Back in 2010 when Bell first announced its plans to support mental health initiatives, I wrote a post “Talking about un-mentionables.” I mentioned back then that “I grew up on the grounds of a children’s psychiatric research institute in London, Ontario, the son of a child psychiatrist.”

As a result, Bell’s commitment to support mental health is especially meaningful to me. I support Bell Let’s Talk Day without reservation and I encourage you to do so as well.

Through the years, cynics have asked why Bell’s brand figures so prominently in the materials. Why isn’t it just called “Let’s Talk” instead of “Bell Let’s Talk”?

One of the key elements of the initiative has been to reduce and ultimately remove the stigma commonly associated with mental health issues. “Help end the stigma around mental illness” is the first link on the Bell Let’s Talk web-page. Yesterday, Bell Let’s Talk and Queen’s University announced a $1 million gift, renewing the Bell Canada Mental Health and Anti-Stigma Research Chair.

Bell is one of the most widely held stocks, among Canada’s largest private sector employers and one the country’s biggest investors in infrastructure. Its media properties carry Canada’s most popular shows. What better way can there be to remove the stigma of talking about mental health than to attach the endorsement of one of Canada’s most valuable brands?

One in five Canadians will suffer from mental illness at some point in their lifetime; the stigma associated with it is cited as the number one reason that two thirds of them won’t seek help.

The Bell Let’s Talk website has ways you can help:

• Language matters: The words you use can make all the difference. Words can help but they can also hurt.
• Educate yourself: Stigma has been around for a long time and knowing the facts and myths about mental illness can be a great way to help end stigma.
• Be kind: Simple kindness can make a world of difference. Whether it be a smile, being a good listener or an invitation for coffee and a chat, these simple acts of kindness can help open up the conversation and let someone know you are there for them.
• Listen and ask: Mental illness is a very common form of human pain and suffering. Being a good listener and asking how you can help, sometimes just even being there for people you care about, can be the first step in recovery.
• Talk about it: Break the silence. Mental illness touches us all in some way directly or through a friend, family member or colleague. Stories of people who have experienced mental health issues and who are doing well can really challenge stereotypes. Most people with mental health issues can and do recover, just by talking about it.

And today, take an extra step to raise awareness of mental health. Tweet a message with #BellLetsTalk .

Add the power of your personal brand, endorsing this important cause.

Registrations are now open for The 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 5-7 in Toronto.

Join your colleagues in listening to and participating in executive presentations from those who have the greatest influence on the direction of Canadian telecommunications, broadcasting and information technology. Hear from global leaders and local trend-setters. Meet with your suppliers, customers and partners. Challenge your competition.

For three full days, The 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit will again deliver thought-provoking insights from the prime movers of the industry. The Canadian Telecom Summit gives you the chance to hear from and talk with them in both a structured atmosphere of frank discussion and high-octane idea exchange and schmooze in a more relaxed social setting of genial conversation over espresso or cocktails.

The Canadian Telecom Summit reviews where we have been as an industry, provides an understanding of the dynamics that propel it and forecasts future trends and expected developments. Attendance is a must for telecom, broadcast and IT industry professionals – corporate users, carriers, content providers and manufacturers – financial analysts, consultants and investors.

Attracting the senior-most professionals from around the globe, The Canadian Telecom Summit is the forum for the broad cross-section of stakeholders to meet, exchange views, share ideas, challenge assumptions and plan for the future. Last year, delegates heard from Ajit Pai, newly appointed to lead the FCC and Conservative Party leadership candidate (and former Industry Minister) Maxime Bernier, among many other leaders.

Be sure to take advantage of early bird pricing. Register by February 28.

Six years ago today, my daughter moved overseas. She got married, has kids… and Air Canada is doing quite well from our frequent travel back and forth.

In between visits, we talk by phone, frequently a few times a day, using video apps or just ordinary phone calls. Sometimes it’s just for me to keep one of the kids company while he eats a snack.

Long distance wasn’t always like that.

I remember Sunday afternoon phone calls to my grandfather in New Brunswick. We would gather around the kitchen phone, handing it off from one sibling to the next to say a quick hello. It would take about an hour’s work to earn enough to pay for a 10-minute call. Statistics Canada shows the average telephone had less than one long distance call per week. When I went to school, we would wait until we saw the start of the news at night before making a call home; the cheap rates started at 11 pm.

