Dr. Lynn Gehl PhD - Nation Builder

Gii-Zhigaate-Mnidoo-Kwe (also known as) Lynn Gehl PhD 

Dr. Gehl is a determined Nation Builder.  She has devoted her life to justice and equity for First Nations women.  Dr. Gehl’s determination is apparent in her court action to correct a wrong against women and children falling into the clutches of Canada’s Indian Act.

She leads a Charter Challenge against Sex Discrimination in the Indian Act, most particularly Unknown and Unstated Paternity in the Indian Act.  This describes a terrible injustice triggered partly by British and Canadian colonialists’ inability to recognize their cultural differences with indigenous cultures and the tragic personal injustices that indifference engenders.

It seems to me Canada’s constitutional framework begins with the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Wampum Belts that indeed described a mutually respectful relationship between First Nations and the nation of England and through England, the nation of Canada.

I believe the legal foundation of our Canadian Constitution rests on that Proclamation.  Yet,  the reality of the relationship between the nation of Canada and First Nations does not resemble that mutually respectful relationship, especially as that relationship is prescribed in the Indian Act.  The Indian Act seems to treat the Proclamation as being of no consequence.  

Yet, Canadians pride ourselves on living a strong confederation of peoples from many lands and cultures, focussed on the ability of French and English colonialists to work through differences to achieve what is recognized as the world’s best place to live.

However, we have missed the mark.  We have not engaged the other founding nations, the First Nations, of Canada in the same nation-building effort, over 630 founding First Nations have been almost totally left out of our nation-building process. 

A most egregious example of this omission arises from how Canada treats people the Indian Act defines as being of Unknown and Unstated Paternity.  The Indian Act narrowly defines members of particular First Nations by their paternal lineage, thereby denying people full rights of citizenship and participation in their actual First Nation.  These people are assumed to be fully assimilated into the citizenship and culture of colonial Canada, when their bloodlines and living cultures clearly show they are not part of colonial culture.   

We need to help her stop the practice of the Canadian government in its removal of identity, empowerment and self-worth of First Nations women in ways the spirit of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms always intended to prohibit.

Dr. Gehl’s court action, when and if successful, will fill in an important gap in the foundation of Canadian confederation.  Her action may begin the healing of a wound that has remained open for nearly 250 years.  Her action affords all of us a real chance of beginning to make Canada whole.

She cannot build nation alone.  She needs our help.  

We can help by rasing awareness of Dr. Gehl and her, dare I say our, cause among our fellow Canadians and beyond.  We can offer her our words of encouragement on Facebook, letters to media, letters to elected representatives and by visiting her website http://www.lynngehl.com/ 

We can donate cash much needed to pay court and legal costs.  We can find a Donate button on her website.  She has also started a donation facility on Indiegogo https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aboriginal-affairs-and-northern-development-canada-s-unstated-paternity-policy .

Finally, she has generously offered to use the proceeds of the sales of her published works, the catalogue of which can be found on her website http://www.lynngehl.com/ .  She is offering these to us at significant discounts, to both educate all of us about First Nations and indigenous issues, culture and knowledge, and to raise cash required for her legal action.

Her works include: Anishinaabeg Stories: Featuring Petroglyphs, Petrographs, and Wampum Belts;  The Truth that Wampum Tells: My Debwewin on the Algonquin Land Claims Process; Mkadengwe: Sharing Canada's Colonial Process through Black Face Methodology.

Let’s help strengthening Canada’s foundation by recognizing First Nations women as integral to nation building among all of Canada’s founding nations.

Thank you.  Mike Klein

Note: This font size is chosen in recognition of Dr. Gehl’s vision disability.

Economics

My farm truck requires fuel, lubricants, tires, brakes, hoses, cleaners etc to make my delivery.

I had decided, as a profit making - cost cutting measure to give it 55% of what it has taken to make my delivery.  We had a negotiation and it did not object to its new diet.

After the first delivery with this new diet, my costs are way down, way way down.  Surprisingly, my costs have fallen by order of magnitude beyond the simple 45% of previous costs for my farm truck.

