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The federal Liberals say wireless prices in Canada are too high, and have ordered the countrys telecom watchdog to carry out a review that could lead to less expensive mobile phone services.

Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains announced Monday he is ordering the CRTC to review a decision from earlier this year. That decision effectively prevented discount wireless companies from offering services based mostly on wi-fi connections and by roaming on other companies networks.

The prosperity of Canadians depends on their access to affordable Internet and wireless services. These services are no longer luxuries, Bains said in a statement. They are basic tools for all Canadians regardless of where they live.

Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains.

Speaking at the Canadian Telecom Summit on Monday, Bains highlighted that many rural areas in Canada still lack Internet and wireless services.

Access isnt the only challenge, the bigger barrier is price, Bains said, as quoted at Bloomberg. The digital divide is unacceptable.

Wireless companies known as mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) have been operating in the U.S and elsewhere for some time. They use a combination of wi-fi access and roaming on competitors' networks to offer wireless services. The CRTC ruled in March that big telecom companies dont have to sell wholesale roaming access to these types of wireless companies.

The Liberals announcement is certain to put the government at odds with Bell, Rogers and Telus, which between them control some 90 per cent of Canadas wireless market.

It also means the Liberals are taking up a cause championed by the previous Conservative government, which moved aggressively to increase competition in Canadas telecom markets, but met with little success.

The three most prominent startup wireless companies Mobilicity, Public Mobile and Wind Mobile were all bought out by the big three telecoms in recent years. Those three were not MVNO's, though they did rely on the big telecoms' networks. Wind Mobile recently rebranded to Freedom Mobile.

Wireless carriers like the now-defunct Mobilicity failed to make much of an impact in Canada's mobile market.

The government is clearly sending a signal to incumbents that it wants more affordable wireless plans in the market, which could be a popular policy in the context of upcoming elections in the not-too-distant future, Desjardins telecom analyst Maher Yaghi wrote in a client note.

Yaghi said that although Canada could see MVNOs come into the market, its likelier that Big Telecom will head off the threat and lower their prices.

They could pre-empt any drastic policy decision by offering lower-end wireless plans, similar to those that Rogers and Telus offer in Internet, Yaghi wrote.

Consumer activist group OpenMedia lauded the Liberals move, saying it could lead to lower prices and greater choice for Canadian consumers and small businesses.

The rest is here:
Liberals Challenge Big Telecom In Fight For Affordable Wireless - Huffington Post Canada

Let freedom ring! When liberals see a problem, the solution is often to call for a ban. Here's a list of just some of the more ridiculous items on the liberal chopping block.

Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, the leader of the 1970s Stop ERA movement, has died.

From long range sharpshooting to 24-hour target practice, here are Americas 10 Best Shooting Ranges.

See the NFLs best-looking cheerleading squads.

The most prolific makes of handguns manufactured in the U.S., based on production statistics provided to ATF.

See the Hollywood child stars we adored, all grown up.

Beauty and brawn, see the sexiest women in professional sports.

Playboy announced the end of an era - the magazine announced it will no longer feature pictures of nude women.

Tattoos are more popular than ever, but dont let your kids get something like this. Check out the craziest tattoos celebrities have shown off and the ones they came to regret.

See the women who have won the annual honor from Esquire magazine.

See who was awarded the title of Sexiest by leading entertainment magazines.

See the best gun-wielding movie heroines.

See the wives and girlfriends of Super Bowl legends.

Hollywood stars who have aged really well.

See the outrageous cars in this years auto show in Geneva.

See the best news pictures from around the world.

See the best handguns for less than $500.

Celebrities who look like other celebrities.

See the top 10 U.S. military helicopters of all time.

See the best and most influential handguns ever made.

See the wives and girlfriends of NFL stars.

See the military canines who bravely served in foreign wars.

Read the rest here:
13 Things Liberals Want To Ban - Photos - Washington Times

President Trump has promised that a $1 trillion infrastructure plan will be put in front of lawmakers before the end of the year, but a group of liberal lawmakers want to see twice that investment during the next 10 years.

That kind of political one-upsmanship could hurt lawmakers' ability to actually pass an infrastructure proposal when a legislative package is introduced, an analyst argued.

Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus signed on to a plan to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure, a proposal they're calling the 21st Century New Deal for Jobs. The goal is to adapt President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal from the Great Depression for modern times through direct government investment.

The plan would invest $200 billion per year over 10 years in a variety of areas roads, bridges, drinking water and waste water systems, transit, airports, public schools, affordable housing and high-speed broadband, to name a few.

