Public Safety Minister Bill Blair on March 25 announced over $500,000 over four years through the federal Cyber Security Co-operation Program for the Community Safety Knowledge Alliance’s (CSKA) Cyber Security Capacity in Canadian Agriculture project.

Glacier FarmMedia (GFM), owner of this website and publications including Country Guide, Grainews and the Western Producer, announced April 6 it will collaborate with CSKA to further extend the ag project’s reach by “engaging with the sector across its media platforms and events to boost awareness and promote improved security tactics.”

CSKA, a not-for-profit organization set up in Saskatoon in 2015, works with private- and public-sector organizations to research, evaluate, train and promote in the field of community safety.

CSKA’s multi-year project is expected to connect with sector stakeholders to “understand the needs of Canadian producers related to cybersecurity, and to engage and inform the sector and federal and provincial levels of government about these needs and opportunities to address them.”

“The rapidly evolving cyber threat environment within which Canada’s agricultural sector operates is outpacing the abilities of many farm and other agricultural operations to adapt and respond,” CSKA CEO Cal Corley said in a federal release.

The ag project, Corley said, “will help better understand and support the sector in closing critical gaps.”

“With the growing digitization of agriculture, the range and impacts of vulnerabilities are becoming more numerous and more complex, and it is becoming hard for operators to keep pace with the rate of change,” CSKA lead investigator Dr. Janos Botschner said in GFM’s separate release.

“Yet, little work has been done to understand and address cybersecurity within this ecosystem, and from the perspectives of farmers.”

Botschner, a Guelph-based behavioural scientist and public safety consultant, said CSKA’s project “will help to address this gap in ways that emphasize the needs of the family businesses that represent almost three-quarters of Canadian agricultural production.”

“Canadian agriculture is a critical and increasingly interconnected service, and it is a key part of our economy, trade and food supply,” Blair said in a separate federal release. CSKA’s ag project, he said, “will help foster collaboration and protect cyber systems from compromise.”

The project team is expected to bring in expertise from social sciences, food security, public policy, engineering and information technology, national security and community safety/well-being.

“The depth of relationships and experience that Glacier FarmMedia is bringing to our project will amplify our opportunity to make a difference for Canada’s food security, and for the families and businesses that are at the heart of its role as a critical infrastructure and contributor to Canadians’ health and well-being,” CSKA CEO Cal Corley said in GFM’s release.

“We see this as an extension of our commitment to rural economic vitality and to Canada’s reputation as a trusted partner in the global food supply chain,” Winnipeg-based GFM’s president Bob Willcox said in the same release.

The five-year, $10.3 million federal Cyber Security Co-operation Program that’s backing CSKA’s project was set up in 2019 as part of the National Cyber Security Strategy.

That program’s latest call for proposals, now closed, was budgeted for up to $4.2 million for the period from April 1 this year to the end of March 2024, and was focused on subjects including the “security and resilience of Canadian systems,” “an innovative and adaptive cyber ecosystem” and “effective leadership, governance and collaboration.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday launched a three-year, $10 billion infrastructure plan aimed at five different sectors, including agriculture. The $1.5 billion is expected to result in 700,000 acres of irrigated land.

Federal Liberals said the investment, to be funnelled through the Canada Infrastructure Bank, will create 60,000 jobs.

The $1.5 billion for agriculture is to target major irrigation projects, and the “lion’s share” of that will go to the Prairies and the West, Bibeau said, a region where she sees “opportunities for investment in this sector.”

The bank, she said, “has already started significant discussions with the provinces, the municipalities, the private sector to see how we could move forward.”

Bibeau didn’t mention specific projects, but Saskatchewan’s $4 billion, 10-year Lake Diefenbaker irrigation project is a top candidate to receive federal support.

The province in early July announced plans for a project expected to allow farmers to irrigate 500,000 acres.

Western Economic Diversification Canada, a federal department, last month recommended Ottawa help fund the Diefenbaker irrigation project, contending the completed project would add $85 billion to Canada’s GDP and $20 billion in tax returns back to government.

While targeted to the agriculture sector, the project is also expected to be beneficial for the potash industry.