Who knew a simple thing like this could be so wildly successful!  In fact, my farm truck operating costs have fallen to zero.

Next on the cost cutting agenda is my farm-based bakery.  I am meeting with my workers today to negotiate a new cost cutting measure there.  Business is competitive, so I have to cut costs to make it all work.

I am told they need a wage that allows them and their families to thrive throughout their life times, including the 45% of their lives where they are not working, you know when they’re too young and have to be in school, when they’re infirm and when they’re too old and can no longer work.

But my bakery really only needs them while they’re working so I am offering them 55% of their previous wage because that’s all I need and I gotta compete after all.

I don’t expect a problem because there are few alternatives for employment for them and anyway, if they leave, I can access workers from away whose living standards are so low they’ll think this is a perfectly acceptable wage.

So, I’m off walking to the bakery.  It’ll be nice to see the old delivery truck parked in the ditch on the way there.  Kinda miss the old truck.

No, it didn’t run out of fuel.  Ah ha, thought you got me there didn’t you.  For some reason the engine seized right about the time the left front tire blew.  So, nope, it’s not out of fuel.

Mike

We Matter

We Matter

Each and every one of us matters.

That principle must lead all human deliberations, decisions and actions as individuals and members of society.

Each of us must listen with open ears and minds, committed to understanding each other at all times and in all things in order to stay true to that principle.

Some of in society, perhaps more than others, by virtue of choice of career or vocation, have a particular interest in following this principle.  This is because their careers and vocations are defined by the drive to improve the lives of  fellow citizens, fellow human beings.

Nowhere is this more evident than with those serving through not-for-profit, health charity and government organizations.  The sole purpose of these organizations is the betterment of the lives of individuals and  the betterment of society by bettering lives.

In fact the same must be said about all people serving in any sort of leadership position.  The highest purpose of leadership is betterment of the lives of those being led.

What does this commitment mean?

People leading initiatives to improve the lives of fellow human beings must then reflect that each and every one of us matter in the style and manner of their leadership.  We being served must understand from our own observations that we matter to the leaders.  We know we matter when we know we are listened to and heard with understanding.

How will we people know we are being heard?

First of all, the people leading the initiative must ask us what our aspirations and frustrations are, what our comforts and fears are.  Then our leaders must restate our statements in their own words and check back with us, telling us what they have understood by telling us their statements and asking us if agree with that understanding.  The leaders will reassure us that our original statements in our own words will be saved, archived, to be referred to when needed.

In the discussions between leaders and us, both parties need to explicitly state that while we are working together addressing the issue exactly as expressed and understood, both they and we will learn new things as the process of addressing the issues unfolds, perhaps even because of addressing the issues.  That may cause the goal of the improvement initiative to change.  Recognizing this, we and the leaders must agree to maintain communication throughout to ensure we are true collaborators in our effort.

To enable this collaboration and continuous learning, we must maintain an open and accessible archive so both the leaders and we can be as up to date as possible on the development process.  We must maintain a record of all actions and  communications undertaken with third parties who may be required to enable the improvement process.  What are those third parties suggesting?  What are they doing?  How are each we and the leaders involved and engaged in these actions?  How does the enabling action work?  If it is seen to be not capable of fully delivering the desired outcome, why not?  What might be done to achieve the desired outcome?  What are the costs in time, resources and money to make the attempt?  Might alternative actions achieve the desired outcome?

The details of data collection and record keeping become important, including use of language commonly understandable to all interested parties.  Data collection is ideally an on-going “real time” process.  That may not be achievable because of resource constraints, but care must be taken to remain current.

When collecting data, particularly by asking questions, it is critical to not lock people into the box of the questioner’s mind.  The questions must be as open-ended as possible to ensure we are speaking our minds without having our thoughts filtered by someone else’s mind.  The questioning might start with something as open-ended as, “Please try to not think of services I (the questioner) or the organization I work with have to offer.  Please think of absolutely anything that comes to mind.  Okay?  Here are the questions.
What is going well in your life?
What is not going well in your life?
What is okay but could be better?”