While Trump's plan is rumored to be more reliant on freeing up private investment in infrastructure to make up the $1 trillion total, the group of liberal lawmakers wants direct investment from the federal government. The plan calls the Republican agenda "a sham" because it doesn't put any new resources into infrastructure.

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., promised the plan would be far more expansive than Trump's plan.

"The American people deserve to have a serious conversation about how to address these needs," he said in a statement. "To fund infrastructure projects, President Trump's relatively small and incoherent plan would use irresponsible tax gimmicks that benefit Wall Street at the expense of taxpayers. My colleagues and I know that Americans cannot afford to settle for this scam."

Infrastructure is widely seen as one of the few areas in which Republicans and Democrats will be willing to work together during Trump's administration. Spending on public projects is generally viewed favorably by the public, and lawmakers are eager to bring back federal funding to projects in their districts.

However, Trump's promised $1 trillion infrastructure package has yet to materialize as Congress continues to fight over healthcare reform. Infrastructure is said to be the third-highest priority for the administration, behind repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act and passing a tax reform package. Trump has proposed rolling tax reform and infrastructure into a single bill.

Trump proposed $200 billion in infrastructure spending as a part of his fiscal 2018 budget released late last month, with little fanfare.

The one-upmanship on display from the progressive lawmakers might actually do some legitimate harm to Congress' ability to get an infrastructure package passed and signed by Trump, said Michael Sargent, an infrastructure analyst at The Heritage Foundation.

The entire discussion around infrastructure spending since the 2016 campaign has gotten out of control, he said. First, Hillary Clinton proposed spending $500 billion. Then Trump doubled it in his campaign promises. And now liberal lawmakers are trying to double Trump's proposal.

It's leading to a downward spiral in real policy ideas that instead leads to political grandstanding that harms negotiations, he said.

"It does do a disservice to actually looking at our infrastructure needs because everyone just thinks this money is free and because the American public likes the idea of spending on infrastructure," he said.

"This money has to come from somewhere. Either they're borrowing for it, or they're going to pay for it with $2 trillion of tax increases on businesses that will actually stymie the economy. This could inflict some serious damage on the economy."

The progressive plan might serve as a marker as to where liberal lawmakers are when legislative negotiations start, but it doesn't have a chance of becoming a reality, Sargent said.

"It's a real grab bag of nonsense, essentially," he said.

Sargent said the goal of the progressives appears to be spending money to create jobs, which isn't necessary during the current time of low unemployment. Even liberal economists don't think direct government spending is necessary to create jobs at the moment, he said.

There are ways to improve the country's infrastructure, such as cutting regulations that slow projects or unleashing more private financing through public-private partnerships, but the progressive package appears to just be an attempt to put people into ineffective jobs, Sargent said.

"You could just pay people to go out and dig holes, or do a man-bun census in Brooklyn, but the point is to actually improve infrastructure," Sargent said.

"This doesn't appear to be that. It just seems to be a big jobs program," he added.

One aspect of the plan would appeal to Trump: an additional emphasis on employing local workers and buying American-made products.

The liberal lawmakers would require projects to hire local workers and would require an increased prevailing wage requirement. Prevailing wage is the average pay and benefits for workers in similar fields in a local area, and some states require projects funded with government money to pay the prevailing wage.

The plan also prioritizes the hiring of military veterans and demands "robust Buy America provisions in every federal procurement decision for labor and materials."

Edward Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department at the AFL-CIO, represents 32 affiliated unions a group of traditionally Democratic voters that leaned toward Trump during the 2016 election. He said the emphasis on local workers and American products won his support.

"We applaud the Congressional Progressive Caucus' commitment to our nation's transportation manufacturing sector by calling for strengthened and more defined Buy America rules," Wytkind said in a statement. "Expanding American job creation by maximizing public purchasing power must be included in any infrastructure plan."

Read more from the original source:
Liberals try to one-up Trump with $2 trillion infrastructure proposal - Washington Examiner

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Posted: Jun 05, 2017 12:01 AM

It was an undeniably awesome week when measured by the only metric that truly matters, the amount of pain inflicted upon liberals. Now, we are not sadists; we dont delight in watching liberals suffer because their suffering itself makes us happy (Okay, it makes us a little happy). Rather, liberals misery is an important teaching aid that might succeed in instructing them in the folly of their poisonous, ridiculous ideology, since reason doesnt work. And they had better learn and change their dangerous course before we all end up here.

Also, some sanctimonious jerks who pretend to be conservative humiliated themselves again, and thats always fun.

The big event was when President Trump did something that has caused the liberal elite and the conservative Wormtongue contingent to wet their collective Underoos. He chose democracy, science, and normal Americans over the elitist twits of the pagan climate cult.

