From the outset, I have had concerns about plans to create new legislation addressing online hate.

Some may find my position surprising, given my involvement in the first CRTC application to request blocking of a website, back in August 2006.

That was a very different case from trying to establish a regime that attempts to define what constitutes online harms and enforces limits on our freedom of expression.

As I wrote last year:

we need to be able to distinguish between language that is insightful and words that are inciteful. Which words lead to constructive engagement and which words are those that are destructive? What facts are being omitted because they inconveniently don’t fit the narrative being set forward? Which authors are consistently reliable and which ones seem to prefer sensationalism over substance?

In 1964, ruling on a case considering “hard-core pornography”, US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote of the term that “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it”.

How will we define what material online should be considered illegal, versus that material which is merely offensive? Will we know it when we see it?

This could be the challenge for the Heritage Minister in introducing online harms legislation. Indeed, the expert advisory group appointed by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez earlier this year concluded its work 2 months ago, recognizing “The issue of harmful content found online is both a critical and complex issue that calls for an approach that balances freedom of expression, protection of privacy, and online safety.”

That said, let’s examine a very current situation: a Montreal-based consultant who refers to Jews as “loud mouthed bags of human feces”, and threatens “Jews with a bullet to the head” (as highlighted in a Twitter stream last Friday by journalist Jonathan Kay).

Hateful or merely offensive? To me, it’s pretty clear that this kind of commentary crossed the line.

But we don’t actually need to consider whether or not Laith Marouf’s comments would survive Canadian Heritage’s prospective Online Harms legislation. Legal or not, it seems pretty inexcusable that this same department of the Canadian government has been providing funding to him.

And to add insult, the funding falls under the Department’s “Anti-Racism Action Program”. Was there any due diligence performed by those responsible for vetting applications? Did anyone use Google before handing out cash to this guy?

I highlighted this problem back in April shortly after the news was released, quoting Canada’s Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion. Before providing a Ministerial statement for the CMAC press release, did anyone check references for the other guy being quoted?

Four months after I started asking questions, I have still seen no action by the government to distance itself from this online purveyor of antisemitism.

The Minister has said Canada is seeking to create “a legislative and regulatory framework to … help create a safe space online that protects all Canadians”.

How can we expect the Minister of Canadian Heritage to establish legislation creating safe spaces online, when the same department is funding those creating the kinds of material against which the legislation is intended to target.

There can be no credibility for online harms legislation being proposed by a department that funds those who generate online hate.

There was only one year that we held The Canadian Telecom Summit in a government owned facility.

Back in 2004, the event had grown big enough to warrant moving to one of Toronto’s larger exhibition facilities. The CEOs of Bell, Rogers, TELUS, Sprint Canada, and Allstream were all keynote speakers, as well as the CEOs and COOs from Cisco, Nortel, Ericsson, Siemens and Alcatel. Attendance was projected to be triple what it had been the previous year.

We booked the relatively new South Building of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC), right downtown. The event was only held there once, and the reason we didn’t go back can be summarized by telling you a little story about the coffee.

A few weeks before the Summit was taking place, I attended another technology trade show at the same venue. I poured myself a cup of coffee from one of the big jugs and almost immediately spat it out, just like we have all seen in the cartoons. I called our conference producer and asked her to get the type of coffee changed.

She called me back a few minutes later with the response, “No”. Changing coffee suppliers? Unheard of.

We were told that was the coffee that gets served at MTCC. Period. After much discussion, we were able to negotiate buying our own ground coffee, providing it to the MTCC and they would still charge us the same $3 per cup to serve it, with the added proviso that we would agree to sign waivers for serving “outside” food and beverage. We were told how many pounds of coffee to provide for the 2 day event. As it turned out, buying bulk ground coffee isn’t that expensive – in those days, it was about $70 for a case with 20 one pound bags. A pound of coffee made 50 cups. So I bought nearly 50% more than what the venue recommended – just to make sure.

As it turned out, at the end of the first day, the maitre d’ informed me that he had never seen people drink so much coffee. He warned me that they were going to run out of coffee, and asked if we wanted to get more, or start serving their coffee. I had a taxi bring us another case of our roast.

After the event concluded, we met with the venue to discuss the ups and downs. We paid thousands of dollars for coffee for the nearly 600 people at the event. The MTCC salesperson echoed the Maitre D’s comments that our attendees drank more coffee than they were used to seeing. I replied that maybe it was because the attendees actually liked our coffee.

Think about it. We paid the equivalent of about 7 cents for a cup of a decent roast and the venue charged $3 to serve it. On a per cup basis, how much cheaper could the the venue be getting their ground coffee? Certainly, when you are buying thousands upon thousands of pounds of coffee, it may appear to be smarter to save a couple cents per pound. But they weren’t selling as much as they could.

I am sure that some government purchasing agent was proud of reducing the coffee expenditures by 10%, 20% or more.

But at what cost?

What we experienced was the result of staff focused on cost minimization, instead of profit maximization. Shaving a penny or two per cup in costs resulted in dramatic reductions in sales of a product with ridiculously high margin. For a few cents more per cup in costs, we showed how the venue could have been making so much more money and improving customer satisfaction.

The Canadian Telecom Summit moved to a privately owned venue near Toronto Airport for the next 15 years. When we first met with the other venue, the salesperson offered me a coffee. I asked what kind they served and following her response she asked, “Is there a particular roast you would like us to serve?”

There is a lesson in there about incentive plans for staff, and the way organizations measure success.

There can be a high cost associated with going with the lowest cost solution.

As frequent readers will know, I have been a supporter of the annual STAC Conference, the annual gathering of the Structure, Tower and Antenna Council, bringing together the people who physically construct Canada’s telecommunications networks.