Adding to the likelihood of federal support is the role former Liberal cabinet minister and Saskatchewan MP Ralph Goodale continues to play within party circles. A long-time advocate for the project, Goodale remains a highly respected voice in the party.

Scott Moe, currently running to continue serving as Saskatchewan’s premier, said he was given a heads-up on the announcement.

“I hope this is positive news. There is some money earmarked for the irrigation project, irrigation projects,” he told reporters in Regina. “We have a significant irrigation investment that will be coming here in the province of Saskatchewan.

“We will be looking at the details of this very soon,” he said, adding he hopes it is an investment rather than a loan through the infrastructure bank.

Ottawa’s announcement also contained a $2 billion commitment to expanding high-speed broadband access. In its Sept. 23 throne speech, the government said it wanted to improve internet access in rural and remote communities.

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture said in a release Thursday it’s “encouraged” by the infrastructure funding announcement, noting rural broadband has been a long-standing issue for farmers and rural communities.

“With the arrival of COVID-19, many services pivoted to become entirely online, highlighting the fact farmers’ lack of high-speed connectivity puts us at a significant business disadvantage,” CFA president Mary Robinson said in a statement.

“Rural broadband is not only necessary for today’s farmers to conduct business and take advantage of cutting-edge technology, it is also critical to attracting new, young farmers into the industry. We know younger generations see high-speed connectivity as essential to everyday living and business.”

The infrastructure bank will be rolling out these investments over the next 24-36 months, Robinson said, and the CFA “anticipates these investments will help accelerate the government’s promised timeline of connecting all of Canada by 2030.”

As for the irrigation funding, she said, “these types of investments will have positive impacts for years to come, helping mitigate the impacts of erratic weather events.”

Increased irrigation, she said, can help farmers grow higher-value crops and more crops per acre, while also making water usage more efficient.

— D.C. Fraser reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa.

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In an ambitious throne speech delivered Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s party committed itself to implementing universal child care and extending or enhancing many of the economic measures put in place to curb the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But it’s a commitment to enhancing rural broadband that farmers will likely find most intriguing.

“In the last six months, many more people have worked from home, done classes from the kitchen table, shopped online, and accessed government services remotely. So it has become more important than ever that all Canadians have access to the internet,” read the throne speech, delivered by Gov. Gen. Julie Payette.

“The government will accelerate the connectivity timelines and ambitions of the Universal Broadband Fund to ensure that all Canadians, no matter where they live, have access to high-speed internet.”

The Universal Broadband Fund was launched in 2019 and, according to the government, is meant to “support projects to build or upgrade access and transport infrastructure to provide fixed and mobile wireless broadband Internet access services in eligible underserved areas of Canada.”

Efforts to expand access to health care were also highlighted in the speech.

“The Government will ensure that everyone – including in rural and remote areas – has access to a family doctor or primary care team. COVID-19 has also shown that our system needs to be more flexible and able to reach people at home. The government will continue to expand capacity to deliver virtual health care,” read the text of the speech.

Canada’s government also plans to legislate the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 as part of its effort to combat climate change.

The speech specifically mentioned the need for the “know-how of the energy sector” to be involved in such an effort.

Two key priorities were listed: supporting existing manufacturing and natural resource sectors “transform to meet a net zero future, creating good-paying and long-lasting jobs” as well as “recognize farmers, foresters, and ranchers as key partners in the fight against climate change, supporting their efforts to reduce emissions and build resilience.”

Trudeau’s government also plans to create a new way of managing Canadian waters. Citing the closure of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA), the speech commits the federal government to create a “Canada Water Agency to keep our water safe, clean and well-managed.”

“The government will also need to identify opportunities to build more resilient water and irrigation infrastructure,” Payette said.

The speech said Canada will also continue to fight for free trade and reform at the World Trade Organization.

“COVID-19 has accelerated the existing trends toward a more fragmented global order. It remains in Canada’s interest to create and maintain bilateral and multilateral relationships to advance peace and economic prosperity.”

Details of the legislative plans highlighted in the speech are expected to emerge in the coming days and weeks.

— D.C. Fraser reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa.