Those questions might lead to very specific or very general or vague answers, but they can be used to begin dialogue.  The details of any given issue will be drawn out through this dialogue.  Always remember we must lead the dialogue.  The questioners will always encourage continual dialogue but not lead the dialogue.

If possible, the questioners should work within a questioning-group or research group to help develop understanding of the responses and to help carry the dialogue along.  The group will be able to help its members remember to remain true to the message heard from us.

This is especially important where the group or questioning organization is a service provider to the people.  Service personnel tend to do their very best to meet the clients’ needs and individual personnel can feel hurt or take responses as negative criticisms of their ability or motivation.  The group can be there to guard against misunderstanding of the issue due to defensiveness on the part of caring personnel.  The group can also support service personnel to prevent them from becoming discouraged.  In fact, the information being gathered will serve as intelligence critical to organizational and service personnel effectiveness.

Research group work is also critically important where the goal is to come up with service policy around which to build programs to meet our needs.  For policies to be relevant and effective, they must meet needs common to individuals and subgroups, or all of us.  That takes broad perspective enabled by many perspectives brought by each of the members of the research group.  The group members can encourage each other to stick with this difficult work, taking no short cuts which could easily disable the entire process and make a mock of everyone’s participation.

We all need to remember there is no greater waste of resources than ineffectiveness.

Conclusion
This can be the most rewarding work any advocate or advocacy group or indeed any service person can do.

All enabling third party providers will thank service provider leaders for directing their attention to exactly those issues important to each of us being served.  The providers’ work on our behalf will save third parties tons of time and other resources and greatly enhance their effectiveness by focussing exactly on our stated needs.

We whose needs are being met will, of course, be the most rewarded by this work.  We will know we matter and are not reduced to simply being numbers or test subjects in some system.  We know we are respected as individuals. We know our self-defined quality of life is improved through the effort shared between those who serve and ourselves.

Lastly and equally importantly, service providers and their leaders will themselves realize the reward that comes from doing the most effective job possible at improving the quality of life of those they serve, thereby improving the level of satisfaction throughout society.

Finally, each and every one of us knows that we, each of us server and served alike, do indeed matter.

Mike Klein

The Trouble with the Big Idea

Let’s say I had the “Big Idea” that the best economic planning relies on demand pull, rather than supply push.  I have reasons for thinking that and let’s pretend we all agree.

Then let’s say I had the “Big Idea” that capitalists (anyone with a savings account or pension fund) demand their savings/investments yield a useful and adequate income.

Then let’s say I had the “Big Idea” that enterprises were producing services and goods that people demand.

Lastly, let’s say I see a way for these “demands” to collaborate with each other so each of them succeeds in meeting their respective demands.

Okay, Wahoo!  I have found an exciting opportunity, a way of realizing the “Big Idea”, that I can describe as one large economic and business opportunity for people to participate in.

Now, I have taken that realization plan to people I see as prospective participants, partners, in the project and tell them how exciting the project is.

The reaction?  Well, they have all become excited by the suggested (Never promise!) benefits to each of them.

Then I begin to describe the intended operation as it will be, hoping they will see their respective roles as plain as day and jump in to assume those roles.

But, ... have you seen the movie “Moneyball”?  Good movie.  There is a scene where the general manager begins to ask hard questions about succeeding on the field without being able to do the standard thing, buy the most talented players to build a team.  The coaching/scouting staff are sitting around the meeting table, anxious to get on with things as they know them.  Billy, the g.m., isn’t too sure himself as his “Big Idea” realization is new to him too, so he can’t explain himself clearly at all.  The coaching/scouting staff keep looking at him waiting for something real to at least be said and nothing is happening.  This goes on for a while, a lot of quiet staring.

Well, that’s me in front of these prospective participants, trying to deal with a room full of blank, but expectant stares.

So, I have known all along I had to write the business plan, which is actually a project plan to bring a set of, albeit well known, theoretical relationships together to make this all happen.

The problem has remained that the “Big Idea” means that as one aspect or relationship is developed, it influences other relationships. These changes trigger the need for redesign and redefinition of the whole project.  So I then start over.  And I see that I will have to go through this again and again.

