By Ray Van Eng (09/17/97)                  

A new report from the Information Highway Advisory Council sponsored by the Canadian government has indicated that Canada needs to ensure that its citizens have adequate access to the global information highway.

Nothing new here.

But the report entitled "Preparing Canada For A Digital World" also points out that technology advances may not necessary lead to economic prosperity. Specifically, the council worries that the changing job market with a shift towards an increasing demand for computer literate workers will present problems for Canada which has a short supply to fill all the high tech positions.

This will created a situation where there is not enough jobs for a large portion of the population with limited technical ability while a small pool of skilled personnel is over worked. The unemployed and the poor would have plenty of leisure time but no money to spend and highly paid professionals with much to spend but with only little or no leisure time to spare.

It is hardly the ideal climate to foster a knowledge-based economy. As a remedy, the study suggests that the Canadian government should implement economic policies that encourage industries to deploy the technology in a manner to create jobs.

As for the lack of a national identity which Canada is constantly aware of, the report calls for a need to increase the accessibility and visibility of Canadian content on the Internet to Canadians. For example, the council recommends that Internet service providers (ISPs) should be encouraged to promote the use of Canadian directories and news at their home pages.

The government, on the other hand, should offer the same kind of tax credits reserved for Canadian film and video producers to creators of Canadian content that can be used on the information highway such as books, audio recordings, multimedia productions etc. and to provide export help for Canadian producer of technology products and services for sale abroad.

While the report advocates universal access to the Internet for all Canadian, including the installation of public access terminals, the council is against licensing Internet access providers, imposing content rules or censoring online material that some segment of the society may find objectionable.

Overall, the council thinks that the Internet is a new medium that does not sit well with existing regulation structures and the government should develop a strategy to deal with it and to articulate a national access strategy before the end of 1997.