From: aa319@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Marita Moll) Reply-To: aa319@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Marita Moll) Newsgroups: can.infohighway Subject: IHAC Report - Access the Key Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 02:07:33 GMT Organization: The National Capital FreeNet Message-ID: Reproduced here for the benefit of all those who missed them are the Toronto Star articles regarding the contents of the forthcoming IHAC report. Posted with permission from The Toronto Star. The Toronto Star Wed 30 Aug 95 Access called the key to information highway Canadians have right to service, special panel says By Robert Brehl Toronto Star All Canadians - rich or poor, disabled or not - should get access to the information highway, a soon-to-be-released report to the federal cabinet urges. ``We run the risk of creating classes of information `haves' and `have-nots', with potentially serious future implications,'' the blue-ribbon Information Highway Advisory Council says in the report obtained by The Star. ``The information highway should be at least as accessible, affordable and relevant to Canadians as telephone and television services are today. This is what Canadians have a right to expect.'' Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Industry Minister John Manley set up the 29-member advisory council early last year. It consulted with the public and received submissions. The information highway - the electronic links among phones, computers, televisions and more - will affect all our lives: through services such as in-home banking and gambling, through dramatic shifts in how and where we work and through digital threats to our private medical and financial data. After 15 months, the panel has developed a blueprint for the government on such wide-ranging topics as how best to guard Canadian culture and how best to protect workers from employers who want to electronically spy on them. The overriding theme of the report is that the private sector should drive the construction of the information highway. Government should step in, it says, if needed to spur growth, make sure competition is fair and to protect Canadian culture and vulnerable segments of society. In other words, the government should act like a referee, not an owner. And industrialists should take the risks and reap the rewards. The council also calls for better computer training in schools, which are woefully under-equipped with an average of one computer for every 15 to 20 students. ``There is a scarcity of computer equipment and computer- related technology in schools,'' the council warns in its final report, expected to be released within two weeks. The 249-page report with more than 300 recommendations to the federal government is sure to stir controversy. Already, one council member has broken ranks to warn that the report offers little protection for Canadian workers facing job cuts due to technological changes. ``I am frustrated and disappointed that my efforts within council on behalf of workers could not have been more persuasive,'' writes labor leader Jean-Claude Parrot in a stinging minority report. Making sure there is ``universal access'' to affordable services and information will be tricky - but essential - for the government, the panel says. So how should the government make sure the needy can afford information highway services? One way, the panel suggests, would be to set up a ``Universal Service Access Fund'' where phone and cable companies pay money from customer rates. This money would be used to lower rates for the needy. Another policy to help develop services for the disabled could be tax benefits and subsidies to companies providing products for small, specialized markets. Access is one thing; having the equipment to travel the highway is another. The council falls short in addressing how low-income Canadians will get the necessary home computer equipment, which could cost around $2,000. Though tax credits and grants are detailed for Canadian companies building the information highway, no such plans are mentioned as a way to offset the high initial costs for the poor to merge onto the highway. But the council does urge ``public access points,'' such as community computers in libraries, government offices and schools. The access should be ``as commonplace as public telephones, postal-service outlets and automated banking machines.'' Some of the council's other recommendations: * The government must control obscene and illegal material on the highway. The report suggests a public education program, devising methods of verifying where material is being sent from and hammering out international agreements to control harmful material on international networks. * Pass tough new laws to protect privacy on the information highway. * Government must become a ``model user'' of technology both to save money and offer Canadians the convenience of in-home services, such as paying taxes or renewing drivers' licences. * Canada's telecommunications and cable networks should be used for distant-learning and in-home courses for ``life-long learning'' programs for workers. * Canadian content must be protected. Both the government and carriers, such as Bell Canada and Rogers cable, must earmark funds for Canadians who create domestic cultural content, such as production companies. * The Copyright Act must be strengthened to protect Canadian creators on the information highway. * Canadian heritage that is held in libraries, museums and archives must be converted to a digital format to be available to all Canadian homes via the data highway. The council was made up of telecommunications and cable-company presidents, university professors, broadcasters, publishers, a labor leader, an artist and a medical doctor. The panel warns Canadians it is futile to ignore the changing world and information revolution. ``Canadians must ask themselves whether they are going to be passive in the face of change or whether they are going to become agents of change themselves,'' the report says. -- Marita Moll Ottawa, Ontario aa319@freenet.carleton.ca