The digital divide between Canada’s remote and urban populations got a little narrower this week with a welcome decision by the country’s telecom regulator to declare high-speed Internet access a basic service.

Web access is crucial to almost every aspect of life, from finding a job, succeeding in school and using government services to simply staying in touch with family and friends. U.S. president Barack Obama recognized this when he said that in the digital age, Internet is a “necessity,” not a luxury. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has gone so far as to call it “a basic human right, like access to health care or water.”

The CRTC ruling is an important recognition that the 18 per cent of Canadians who currently don’t have reliable access to Internet are being unjustly disadvantaged.

The decision set minimum high-speed targets for service delivery and established a $750-million fund to build infrastructure in remote communities over the next five years. The CRTC estimates that to expand high-speed Internet into every corner of the country will take up to 15 years and may cost tens of billions of dollars. That will require sustained efforts and investments of successive governments. This is just a start, but an important one.

Still, there's another dimension of the digital divide that policymakers will have to address if they are serious about treating high-speed Internet as a basic service: lack of access for the low-income Canadians.

According to Statistics Canada, only 58 per cent of Canadian households with annual incomes of $30,000 or less have home Internet access compared to 98 per cent of Canadian households with annual incomes of $120,000 or more.

Studies have shown that low-income Canadians often take money out of their budgets for food, recreation and rent to pay for Internet services. Or they simply go without digital access, constraining their economic and educational opportunities and excluding themselves from a range of services and various kinds of civic participation.

Anti-poverty advocates have long called for a mandated $10-per-month high-speed Internet product for families and individuals living below Statistics Canada’s low-income measure. (In 2013 that poverty line was $20,933 for an individual and $41,866 for a family of four, after taxes.) The CRTC could have mandated that as they did a cheap skinny cable package.

Instead, Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais says the commission is relying on market forces to regulate prices and hopes that by creating sustainable competition better prices will emerge.

That’s not good enough. Clearly basic services should not be contingent on market forces.

In 2011, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on freedom of expression called on all governments “to develop a concrete and effective plan of action to make the Internet widely available, accessible and affordable to all segments of the population.”

With its decision this week, the CRTC took a big step in recognizing the importance of that goal and made an initial investment in addressing availability and accessibility. But no concrete steps were taken to help the many poor Canadians whose disadvantage is compounded by their lack of Internet access.

To its credit, the commission did file a report on broadband issues, including affordability, with the federal government on Wednesday. Now it’s up to Navdeep Bains, the minister of economic development, and his government to find a way to ensure that Canada's newest basic service is truly guaranteed for everyone.

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