Overseas calls were prohibitively expensive in those days, in the order of an hour’s pay per minute. Nobody that I knew would pick up the phone to make an overseas call just to say “hi”.

And now, it isn’t anything special when one of my kids is driving 100 kmph on a highway in Alberta, talking to his sister on a train 9 time zones away. My long distance bill last month was 44 cents.

When I moved back to Canada in 1989, it was to help drive those changes, introducing network-based competition to the telecommunications industry. This coming June, we will mark the 25th anniversary of the CRTC’s approval of our application, launching what it called “Consumer Friendly Competition.” [The cover for the CRTC’s media package featured stylish, designed in Canada, Northern Telecom Contempra phones.]

It marked the end of an era of fathers shouting to their kids to hurry up and get the phone: “it’s long distance!”

I smile when I think of the part I had to play in creating the framework that enables the innovations we have seen over the past quarter century. I continue to be excited by the opportunities over the next 25 years. What will be my kids’ nostalgic anecdotes that cause their kids to roll their eyes, thinking “here we go again with that old story”?

The 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit [June 5-7, Toronto] will look at “Competition, Investment and Innovation: Driving Canada’s Digital Future.” For the past two months, each day I have been tweeting an innovation that came from the telecom sector [collected here].

What innovations will drive Canada’s digital future? I hope you’ll be part of the discussions at The 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit.

Early Bird savings for conference registrations are in effect until the end of February. Register now and save.

Through the weekend, a couple articles appeared about innovation:

• Jennifer Wells wrote Innovation key to fixing Trudeau’s ‘resourcefulness’ problem in the Toronto Star; and,
• Dan Debow, John Kelleher, Iain Klugman and Kevin Lynch authored How to make the Toronto-Waterloo corridor a technology supercluster in the Globe and Mail

According to the Global Competitiveness Index from the World Economic Forum (WEF) [pdf, 12.2MB], Canada’s ranking dropped in the past year from 13th to 15th place. According to the WEF, Canada’s level of innovation and business sophistication have deteriorated and could be slowing down productivity improvements. This has occurred despite the government having placed special emphasis on Innovation by transforming the Industry portfolio to Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED).

While the Star article correctly observes that Canada’s overall 15th place ranking is being dragged down by a 24th place standing under the Innovation and Business Sophistication Pillar, Canada’s worst score is actually a 41st place finish under the banner of “Macroeconomic environment.”

How are these rankings developed? For macroeconomic environment, the WEF examines:

• General government budget balance as a percentage of GDP
• Gross national savings as a percentage of GDP
• Annual percent change in consumer price index (year average)
• Gross general government debt as a percentage of GDP
• Institutional Investor’s Country Credit Ratings

For the Business Sophistication Pillar, WEF examines its executive survey, asking about: Local supplier quantity; Local supplier quality; State of cluster development; Nature of competitive advantage; Value chain breadth; Control of international distribution; Production process sophistication; Extent of marketing; and, Willingness to delegate authority.

For the Innovation Pillar, WEF again uses its Executive Opinion Survey, asking about: Capacity for innovation; Quality of scientific research institutions; Company spending on R&D; University-industry collaboration in R&D; Government procurement of advanced technology products; Availability of scientists and engineers; and, Patent Cooperation Treaty patent applications.

The connection between the two newspaper articles comes from a quote in the Star, taken from the WEF report: “To be truly innovative, a country should not only file patents and support research and development in science and technology, but should also provide a networked, connected environment that promotes creativity and entrepreneurship, fosters collaboration, and rewards individuals who are open-minded and embrace new ways to perform tasks.”

How do we encourage the development of “a networked, connected environment that promotes creativity and entrepreneurship”? The Globe and Mail article builds on the December NEXT Canada release of a McKinsey report, Tech North: Building Canada’s first technology supercluster [pdf, 2.2MB]. The report sets out a “proposed blueprint with catalyzing ideas to help kickstart a Toronto-Waterloo technology supercluster.”

We believe initiatives such as global talent visas, innovation procurement by governments, student and startup passports to incubators and university faculties within the corridor, risk-capital matching funds, new transport linkages and others can kick-start a virtuous dynamic circle within the corridor.

The Tech North report targets a number of the points in the Innovation Pillar of the WEF Competitiveness Index. Keep in mind that there are a number of competing regions across the country that are each seeking to reinforce their standing as an innovation corridor. The high cost of electricity and housing aren’t helping the case for the Toronto-Waterloo corridor.