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The Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph hosted a virtual panel in May to discuss COVID-19’s social impacts, in which researchers from a variety of fields reviewed both the negative and positive takeaways so far.

Jacqui Empson Laporte works with rural communities in her role with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and also volunteers with Victim Services in Huron County, Ont. where she lives.

“In both roles, I’m seeing the stress in farmers and their families, caused by disruptions by the supply chains or even the threat of supply chain disruptions,” she said, noting market uncertainty as small businesses in small towns are trying to adapt to new consumer needs.

Victim Services in her community is small and largely volunteer-driven — and under pressure from the pandemic.

“When our volunteer base is undergoing stress at the scale COVID is pushing on our communities, it really starts to destabilize our establishments,” she said.

It increases the burden on staff, she said, and requires narrowing the scope of calls to which they respond to primarily fatalities and violence, because those incidents are likely to cause the biggest ripples in a community.

“It’s really hard to reach out for help when your stuck in your home in the same conditions that are causing the crisis, so if there is a challenge of addiction or domestic violence or mental health, people are not only isolated by distance in rural Ontario but isolated because of the travel restrictions.”

More tele-counselling opportunities are needed and could help rural communities, she said, but those opportunities are only available where there’s reliable internet service.

Helen Hambly Odame, an associate professor at the University of Guelph who focuses her research on connectivity of rural areas, said the pandemic shows “how essential broadband has become for every single Canadian, urban and rural.”

A “digital divide” that has made it difficult for some rural communities to adapt to changes resulting from the pandemic, she said, as those lacking connectivity are experiencing more isolation from society and the economy.

“We can see how essential connectivity is,” she said, adding later the internet is a current challenge but also a source of great opportunity in the future. “Let’s look at the future as one of opportunity through connectivity.”

She is also hopeful some workplaces recognize employees can successfully work from home and that “some of those workers choose to work from home in rural Ontario.” That, in turn, could become an economic driver for rural communities, she said.

Ryan Gibson, a University of Guelph associate professor who focuses on rural planning and development, told the panel the ability of people in rural communities to volunteer their time has been compromised because of COVID-19.

Many non-profits have had to rethink how they deliver services, he added.

Volunteerism has been “a really key feature” and part of the fabric of rural communities, he said, and while there are typically ebbs and flows, those communities right now ” are challenged in how they respond during the COVID-19 crisis.”

He singled out support for newcomers in rural communities.

“This pandemic has caused a disruption in terms of the supports for the newcomers, it’s challenged the ability to tap into that social fabric, to be able to participate and volunteer, to have your kids take part in extracurricular activities,” he said.

Abdul-Rahim Abdulai, a PhD student at the University of Guelph, echoed that sentiment.

“Most newcomers, like myself, can find a community in a community,” he said, adding it’s difficult to settle in without that support network. “Just moving into a new area by yourself can be very challenging, of course.”

Post-pandemic, “we need to start thinking why our responses to COVID-19 need to look different in different places,” Gibson said, because urban strategies may not be the best response for rural areas.

“One of the really important things we have to think about as we move forward is how to build place-based strategies, how do we build on the assets that are currently in our communities, within the people who live there, and how can we use those assets to meet our local priorities.”

— D.C. Fraser reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa.

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New Brunswick-based, privately held Xplornet Communications announced Thursday it has signed a deal to sell majority control itself to Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners.

The two companies’ announcement didn’t put a dollar figure to the deal, but a report Monday from Bloomberg, well ahead of Thursday’s announcement, quoted unnamed sources putting the price tag at about US$2 billion including debt.

The deal still requires regulatory approval and is expected to close “in the coming months,” Xplornet said in a release.

The funding from Stonepeak, whose portfolio today is valued around US$17.9 billion, is expected to give the company “a strong balance sheet to execute its plan of improving broadband service for residences and business in rural Canada, along with access to growth capital,” Xplornet said.

Xplornet CEO Allison Lenehan said the new investment “will position Xplornet to accelerate development of our facilities-based broadband network and services, enabling much faster speeds, including unlimited data plans at affordable prices for rural Canada.”

