Canada infamously has some of the most corrupt and expensive telecom in the entire world. I seriously doubt this article is accurate. It looks like Trudeau is preparing for an election with empty promises.
It has the largest operating area of any Telco on the planet.
In virtually all communities they are the one and only provider.
Yes, it's expensive. Yes, the CRTC is corrupt, and the whole setup is just guaranteed profits to the big telcos. But, you need to think about how hard it is to serve internet to communities of 20-100 people in the Canadian Arctic that don't have roads. There are hundreds of such communities served.
There are weekly outages because of everything from ice build up on the towers at -50C, wind storms blowing down towers, Caribou eating through cables, etc. etc. Most outages require chartering a helicopter and going to the top of mountains 300km from a road or town of noteworthy size.
Canada is BIG and the Arctic is REMOTE.
I was surprised they even allowed Starlink since it could threaten the potential business Rogers, Bell and Telus could have sometime during the next century.
The US has a lot more variability. Lots of big players and a million tiny ones. Usually you'll have 1 or 2 choices, but sometimes they're both worse than the usual suspect Canadian providers.
These statements only apply to DSL/Cable.
Is Canada involved at all in the tech behind Starlink? It looks to me it's 100% funded and developed by SpaceX here in the US.
The issue with Canada is that Big Telco owns the Government. So when it comes to competition there is none and they make sure nothing threatens their Oligarchy. Trudeau like others, promises to go after them every time there is an election and then does shit like everyone before him. I'm sure there is a payoff somewhere in there for him and the others.
Any money he throws at this will be tax payer money and it's just a different way of separating the masses from their wealth and funneling more of it to Big Telco. He will never offer any kind of support to companies like SpaceX since they are not part of the club.
Just good old corruption in plain sight of the masses. He knows they won't do anything about it and there are millions in favors he has coming when he decides to leave Government.
EDIT: I am getting downvoted, which is fair. I did not provide any context and assumed it was common knowledge. In his throne speech, Trudeau had this to say about pharmacare:
> The Government remains committed to a national, universal pharmacare program and will accelerate steps to achieve this system including:
- Through a rare-disease strategy to help Canadian families save money on high-cost drugs;
-Establishing a national formulary to keep drug prices low;
-And working with provinces and territories willing to move forward without delay.
Essentially, the government will try to make drugs a tiny bit cheaper for consumers. It does not look the Pharmacare program is going to be universal and free, like the Medicare is. But perhaps your 2000$ per month drug price would come down to 1500$ per month, if you are below a certain income threshold, etc, etc. This is not nowhere near enough after Liberals promising Pharmacare for decades.
EDIT 2: The price of insulin in Canada is an order of magnitude lower than the US. Despite this, many Canadians are still forced to forego or ration their insulin and other drugs and supplies [0][1]. Reducing prices does not work nearly as well as one might think. Making them free does.
> At T1International, we found that 19 per cent of Canadians with type 1 diabetes had rationed insulin in the last year; 3 per cent were rationing at least once per week.
> Yes, Canada has less insulin rationing than the US (25 per cent) and at lesser intensity for sure; Americans who rationed often skip doses daily whereas rationing once per week or month was more common here. But Canada is a far cry from countries like the United Kingdom, where there was essentially no insulin rationing reported.
> In the U.K., all diabetes supplies, including insulin, are covered by the National Health Service. Such is also the case in many other high income countries. Even many middle income countries, like Morocco, cover the cost of insulin for their diabetic population.
[0] https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2019/07/29/cana...
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/blog/the-soaring-cost-of-...
As a side note, the fact that the federal government can use its spending powers to enforce policy that is not within its jurisdiction is very unpopular in Quebec and one of the changes Quebec wants made to the constitution.
https://budget.ontario.ca/2019/chapter-3.html#section-6
https://globalnews.ca/news/3496355/quebec-canada-constitutio...
https://ualawccsprod.srv.ualberta.ca/2019/07/federal-spendin...
Especially since the fact that the federal government has money to spend for these means that it's collecting too much and for purposes not under it's jurisdiction.
Quebec is very wise to want to put an end to this.
It's up to the citizens of each province to vote for the laws that serves them better, not some overarching central bureaucracy desperately trying to illegally acquire more powers.
2) It is up to the citizens of Canada to vote for laws that serves them better, and they have voted for federal politicians who created, expanded and maintained laws such as Canada Health Act (CHA). The democratic voice in federal election is no less democratic than the provincial election.
2) I don't think any provinces would have created reciprocal systems. Case in point:
CHA mandates reciprocity for the services provided under CHA. That is to say, if you are an Ontario resident and you get into an accident in BC and have to go to the hospital, you would not have to pay for the stay. Most provinces offer extra services that are not mandated by CHA. For example, prescription drug coverage and ambulance services. Since these services are not under CHA, there is no obligation for their reciprocity. Lo and behold, none of the provinces reciprocate these services. It is strongly recommended to purchase travel insurance for out of province travels for this very reason—a call in another province may cost you 1000's or 10's of thousands of dollars. Considering that the provinces are doing the very bare minimum they are legally obligated to do by the federal government in terms of reciprocity, I do not believe we would have gotten any reciprocity at all without the federal mandate. Also, Alberta would most probably have US-style healthcare system with US-level prices.
Or monitoring the transmissions of its factional enemies?
You don't seem to understand the true extent of what corruption can mean.