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Cons use cover of holiday weekend to announce cut to Community Access Program
April 7, 2012 - 12:22am
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Ottawa cuts CAP public web access funding
This is appalling. For years my only internet access was through my neighborhood library. Although I now have internet access at home, I know there are still many low-income folks who depend on C@P computer access at their libraries, community centres, CHCs, and shelters. I still go to the library whenever I have to print something.
This is a disappointment for sure.
The people on the bottom get it once again. Class war continues but the 98% won't do diddly squat about this either.
Think of the Internet the same as what the phone was in 1912. Did the government provide free phone to everyone who didn't have one at home? Why should the government (your and my taxes) provide free Internet to someone who doesn't have it at home, either by choice or necessity? Where does It end? Postreupedic mattress? 60" flat screen? Designer clothes? C'mon...
See ignorance of history is a dangerous thing. The government in fact provided the phone lines and infrastructure and regulated the system so it was based on cost and small profit, unlike the Internet, which has become a modern necessity for even interacting with government, where Canadians pay some of the highest prices in the world, for some of the worst service.. The same thing occured in terms of government involvement with electricity. You demostrate your ignorance with both your false history and your ridiculous comparisons.
Surprisingly forwad thinking. I thought Cons thought the internet the same as the pony express of 1850.
Ad homiem attacks aside, the phone companies provide the end use with the ability to use the equipment. They had "pay stations" (think Internet cafes) which were later replaced by pay phones. So, no! the government never provided free telephone access to the end user, joe public.
Sorry sonny, but I am old enough to know your statements are factually incorrect. The entire infrastructure was created through government funding- which also included much of the fibre optic infrastructure currently being done. In exchange for access to this publicly owned infrastructure private companies were highly regulated and required to provide service to remote and rural areas, not just the lucrative city centres. In many cases municipal at cost telephone systems still exist in rural areas. So no the end cost was not free, but there were very high levels of subsidization through out the system from one phone to the next. The situation was very similar to the expanision of electrical power. So again your assertion is completely false on the face of it. That is the problem with modern free market Conservatives, they don't know that much of the things we have that are supposedly free market places with lots of competition were in fact started with heavy government involvement for the public good. Closing federal government offices in communities across Canada, including post offices, and then taking away the only access for many of those people might seem sensible to you, but it is anything but.
Because it's a social good, and undoubtedly saves the government money if you were to do a full accounting of it. How about because governments have shifted much of their communication with the public online, so in a supposed democracy where constiuents are supposed to be able to dialogue with their politicians, basic internet access should be considered a democratic right.
If you seriously need to ask why the government should provide free internet access in public spaces for public use, one could just as easily ask the question: why should the government do anything?
I was about to flag that as offensive but thought someone should respond instead.
The internet is probably more essential these days than the telephone. Try to get through for service to government agencies on the phone. If you cannot afford a computer and a printer, the library or other public site would be a logical place to go. Many small towns do not have internet cafés where the poor can go and spend part of their food budget to use a computer.
Dushan, that is not only a false analogy -- it is classist and also idiotic.
I think it's fair to ask whether this program was still doing anything useful compared to when it started in 1995. It might not be. A lot has changed since then. Internet access costs a lot less for a library to provide now than it did then, especially considering the equipment costs. If you have a cell phone, you either have internet service or it's just a matter of getting to the nearest library or a restaurant with free wi-fi. It's true that isn't the case for everyone, but even that implies a change in the sort of program necessary because now government can focus on the exceptions.
Again, responding to your analogy between pay phones and internet cafés: I repeat that many communities do not have internet cafés. The public library is one safe constant place where vulnerable people can go about their business.
As for pay phones: I dare you to find one when you need one, these days, if you don't have a cell phone. They've been yanked out of many places.
And the criticisms of your earlier statement were not ad hominem but rebukes of what you said. If your ego is so tied in with what your brain chooses to write in a public forum, you might remind it that occasionally people call each other idiots when they mean not the person but the views expressed.
why should the government do anything?
Eaxactly!!
Dushan, that is not only a false analogy -- it is classist and also idiotic.
Seriously? And my post is offensive?
As for pay phones: I dare you to find one when you need one, these days, if you don't have a cell phone. They've been yanked out of many places.
And nobody complains. They were never "free", contrary to some claims. Thirty years ago if you wanted to contact he government you had to either mail them and pat for postage or phone them and pay for the call. Just because today the government operates via Internet why should it suddenly be free? Enough of the entitlement society.
Thanks Life for the heads up about this topic, and you are right I do know a bit about it having worked in the field for over 15 years.
I think the easiest way to discuss this topic is to answer Doug's reasonable questions. The CAP program has evolved over the years since it first began. In the early days libraries, particularly in rural/small town communities were one of the few places were the internet was available with any speed, thanks to CAP. In those early days the program was really providing a window on the world of the internet and was the entry point for a lot of people, particularly older residents- assuming my experience is fairly common. People would come in to find out what this internet thing was all about.