The New Brunswick company has been on an aggressive growth track in recent years, buying providers such as Saskatchewan’s YourLink and Manitoba’s NetSet in 2017. It also announced a deal earlier this month to buy southwestern Ontario-based Silo Wireless.

Xplornet also picked up a substantial customer base in rural Manitoba in 2017 when federal regulators ordered Bell Canada to divest assets for approval of its takeover of Manitoba telecom firm MTS.

The company on Thursday reiterated its recently announced five-year plan to put up $500 million for hybrid fibre wireless and satellite technology for more broadband coverage over rural areas.

The deal announced Thursday calls for Lenehan to continue as Xplornet’s CEO and for the business to remain headquartered in New Brunswick.

Current board chairman Steve Weed and his Seattle-based investment fund WaveDivision Capital will also still be “material investors” in the Xplornet business, the companies noted.

Stonepeak, which bills itself as an investor in “long-lived, hard-asset” infrastructure including fuel and water pipelines and utilities, is no stranger to the internet service sector.

The investment firm’s assets also include Cologix, which operates data centres in the U.S. and Canada supporting web network interconnections, including 17 in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto; wireless provider Extenet Systems; and wireless tower operator Vertical Bridge. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The House of Commons’ standing committee on industry, science and technology, chaired by Vancouver area Liberal MP Dan Ruimy, on Tuesday released its report and recommendations for meeting federal targets on rural broadband connectivity.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in 2016 declared broadband internet to be an “essential service” in Canada and set minimal performance standards of 50-megabit per second download and 10 Mbps upload, working with Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) to fund broadband deployment in rural and remote areas.

However, the committee wrote, evidence it received from various stakeholders shows the digital divide to still be “prominent” in Canada and the CRTC targets “may not be appropriate to all rural and remote areas.”

Licensed incumbents in the broadband sector “tend to only invest in high-density areas that are more economically profitable,” the committee wrote, but if Ottawa were to “adapt” its regulatory framework, particularly on spectrum and network management, “small providers, non-profit providers or non-incumbent providers” could deploy rural broadband in “an economically profitable manner.”

The government also needs to “consider ways to increase the accessibility of funding programs for small providers, non-profit providers and non-incumbent providers, and consider the spectrum allocation process for the purpose of broadband deployment.”

Ottawa also needs to take steps, possibly through legislation in tandem with the provinces, for such providers to be able to accessing “existing infrastructures for the purpose of deploying broadband access,” such as granting easements or servitudes, “especially in regards to utility poles.”

The government also needs to consider the spectrum allocation process, focusing on the “scope of licences, pricing and effective use of allocated spectrum, including ensuring that small providers, non-profit providers, and non-incumbent providers have reasonable access to spectrum for broadband deployment.”

The committee also urged the government to “consider new ways of collecting service and performance data in addition to the speed of internet services, including, but not limited to, adding new indicators, using local knowledge.”

The CRTC, the committee said, should also consider not only broadband speed, but other indicators in its targets, such as “standards of parity between urban and rural centers, network performance, purchased consumer packages, latency and redundancy.”

(“Latency” refers to the time it takes for a given signal to get from a transmitter to a receiver, usually measured in milliseconds.)

The CRTC should also consider “regularly reviewing” its target broadband speeds to make sure they “remain relevant with technological development and international standards.”

Some witnesses during the committee’s hearings on the matter cautioned that the CRTC will have to “regularly update” its broadband speed targets “to keep up with technological change.”

Corroborating those witnesses, the committee said, is “the fact that actual broadband speeds in Canada substantially lag behind many countries that invest more in digital infrastructure.”

A monitoring report, the committee said, shows 99 per cent of Canadians living in rural areas have some form of internet access, including wireless, but to speeds between 1.5 and 4.9 Mbps — and only 42 per cent have access to speeds between 30 and 49.9 Mbps.

“Thus, while most Canadian communities do have Internet coverage, in many rural communities, the available speeds are so low that they only allow for a limited number of uses.” — AGCanada.com Network

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Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s 2018 budget proposes a couple of new limits on Canadian-controlled private corporations’ (CCPC) ability to benefit from a lower tax rate on passive investment income.