Frustrating.

So I gave up.

I then had no real idea what to do next, just that I had to do something.

I just started to write what I knew.

It eventually occurred to me that I was breaking the “Big Idea” into its component parts.

I wrote the core methodology that underlies the whole enterprise, the patent, as it were.

I wrote the benefits to the main characters in the project.

I wrote the needs for professional advice, one professional at a time.

I wrote the descriptions of the actions needed by the participants who will deliver the service as an on-going business, one participant at a time.

It seems I have a pretty good idea by now how all this will unfold.  By addressing each component separately, the plan is being built one component at a time.

I know I will have to adjust each of the components as the other components are added.

I also know that after the last component has been prepared, and I think all the pieces fit and the whole project plan is complete, once the participants start to tell me how each of them can be involved, the components will change again.

So, the moral of the story is, never be afraid to break down a project into bite-size pieces.  Breaking it down can only happen when there is a whole vision to break down, so that is the vision to achieve.  That means studying the “Big Idea” until you really know it.  Then create the components and assemble them to enable achievement of that vision.

Don’t worry, the components will be parts of the vision because the vision of the “Big Idea” is always in front of you as you work.

It’s still not simple, but the “Big Idea” then has the ability to become the “Big Thing”.

Mike

CEO/Employee Pay Ratio - more

CEO/Employee Pay Ratio - more

Economic Management

Bubble Living

Remember the story of the boy in a bubble?  Actually, it seems to me we all live in bubbles.

We sometimes refer to that as being “in the box” or “seeing the world through our own lenses” or “seeing the world in our own colour of glasses”.

I prefer the image of living in a bubble.  Bubbles have interesting qualities.  At one end of the spectrum are bubbles with transparent, permeable walls.  At the other end are bubbles with opaque, thick walls.

It seems to me the permeability and transparency of the walls is completely determined by our awareness of them and our deliberate efforts to make them what they are.  When we are unaware of them they may evolve into either thick or thin walled bubbles.  When we are aware them, the thickness of the walls may be a deliberate choice.

When we are unaware of the bubble we live in, we may go about our business in whatever way we know how, without any idea of the impact our lives have on the world around us, including the people around us.  Thus we may know ourselves well, but not appreciate our place in the world and the impact we have on the world and its impact on us.

Alternatively, we may be aware of the bubble we live in and make deliberate decisions about how transparent and permeable the wall is.  We may even decide under what circumstances permeability and transparency will be increased and reduced and for whom.  Here we may know ourselves well and appreciate the impact we have on the world and its impact on us.

My guess is that the former is the more common situation.

What’s that mean in the context of CEO/Employee Pay Ratio?

Well, the CEO has worked hard to reach that noted level of achievement, the “C suite” or chief executive level in an organization.  The society of C level people is filled with other C level people from within their own organization or from many organizations.  These are busy, earnest, hard-working folks whose job description includes C level tasks often done in collaboration and competition with other C level folks.

They are, therefore, likely to see themselves relative to their peers.  There are tiers within the C level world, roughly divided along lines of size of organization in which they occupy the C level.  Thus the larger the organization, the larger the C level office, the greater the C level compensation.  The competition among them has them further ranking their economic worth as being reflected in their relative compensation levels.

The point?  The CEO/Employee Pay Ratio is not their focus.  They know they get paid more than average employees for whatever reason, including tradition.  It is almost certainly not a deliberate decision to have C level pay be 100 or 106.5 or even 331.72 times that of the average employee.  It is a deliberate decision to have C level pay be relative to the pay of other C level people and the competitive instinct drives each executive to be compensated at a level greater than fellow C level executives.

When we consider that situation in the context of how C level executives and their Board of Directors executive compensation committees are populated (as discussed in the previous blog entry “ CEO/Employee Pay Ratio”), we see the tendency to have ever rising C level pay scales as organic outcomes of their working environment.

The phenomenon is then more an outcome of positive forces, seeking greater responsibility and competing with peers, than negative forces, keeping the average folks down.