The 2023 conference is taking place in Niagara Falls, Tuesday, March 28, and Wednesday, March 29.

While the event is still nearly 8 months away, the organizers are already starting to pull together the event program. To that end, there is an open call for speaker proposals, with a deadline of October 10 – just 2 months from now.

Session content should not be promotional in nature and should remain unbiased with respect to any mention of manufacturers and products.

The following criteria will be used by STAC 2023 conference planners and the STAC Steering Committee when reviewing speaker proposals:

• Relevance to the conference program themes and objectives
• Innovation and fresh insights
• Knowledge and expertise of the speaker
• Research-based content where appropriate or relevant
• Learning outcomes/audience engagement
• Previous speaking experience
• Diversity of speaker background, experiences, perspectives, and ideas

I have reviewed a number of sessions from the past 2 years; you can get an idea of the kinds of sessions by searching with a keyword “STAC”.

Submit your speaking proposal by October 10. And mark the dates in your calendar: STAC2023 | March 28 -29 | Niagara Falls.

Enough is enough. Once again, we experienced another case of Canadian police forces’ use of the national public alert system.

At 5:58pm Tuesday evening, I received another useless Amber Alert on my phone.

As described by the AlertReady website, some government issuer (in this instance, the Ontario Provincial Police), crafted a message to tell the public that an 11-year old girl was last seen in Stratford and we are to dial 911 or go to amberalert.opp.ca.

More than 6 hours earlier, Stratford Police tweeted far more descriptive information: “last seen around the Rotary Complex. 5′ tall, thin build, black top with Jurassic Park logo, black shorts, black shoes, glasses.”

Why did the Amber Alert message contain so little descriptive information, when clearly, so much more useful information was available?

Thankfully, Stratford Police issued a tweet at 6:26 pm identifying that the girl had been found, safe, apparently in York Region, around 100 miles away.

That explains why the OPP website from the Amber Alert was displaying a banner with “NO ACTIVE ALERTS” when I visited the site around 7:00pm. As I write this, the OPP has not yet cancelled the Amber Alert.

There are clear responsibilities for the issuer of a public alert:

1. Specifies the type of alert [e.g. amber alert, tornado, etc.] as well as whether it is to be broadcast immediately because of imminent threat to life.
2. Chooses the content of the message, including which language(s) the message will be issued in.
3. Chooses the format of the message, including whether the message will be sent as text only, audio only or in both text and audio formats.
4. Specifies why and when the alert is sent.
5. Ensures that the alert is updated and/or cancelled.
6. Specifies the geographical areas covered by the alert.

That York Regional Police were involved in the rescue demonstrates the value of casting a wide net for the geographical coverage of the alert, but we should not accept the lengthy delay between the local police force’s appeal to the public over social media and the OPP issuing an official alert. Above all, the lack of useful descriptive information in the Amber Alert is inexcusable.

For more than 3 years, I have been calling for “formal process to review each use of the National Public Alert System, to help develop best practices”

The AlertReady system is a powerful tool in the hands of Canada’s public safety officials. As I have written before, I don’t question that the system was deployed in this instance. Shouldn’t we continually be examining how the system was deployed, to ensure that it will always be used in the best possible manner?

In April, I described a review of the US system being undertaken by the FCC. I would prefer to see leadership of such a review by Public Safety officials, but it is clear that multiple agencies and multiple levels of government should take interest.

As I have said repeatedly, shouldn’t we continually be examining how the NPAS system is being deployed, to ensure that it will always be used in the best possible manner?

With continued failures in the way imminent threats are being communicated to the public, the safety of Canadians is being threatened.

Ottawa needs to take action to improve the way alerts are being transmitted.

Last week, two acquisitions in the Canadian telecom sector were met by very different reactions.

The first was Quebecor’s purchase of VMedia, a wholesale-based internet service provider with bundled TV offerings. As described by the Toronto Star, “The deal is part of Quebecor’s push to expand outside its home province”.

The other was Beanfield’s acquisition of Vancouver-Based Urbanfibre. Beanfield operates what it calls the largest independent fibre-optic network in Toronto and Montreal; Urbanfibre is a similar company operating in Vancouver.

About its acquisition of VMedia, Quebecor told the Toronto Star, “VMedia is now one of the key partners that will help accelerate Quebecor’s plan to create greater competition in Canada through advantageous bundles of services, giving Canadian consumers more choices at better prices.” The deal drew a mixed reaction from other internet service providers. According to the Star, the Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC) called the VMedia deal an “exciting possibility” for competition. On the other hand, Teksavvy characterized the deal as “another blow to the market and consumer choice”, referencing Bell’s acquisition of EBOX earlier this year.

Of course, these deals don’t reduce consumer choice. None of the deals could be termed as a ‘fire-sale’ with desperate ownership. In each case, the combined entities will be better funded, and better positioned to offer an expanded array of choices to consumers across a wider geography. As VMedia’s co-founder told the Star “We’re going to be able to provide even better deals for consumers and be even more competitive than the ISP space has been. I think that’s going to bode very well for consumers.”

Economist David Stinson recently wrote:

There are two issues which, in telecom markets, are all too often conflated — i) the number of retail market competitors, and ii) the scope of competition. By “scope of competition”, I mean the proportion of network and service components that are subject to competitive market forces.

In telecom markets, which necessarily involve substantial economies of scale and scope and significant proportions of costs which are insensitive either to traffic or the number of customers or both, the number of socially optimal and sustainable facilities-based providers will be far less than a superficial, Econ-101-based notion of perfect competition would imply.

Consolidation in telecom does not necessarily result in a reduction in competition for consumers. In each of last week’s transactions, consumers will still have access to competitive choice, with a stronger, more sustainable service provider complete with stronger financial capacity to invest.

These acquisitions result in a more competitive marketplace.

That’s good for consumers.