Since those days CAP has evolved substantially. In rural Ontario at least, and I expect this is true in most of the rest of rural and remote Canada, we have lost almost all government services. Everything from getting your liscence renewed, to applying for a SIN card, to job searching, to skills development to you name it is now done outside of our communites and the distances get further and further away and into larger and larger centres. In some ways upper tier government no longer exists as a tangible entity in many rural communities. At the same time governments at all levels have been pushing people towards use of the internet for basic interaction with government. There simply is no public transit of any kind, so travel would be both expensive and difficult to obtain for those with disabilities.
So for some of the poorest in our communities CAP is crucial for them to be able to access government and many other programs they need to get themselves into better situations. In my professional experience the growth of this kind of use of CAP has been increasing rapidly year by year and it is government that is driving it for the most part by cutting back on actual physical bricks and mortar interaction. I have people using our CAP computers daily for this kind of stuff, and that is in a relatively small town. Just this week we helped someone start a basic literacy program, apply for social assistance, find out how to apply for a death benefit through CPP and someone using the computer to complete their high school diploma. This program is used, and it provides great service at a fraction of the cost it take to provide these services in the community.
In some ways I feel like this cut is my fault as just last week I was commenting to one of my collegues how reliant people have become on our CAP internet access and how much I have noticed the traffic for it increasing as we are seeing more and more people who are suffering financially in our communites (housing is often cheaper) and how thankful I was that this program is there to help people. Somehow some Conservative must have overheard that and it upset them so they moved to cut it off.
Nope you are wrong. In many communities the Post Office acted as a conduit for many of the services needed by locals. You often had a government office attached to or near the Post Office where you could get the help you needed. They often also doubled as what was then called Manpower offices if you want to use your 30 year figure. So you just walked in free of charge. So far you seem to be batting about .000 in your historical claims.
By the way my father was employed as a very young man installing many of the hydro poles you can still see in parts of southern Ontario. He worked for a contracted crew, but they were hired by the locally publicly owned utility company, or Ontario Hydro itself. So again as Life pointed out there was a great deal of public/government involvement in these kinds of technologies that quickly became necessities.
So you just walked in free of charge.
But if you lived on the other side of town you had to drive or take the bus. Was gas or bus fare provided?
The point I am making and trying to make you all understand is that nothing is, nor should it be, "free". Even if the user does not have to pay for it there is still a cost attached to it and someone, in this case the tax payer, has to pay for it. I am not prepared to pay for someone else's Internet.
Please for the sake of your purity don't drive on a road again, don't visit a medical facility, don't cross over a bridge, don't walk on a sidewalk, stay out of all parks, never, ever go to a public beach. Don't do any of it, because of course nothing should ever be 'free'.
And you are not paying for anyone's internet. Did you bother to find out what CAP actually has done. What CAP has done was provide open and democratic access to government, something all citizens deserve. Did you bother to read the list of CAP access I experienced in the last week alone.
And by the way people walked too, especially if they had no money and there has rarely been regular buses in most communities in Canada. That's a city thing.
Ok, well, thanks for trolling this thread. If nothing else you've provoked some great personal examples that bolster the argument in favour of continued government funding.
At the same time they have ended student summer employment centers, saying that they are not needed because students can use the internet to link into government summer employment websites. Of course we know all students are rich enough to afford their own internet service. Truly Kafkaesque.
Dushan, I know it's a lost cause, but your ego is getting in the way of your own self interest in this scenario as it costs far less to help people out of poverty, by providing them with low cost services such as this, than to trap them in it. Then again, who cares about rationality right, only you matter, clearly.
I thought it was that time of year again to resurrect Jesus, not Ayn Rand.
Last time I checked, we lived in a democracy. So if the majority (or even in a plurality in our case) say that we should pay a little tax to provide free internet service to some people who need it to function in the 21st century, that is what we should live with, and even be sanguine about it. Sure, we may not agree with what the majority wants most of the time, however we have to live with it.
When people say "I WANT" politically for a left-wing or right-wing thing, it is more about egotism than altruism.
Even if it were the case that we live in a democracy, there's plenty of antecedents that should have us calling into question the validity of the majority rule approach to bestowing rights upon a minority. Generally if we're talking about advancing the democratic ideal, one that you suggest we're already basking in, there does appear to be a persuasive argument for providing communal access to the internet, and thus a voice and a means of communication to those who couldn't normally afford it; those whose voices are otherwise routinely ignored anyway by politics and the media alike...in this wonderful democracy of the majority that we have.
My mom called this a few years back when the library board here complied with government dictates of getting rid of all books that had not been taken out in a couple of years. This was in order to get computers in and access the community access program offered. She said it would all be the reference books that would go and once they were gone the community access program would be pulled.