It’s just that, in my opinion, it has spun out of control because of the lack of appreciation of the impact they have on the world around them.  The C level bubble serves to isolate, making the impact of these decisions less obvious or even invisible to C level executives themselves.

The impact on the viability of the organization will also be negative, perhaps even in the relatively short term.  The impact of this discrepancy on the world is negative.

In the organization, a disincentive is created wherein, whether business os “good” or “bad”, the average employees see the C level compensation continuing to escalate and be a world unto itself, while the average employee sees outsourcing, fierce wage competition in a race to the bottom and lay-offs.  This makes it difficult for employees to remain motivated, innovative - productive.


For the world or society, a divide is created wherein people do not see themselves as in it together, furthering the commonweal.

Furthermore, in society, we have fewer and fewer people with disposable income to use to buy stuff, lowering the demand for stuff that drives all business throughout the consumer goods supply chain.  This lowering of the tide lowers all boats, making all businesses ever less viable.

The bubbles then burst to no one’s benefit.

CEO/Employee Pay Ratio

Economic Management
CEO/Employee Pay Ratio

This is a hotly discussed issue of late.  The ratios can be high with public company CEO’s being compensated an average employee’s annual wage within the first day of a year’s work.

Some argue this is a sign of a breakdown of society as the share of society’s output going to chief executives is rising far faster than the overall income of society and definitely faster than the compensation to employees.

This imbalance, these might claim, leads to depressing consumer demand and social unrest.

Others argue this is an example of market forces at work and highly qualified and successful people must be retained by employers or lose out to competitors, both at home and abroad.

The imbalance, these others might argue, may well right itself over time, but in the meantime in a world short of talent, this is the cost of remaining competitive.

I do have questions that I have not yet seen anyone express an expert opinion on.

Whereas a great many chief executives are also on boards of directors of not only their own employers but on boards of directors of other competing employers, might this argument of “let the market decide” not be somewhat self-serving?

Don’t we have, in effect, chief executives making decisions about not only the compensation of other chief executives, but about chief executive compensation levels generally?

Furthermore, don’t these chief executives move among employers, from chief executive post to chief executive post within that relatively small cohort?

Do chief executives move internationally and experience the same pay ratios in all developed countries?  If not, do those countries with reduced pay ratios have less successful executives with lower returns to shareholders, lower market shares, lower innovation and lower productivity?  If not, why not?

So why is this not a case of a skewed market wherein chief executives and members of boards of directors are sitting on both sides of the bargaining table at the same time, in effect, at least indirectly in conflict of interest in negotiating compensation for chief executives?

As we see in the resources below, shareholders, securities regulators and securities exchanges, along with the general public, are all taking an interest in this issue, most particularly in the aftermath of the financial meltdown of 2007/2008.

Governance is interesting isn’t it.

Mike Klein

Resource links:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2013/08/27/how-wide-is-your-wage-gap-new-rule-would-reveal-ceo-pay-vs-employee-pay/2/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-17/ceo-to-worker-pay-ratio-disclosure-proposal-to-be-issued-by-sec.html

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/05/ratio-ceo-worker-compensation

Spectrum Auctions and Consumer Advocacy

Economic Management
Spectrum Auctions and Consumer Advocacy
Needs
Canadians see need for expanded coverage area with fewer and smaller “dead” zones for mobile phone and data service.

Canadians see need for greater data transmission capacity within the available mobile phone and data service areas.

Government Initiatives
One federal government proposition is that holding spectrum auctions enhances competition to better serve consumers with mobile phone and general Internet service.

Another federal government proposition is that new rules governing contracts between mobile phone providers and users will improve access to service area coverage.

Background
We need to note the differences between bandwidth spectrum and geographic area service bars.

Bandwidth spectrum refers to the number of frequencies that can be used to carry data.  For instance, the AM band has a range of numbers representing frequencies within that band, the FM and UHF bands likewise each have a spectrum from lower frequency to higher frequency within each defined band.  Then there is the microwave band and other bands.