Morneau last July had proposed that savings — if held as passive investments within CCPCs — would be “taxed in a manner that is equivalent to savings held directly by individuals.”

Farm groups such as the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) objected at the time, describing passive investments as “vital” to farmers in managing year-over-year risks due to weather or market volatility.

Due to such concerns raised during public consultations last summer, Morneau stepped back from that proposal last fall.

As Tuesday’s budget noted, tax experts in last year’s consultations suggested the main reason for the use of private corporations as a tax planning tool was “the significant difference between personal tax rates and the low small business tax rate.”

Thus the new budget proposes that if a corporation earns over $50,000 of passive investment income in a given year, the amount of income eligible for the small business tax rate will be “gradually reduced.”

The small business deduction limit would be reduced by $5 for every $1 of investment income above the $50,000 threshold, cutting the business limit to zero at $150,000 of investment income.

The budget’s proposal marks “an important departure” from last July’s proposal, the government said, in that the budget plan doesn’t directly affect taxes on passive investment income. Also, no existing savings will face any additional tax on withdrawal.

Tuesday’s budget also proposes that CCPCs will no longer be able to get refunds of taxes paid on investment income while distributing dividends from income taxed at the general corporate rate. Refunds will continue to be available when investment income is paid out.

Until now, any taxable dividends a private corporation pays out could trigger a refund of taxes paid on investment income, regardless of where the dividend came from.

Both measures, the government said, will apply in taxation years that begin after 2018. The two measures, along with new rules on income sprinkling, are expected to raise $925 million per year for the government by 2022-23.

Tuesday’s budget documents emphasized that for a farm operating as a CCPC, investment income from the AgriInvest program — which includes matching government contributions — is not considered passive income and won’t be affected by the new rules.

The budget proposals on passive investments are targeted, the government said, to affect less than three per cent of CCPCs, or about 50,000 private corporations.

CFA president Ron Bonnett, in a separate release Tuesday, said the farm organization “is pleased that changes regarding passive investment incomes have been further clarified. However, more time is needed to review the legislation with more scrutiny.”

Budget expenses

The budget doesn’t include any specific additional measures for the federal agriculture department, holding its program expenses at $2.4 billion for 2018.

Noting “few mentions” of agriculture in Morneau’s budget speech and documents, Bonnett said Tuesday the CFA is “disappointed that the government hasn’t directly followed up on the vision from last year’s budget, which set ambitious targets to grow the industry for the benefit of all Canadians.”

However, Bonnett said, the budget’s “continued focus on research and innovation” is positive.

On the research front, the budget announced phase one of “an ambitious plan to renew federal laboratories,” offering up $2.8 billion over five years, starting in 2018–19, for constriction of “multi‐purpose, collaborative, federal science and technology facilities.”

Specifically, the government said, “rather than work in silos, this new approach to federal science and discovery will look to bring together federal scientists and science facilities across government including Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, the National Research Council and others.”

The budget also sets aside $100 million over five years for the Strategic Innovation Fund with a “particular focus on supporting projects that relate to (low Earth orbit, or LEO) satellites and next-generation rural broadband.”

LEO satellites, the government said, “can receive and transmit data with significantly improved response times” and help provide internet services across “challenging landscapes” at lower costs than fibre-optic lines.

Tuesday’s budget also commits $4.3 million over five years, starting in 2018–19, to “support the reopening” of penitentiary farms at the Joyceville and Collins Bay Institutions at Kingston, Ont.

The farms are to be run by Corcan, a rehabilitation programming agency of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC).

The government in mid-2016 announced a feasibility study on reopening the Kingston farms, which the previous Conservative government had wound down in 2009. An advisory panel, including four eastern Ontario farmers, was set up last spring to further explore the idea of reopening farms at the sites.

The budget on Tuesday also pledged $194.1 million over five years toward a “robust compliance regime” to protect and enforce rights for temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in Canada, including unannounced inspections and “ongoing collection of labour market information related to open work permits.”

The budget further proposes $3.4 million over two years for a pilot program developing a “network of support organizations” for TFWs dealing with “potential abuse by their employers.” — AGCanada.com Network

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And so, when I came home from our Christmas holiday and heard about the CRTC’s new announcement, I was doing cartwheels on the lawn.