Last week, ISED Minister Bains made a number of funding announcements to colleges and universities [Georgian, Waterloo, UQAT, Laurier, Windsor], and to Canadian operations of Japanese and Mexican automotive manufacturers [Honda, Nemak].

The press releases for the university announcements each spoke of the “historic investment by the Government of Canada is a down payment on the government’s vision to position Canada as a global centre for innovation.” The automotive funding was through the government’s Automotive Supplier Innovation Program and the Automotive Innovation Fund.

Still, I suspect that we need to ensure that the overall environment supports entrepreneurs to emerge and execute their plans in Canada, rather than providing targeted subsidies to a handful of companies.

In order to build a more globally competitive economy, Canada will need to consider more than the Innovation pillar in the WEF Index. We need to improve the macro-economic conditions and address the shortcomings in what the WEF calls business sophistication. That could mean taking steps to get the government’s house in order for balancing budgets and controlling government debt. Tax policy needs to encourage entrepreneurs to succeed in Canada, rather than relocate to other jurisdictions. The innovation agenda needs to be a consideration across all departments, not just ISED.

Laying the groundwork to create the right conditions that enable winners to succeed may not make for a photo opportunity, but that is the kind of truly historic investment needed to position Canada as a global centre for innovation.

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[Update: January 18, 2017] Bloomberg has released its 2017 ranking of the World’s Most Innovative Economies. In that article, Canada fell from 19th to 20th place.

The 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit [June 5-7, Toronto] will look at “Competition, Investment and Innovation: Driving Canada’s Digital Future.” Early Bird savings for conference registrations are in effect until the end of February.

I hate getting robo-calls as much as anyone. With all the phone lines I have, I can sometimes get bombarded by calls from “credit card services”, duct cleaners, Mexican resorts or agencies purporting to repair the viruses they detected on my computer. I have filed more than my fair share of Do Not Call List complaints (perhaps explaining why Ontario’s 61,000 filings represent nearly half of the DNCL complaint reports to the CRTC).

Last year, the CRTC spent more than $3M on the Do Not Call List, over and above the $2M spent on the database itself. The complaints continue to pour in (more than 130,000 last year), but enforcement resulted in just 5 warning letters, 8 citations and 20 notices of violations.

The current regulatory approach appears to be unable to make a dent. The CRTC and other jurisdictions have been considering technology-based solutions. Earlier this week, the Commission issued a public notice to “examine the development and implementation of technical solutions to (i) prevent spoofing of caller identification information, and (ii) trace and identify the source of a call.”

Some may ask why caller ID spoofing is even allowed in the standards. There are good reasons for the capability, such as enabling people to work from home but display their office number. Indeed, the CRTC’s unsolicited call rules leverage the ability for telemarketers to provide call number display of an alternate number where they can be reached.

As indicated in the Notice of Consultation, in the wake of a report from what the CRTC calls a “US telecommunications industry Robocall Strike Force” (the group actually included non-US service providers British Telecom and Rogers as well as global suppliers such as Blackberry, Nokia and Ericsson) some proposals have been put forward to authenticate the telephone number being presented as the caller ID, but these have not yet been adopted:

5. The telecommunications industries in the United States (U.S.) and the United Kingdom (U.K.) have developed approaches and mechanisms to improve the accuracy and authenticity of caller ID information that could be introduced by TSPs in Canada and elsewhere to reduce caller ID spoofing.

…

10. In this proceeding, the Commission is seeking information and comments on
    • the implementation, use, and effectiveness of technical solutions to authenticate caller ID information for wireline, wireless, and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networks in Canada;
    • the implementation, use, and effectiveness of mechanisms to trace and identify the source of a call;
    • any barriers to implementation that would need to be addressed to facilitate these solutions and mechanisms; and
    • what regulatory measures, if any, should be established to ensure that Canadians have confidence in the caller ID information displayed.

That last bullet is key: “what regulatory measures, if any, should be established.”

Each time a regulatory measure is introduced, there are limits imposed on the degrees of freedom for innovation. It is not clear that the proposed caller ID authentication schemes would have permitted many of the innovative services that led to the precipitous collapse of prices for long distance calls globally. Early VoIP companies relied upon permission-less innovation and interconnection that circumvented traditional settlement schemes.

Regulators around the world examining proposals might ask if companies like Delta Three, Vonage or Skype could have or would have passed the authentication processes. Will regulatory measures inhibit innovation?

As frequent readers know, I think Canadians should get more comfortable with just hanging up.