design, eh?

Canadian telecom operators are uniquely positioned to anchor this transition. Telecom carriers already manage the ultra-low-latency, highly secure digital backbone required to interconnect distributed compute nodes. As AI transforms network operations, spectrum management, and customer service, operators need trusted domestic environments to train and execute models safely.

Telecom policy has long promoted investment for Canadians to connect and communicate securely. It makes sense for telecom operators to extend that role to include sovereign compute capacity, as a logical next step to secure Canada’s national digital strategy.