But, when I crawled back in through the snowbanks in our back yard and read the fine print, I realized that the CRTC announcement may not actually be life-changing — at least not right away.

Not that it’s bad news! The CRTC has clearly stated that access to broadband Internet is a “universal service objective.” And, the CRTC acknowledged that, for many rural Canadians, Internet access is not all it could be: “While most are well-served, many Canadians, particularly those in rural and remote communities, do not have access to broadband Internet access services that are comparable to those offered to the vast majority of Canadians in terms of speed, capacity, quality and price.”

It’s always a relief when someone in authority acknowledges your problem, even if they can’t fix it.

The objectives

On December 21, the CRTC set out three new targets. I’ll quote them here for you:

• “Speeds of 50 Mbps download / 10 Mbps upload for fixed broadband services;
• An unlimited data option for fixed broadband services;
• The latest mobile wireless technology available not only to all homes and businesses, but also along major Canadian roads.”

This sounds great. And to make it even better, the CRTC is putting a $750-million fund in place to makes sure these three objectives are met. But, hold your cartwheels. It’s not at all clear that these first two goals apply to my situation and they may not apply to yours.

The first two objectives are related to “fixed broadband.” This definition is typically used to mean a wire or cable brings the Internet into your house. In the background documents, the CRTC estimates that 82 per cent of Canadians already have access to fixed broadband services with download speeds of at least 50 Mbps.

I am not in this lucky 82 per cent. The nearest cable is quite a few miles from our farm, and the costs of running a cable out here seem to be more than it would be feasible to pay.

In its documents, the CRTC says it expects fixed broadband Internet “to be available in 90 per cent of Canadian premises by the end of 2021, and in the remaining 10 per cent of Canadian premises within 10 to 15 years.”

So, there is hope, if I can only convince my 10-year old to wait 10 to 15 years to update “Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare” for his Xbox. (Luckily, he goes to a rural school, so most of his friends are also waiting patiently for the download to finish.)

Because we don’t have a fixed cable, we access the Internet through a tower, wirelessly — “fixed wireless broadband.” This is not the same thing as the “mobile wireless technology” the CRTC refers to in its third objective. Mobile wireless technology is the 3G and 4G data that you use to watch Facebook videos on your phone. If you don’t have access to cellular data at your farm, it’s your time to do cartwheels — snowbanks or not. This could make a big difference for you.

We have pretty good cell service on our farm, but as anyone who’s used their phone Internet as a WiFi hotspot knows, most cell phone plans come with limited data, and high costs if you accidentally download more than your allotted amount. While my phone plan theoretically offers unlimited data, when I download too much in one month I get a text telling me that, to make things fair for everyone, my data speed will be throttled back to nearly nothing until the end of the billing period. While the CRTC objectives mention unlimited data for users with fixed broadband connections, there is no mention of requiring SaskTel to make truly unlimited data plans available to those farmers who have no other options.

The promise and the truth

The problem with a lot of things related to Internet speed is that the theory doesn’t match the reality.

In theory, my Internet problems should already be solved.

Back in 2011, the CRTC issued Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2011-291. In this document, the CRTC said: “it would be in the public interest to establish universal target speeds for broadband Internet access in Canada. This should ensure that all Canadians, particularly those in rural and remote areas, can benefit from a great level of broadband connectivity. In this decision, the Commission establishes target speeds of 5 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream.”

In 2017, the best Internet provider I can find in my area offers me a maximum download speed of 2 Mpbs. That’s the advertised speed. As with most companies, in reality our download speeds aren’t usually as fast as the advertised top speed. The provider we use has great service staff who do their best to keep me happy; they just don’t have access to more spectrum, and I’m five country miles away from their tower.

A sharp-eyed reader from the CRTC might argue that I have access to download speeds of 5 Mbps through a national company that offers Internet service via satellite. This is not untrue. However during “peak periods” this company slows certain data well below that speed according to its “traffic policies.” Other users updating Facebook, playing online video games or watching Ghostbusters on Netflix would get priority over me while I tried to upload a Grainews photo to our Winnipeg server. As well, when I input my postal code into the company’s website, it outputs a statement saying that it “wouldn’t recommend” me trying to use Netflix with the plan they could offer me out here.