These signals may be airborne,  wire-borne or glass fibre-borne.  The infrastructure may include above ground lines with poles, underground lines, towers and satellites. A set of copper paired cable phone lines may carry multiple bands and glass fibres can easily carry multiple bands, each with multiple frequencies within each band.

Service areas I have referred to as geographic area service bars are areas in which mobile or cell phones characterize signal strength by number and/or size of service bars.  Having no service bars means there is no signal strength, therefore no service.

Bandwidth is only meaningful where there is service.  Where there is no service, there is also no bandwidth.

Government Initiatives
Bandwidth Spectrum Auctions
Auctions are intended to deliver goods and services to the highest bidder.  So the Government of Canada is proposing to follow the example of the US government in raising revenue by selling authority to use regulated bandwidth to mobile phone and data transmission service providers.  The revenue would go to the (presumably) general funds of the Government of Canada and provide funds to deliver government services to the people of Canada.  The highest bidder notion is supposed to maximize that revenue.

Provider Service Contracts
The Government has initiated change to limit contracts, particularly for mobile phones.  Thus contracts can now be no more than two years and the terms of terminating a contract, where for instance a subscriber moves to an area not served by the initially contracted provider, are eased.

Each of these initiatives is proposed to improve service and reduce costs to consumers.

Situation
Competition
Canada’s mobile phone service is almost totally provided by three dominant long established providers; Telus, Bell, Rogers.  These and other legacy telecoms have long ago installed the physical infrastructure that supports our phone and data transmission services.  These include wires, towers, satellites, microwave systems, undersea cables, routers etc.

These are businesses that must at least recover their costs to remain viable to provide service at all.  Ideally from their perspective, they are businesses that buy low and sell high or at least buy and then sell at a mark-up.

These three providers, we are told by Government of Canada advertising, do not provide complete coverage for all parts of Canada.  The providers’ argument against providing complete coverage is that both the capital and the operating costs of doing so are too high to be sustainable,.

Verizon and other very large international service providers are not interested in entering Canada because the costs of serving a relatively small population over a large area are prohibitive.  Small service providers face the same prohibitive capital startup costs and must compete with the three much larger established providers, each with a large subscriber base.  This means the threshold for new providers to enter this market is considered to be too high to make entry a reasonable business proposition.

Capacity
Bandwidth can be a real resource when the communication infrastructure is in place.  Authority to use yet to be built bandwidth is a completely artificial resource.  Simply having authority to use a nonexistent resource is not a guarantee the resource will be made available and subsequently used.  In fact, one of the purposes of buying authority is to keep competitors from using the bandwidth to which the authority applies.

Bandwidth is more than a concept, it is real physical infrastructure enabling electronic, digital communication.  Bandwidth requires knowledge and capital to be put into place.  Canada’s three major providers have overlapping bandwidth infrastructure that enables them to serve subscribers unique to each in the same geographical area.  So the major population areas have at least three choices of bandwidth to access.  There is nothing stopping me, for instance, having three separate service contracts at my one physical address, each with its own physical infrastructure.  Of course I would have to pay for the use of each of these three through three separate contracts.  The three providers must earn revenue for the service they provide, no matter how many other providers are covering the same area.

As an aside, my guess is that the actual costs of these services are higher because of three sets of infrastructure than would be the case would the providers share space on a single capital and operating cost of a single physical infrastructure.

Conclusions
So what about the Government’s proposition?  Did the government achieve any of its stated objectives?  Did we benefit by those achievements?

Increased Competition: The same three established predominant providers are the only ones who can justify buying authority to use bandwidth.  So now we have three dominant providers in a position of greater dominance by having exclusive use of greater bandwidth.  In fact, the purchasers now have the legal authority to keep other providers out of certain bandwidth capacity.

Therefore, no increased competition and no benefit to us.

Increased Competition to Lower Cost to Consumers: The same three dominant providers control the space, but with increased capital costs, the costs of bandwidth licenses.  They must get a return on those bandwidth authorities by charging cost plus margin to users.  The cost to users must rise or we lose even those three dominant providers to bad business economics.

Therefore no lowering of cost, in fact, a raising of cost to users.

