The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), a coalition of eleven Canadian public service employee unions, is demanding that the Conservative government open consultations on the need for legislation to protect Internet neutrality in Canada.

In a letter to Industry Minister Jim Prentice, the NUPGE deplores the lack of action taken by the government to protect the rights of a free and neutral Internet for all Canadians. It states that Comcast’s recent admission that it was blocking peer-to-peer traffic (after claiming it didn’t) should spur the Conservatives to act now before this type of situation becomes the norm.

As proof of concept, the letter mentions more “home-grown” traffic shaping occurrences, like the infamous case of Telus blocking access to its striking workers’ website, and Rogers’ statement that it engages in Comcast-like beahviour. The companies are breaking their own terms of usage without even a blink, and the fact that they can get away with it is clear that we need recourses to ensure that corporate interests do not interfere with our right to free and accessible information.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 4:45 pm and is filed under canada, comcast, Net Neutrality, NUPGE, prentice, rogers, telus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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