And so, I’m still in the same place I was on December 21, when I was out in the sun, blissfully unaware of the CRTC’s latest announcement.

The Internet speed the CRTC thinks city people need is 25 times the speed I’m supposed to be getting, and five times the speed the CRTC has declared as a “target speed” for people like me. Now, there is a new fund in place to focus on making sure city people can watch Netflix on three devices at once, while I’m still waiting to download the map of areas with fixed broadband posted on the CRTC’s website.

As I’ve said before in this space, it was never any different. Electricity, telephones, television channels… all of these things came later to rural areas than cities. When my 10-year old complains about slow download speeds, I counter by telling him “when I was your age, we only had two TV channels.” Today we have way more TV channels than anyone would ever want to watch. I can imagine it now… one day, decades from now, my son will use his insanely fast on-farm Internet connection to tell me by video-link about his own kid’s complaints: “I have to drive all the way to Weyburn to use the teleport machine to get to Hawaii.”

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The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said it was establishing a new fund that providers will pay into that will invest $750 million over five years to build or upgrade broadband infrastructure with a focus on improving access in underserved areas.

Telecom companies with revenues of $10 million or more already contribute a percentage of their profits to subsidize basic phone services. Companies currently pay about 0.5 per cent of their telecom revenue.

Internet revenues, which are currently excluded, will now be included in the calculation of what companies have to pay for the new fund, potentially chipping away at an increasingly profitable area for providers.

With consumers moving to streaming services such as Netflix, offering internet access has become more lucrative for Canadian companies than offering television services.

Canadian telecom and cable companies made $9.81 billion in revenue from the supply of internet connections in 2015, outstripping the $8.92 billion companies made from cable, satellite and internet-enabled television subscriptions, the CRTC said in October.

The CRTC also set a download speed target of 50 megabits per second, well above its previous target of five megabits, and recommended providers offer an unlimited data option for fixed broadband. The regulator did not set a price cap.

In 2015, about 82 per cent of Canadians had access to internet at those speeds.

Providers that are not able to meet those targets will be able to apply for financing from the new fund, which will be run at arms’ length from the CRTC. Only those applying for funding will be obliged to meet the targets.

Applicants will be required to secure supplementary funding from the regional or federal government and put their own investment into the proposed project.

In its budget earlier this year, the Canadian government set aside up to $500 million over five years for improving broadband service in rural and remote communities.

— Reporting for Reuters by Leah Schnurr.

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Researchers at the University of Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College (OAC), as part of the Regional and Rural Broadband (R2B2) project, are studying how “current and future connectivity” influences farmers’ adoption of precision agriculture (PA).

Farm operators growing field crops in southwestern Ontario and the Niagara region and either using, or not yet using, PA technologies are invited to take part in an R2B2 e-survey online.

The study group’s findings so far show the factors that influence farmers’ decisions on PA applications include initial cost, return on investment, training and technical skills, as well as the “diversity of their operations.”

However, the group added, “there are indications that information technology (IT) infrastructure capacity, particularly access to broadband internet, has a significant influence on PA uptake.”

The amount of data collected, stored and processed through PA instruments, and the software required to connect multiple platforms, takes “significant computing power and upload/download speeds,” the group said.

“Broadband,” for the study’s purposes, is defined as high-speed internet with download speeds over five Mbps.

“A lack of capacity in this regard can override any advantages for a producer considering adopting PA,” such as training or affordability, the group said.

For this study, “the objective is to analyze the extent to which access to high-speed internet, or lack thereof, serves as an enabler/barrier to the adoption of various PA applications.”

Funding for this study comes from the Innovation and Growth Policy Division of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

The AAFC division is, more generally, looking at the “current state” of the use of PA in Canada, its impact on the ag sector and the factors that either “facilitate and impede adoption” of such applications.

The division’s ongoing research and analysis “may also be used to inform development of future policy and program options,” the OAC study group said.

The summary results of the study are expected to be available by January on the R2B2 website. — AGCanada.com Network

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