Bandwidth Authorities as Benefit to Consumers:
The revenues raised by bandwidth auction definitely goes to Government revenues and can replace tax revenues that might otherwise have to be paid by consumers.  However, it seems clear that the providers must charge more than they paid, thereby costing consumers more than the government revenue raised through the bandwidth auctions.

Therefore no net economic benefit to taxpayer-consumers.

Unmentioned Impact on Canadians
Bandwidth Auctions as Income Transfer Policy
The investors in the three dominant providers buy access to increased consumer spending by buying the bandwidth use authority.  That enables the transfer of money (income redistribution) from every Canadian bandwidth user, filtered through the corporate structure of the three providers, to the investors in those three providers.  So, the Canadian treasury is indeed at least indirectly being used to transfer income from the many to the few by creating an indirect tax on consumers, a tax on providers that must be passed on to consumers after being marked up.

Improved Access to Competition as Portrayed in the Government Advertising
The Issue: Security of Supply of Service
So the nice lady (in the ad) drives into a non-service area and is frustrated by the lack of service.  Will the sale of bandwidth to the three providers improve her situation?  Will the government’s policy of enabling termination of contract to allow and enable start of a new replacement contract with another provider help this nice lady?

Well let’s look at her situation.  She apparently had service up the point in her trip where she did not have service.  Supposedly another provider will offer service in that “dead” zone.  So, does that other provider offer service in the “live” zone she just left?  We don’t know.  It seems the nice lady would need to terminate and start contracts every 500 metres or so, with each contract being at the normal rates of such contracts, including the new charges to cover the cost of purchasing bandwidth.  We have no assurance the newly purchased bandwidth authority will add bandwidth to the service, nor do we have any assurance that the new bandwidth authority will improve area coverage, leaving fewer “dead” zones.

In fact as already discussed, new bandwidth is only meaningful where there is service, but does not add more service area.  There are the same number of “dead” zones.  It seems likely these dead zones will remain dead longer as the provider companies have had to devote expensive capital to purchase of bandwidth licenses instead of adding coverage areas.

So What Was The Point?
Service Contracts
The nice lady standing in for all of us is meant to understand that the Government of Canada served her interest by making it easier to remove an unwanted contract, thereby making her more willing to return the party in government to power in the next election.  The government did, after all, attempt to respond to consumer frustrations with this initiative without committing to government expenditure.

Maybe the government can impose, as market interventionist  governments might do, rules that allow contracts to terminate and start as we make our journeys across Canada through automation.  Without the ability to more easily switch contracts among providers, there is little point to the new initiative.

However, in the practical reality of mobile phone and mobile data service, it seems technically infeasible to switch providers at will to simply achieve greater area coverage.

It therefore seems this impractical solution is not actually helpful to the nice lady.

Capacity
The word “competition” in bandwidth auctions might have Canadians thinking the government was reducing costs and improving services by adding bandwidth competition to the service mix.  Again, the nice lady might be convinced to return this party to power.

But what if she notices as previously discussed that her costs have actually risen and her security of supply has not improved?

Seems this initiative was actually not helpful to the nice lady and in fact worked against her interest.

Suggestion
Perhaps the Government of Canada could demonstrate real leadership by installing bandwidth and service coverage for all areas of Canada as an infrastructure to be made available to all and any phone and data transmission service providers.

The threshold for entry into the mobile phone market could be reduced to next to nothing, thereby actually making it possible for many providers to enter the market as opposed to raising the threshold to keep other providers out through bandwidth auctions.

After all, we the taxpayer-consumers are going to have to pay for it all no matter how it’s presented to us.  At least this way the providers can design their services to respond each in its own unique way to consumer needs without having to devote all that development capital to simply crossing the threshold of entry into the market.

Possible Outcome
The bandwidth would physically exist.

The service area coverage could be expanded.

The lowering of cost to each provider and thereby to each of us could be accomplished by having each provider use only its allotted bandwidth(s) on that infrastructure common to all.

Additionally, the high capital cost of providing at least three redundant physical infrastructures may be avoided, therefore making a stronger business case for coverage in every area of Canada, no matter how remote.

Mike