Horrors! An American president choosing Pittsburgh over Paris Oh, well, I never!

The Paris Accords were apparently such a big deal and so mightily important that there was no need to submit this proposed radical restructuring of our economy and the crippling costs it would impose upon us to the representatives of the people. Consent of the governed? No time for such technicalities! In a hundred years it might might be slightly warmer!

To argue for the Paris Accords is to argue against democracy incredibly, they wanted to deny us any say in our electric bills tripling and in hundreds of thousands of our citizens being tossed out of work to please the Chardonnay-swilling swells of San Francisco and Manhattan. They all know this treaty would never pass so they decided to make a treaty without having it ratified senators have to answer to actual voters, and when you vote to give Third World dictators billions of bucks from your constituents pockets, they resent it. Plus, its super hard to explain why were meeting one standard and China gets to meet a different (and much lower) one. And all to attain maybe a fractional decrease in the temperature a century from now. Maybe. Unless a volcano erupts or something else happens that changes things, in the way temperatures changed long before Exxon came along.

Basically, it was a bogus goal based on a fake crisis designed to justify a massive transfer of wealth and power away from us and to the liberal elite. They call that #science.

And Trump nuked it. Killed it dead. Their screams of pain and wailing about earth crimes and eco treason are a beautiful symphony, and their response to it all was illustrative:

Why shouldnt our representatives get to vote on this treaty in the Senate like the Constitution says?

Were all going to die!

Why should China and India get to pollute more than us?

Were all going to die!

How is writing checks to Third World countries going to help the climate?

Dont you see? Were all going to die!

Well, Im convinced, but not how they intended. And not by them either, but by the shrieks of terror from the crony capitalist contingent and its zillionaire members like Elon Musk and the GE chairman who fear their government subsidy gravy train may be derailing. Any time the corporate rent-seekers have the sadz, I have the happyz.

Of course, we also have the pseudo-con contingent coming along trying to step on the GOPs Schumer. Mitt Romney piped up that leaving the Paris Accords is terrible essentially because his rich buddies and the Euros think so. Great, he and Hillary agree. You can be sure Jeb! will be weighing in soon about how putting our people out of work to cater to the delusions of Angela Merkel is an act of love.

The other big deal came on the cultural front when Kathy Griffin forgot that normal people have an aversion to beheading political opponents though how long that will last if liberals keep changing the rules is unknown. She then apologized and then unapologized at a press conference with Gloria Allreds lawyer daughter. Im not sure why Griffin needed a lawyer, unless she feels compelled to file a class action suit against normal people for malicious decency.

What was truly great was how this Hollywood fringe mediocritys idiocy brought the current manifestation of liberalism into such focus not just for us news junkies but for normal people. She gave us a great opportunity to say, Hey, this is what #TheResistance is all about. These are the people who want to turn your culture into a cesspool and then drown you in it.

And it worked that hackneyed crone has caused liberalism more damage than a thousand unread scold-tomes by Ben Sasse, who is always willing to instruct fellow conservatives on our moral inadequacy but who cant even man-up enough to tell that witless creep Bill Maher that the N-word is un-Judeo/Christian and unAmerican.

But then arose the usual nasal whines of the usual wusscons about how responding to Griffins head games was beneath us and how we conservatives shouldnt stoop to their level by actually talking about what every single person in America is talking about.

Baloney. These wimps whimper and wail about our cultural decline and then, when presented with a golden opportunity to make our conservative case and run up the score, they go AWOL because they dont want to get their soft, girlish paws dirty by actually fighting for what they say they believe in. They are frauds and scammers. They were happy to sit in their donor-funded sinecures waving their fingers at liberalisms relentless march through our culture, but all of a sudden it turned out that we normals expected them to actually fight. And when that ginger geriatric cryptkeeper of a comic gave us a blood-soaked opportunity on a platter, they turned tail and ran rather than jam it down our enemies collective throat. Losers.

And as for not wanting someone persecuted for speaking her mind, or her mindless as the case may be, that is absolutely right as a principle and absolutely wrong as a tactic. We tried reason. We tried principle. And, as the enigmatic Ace of Spades observes, those tactics failed. So now, lets try pain.

Lets let them see and, more importantly, feel the consequences of the very rules they want to impose on us. Ill gladly sacrifice Kathy Griffins ability to be a talentless hack to save free speech by using the corpse of her already comatose career to teach liberals what the end game of their new rules looks like.

Hell, we better stop these liberal morons now, because things can get a lot worse if you want to see what a lot worse looks like, check out my new novel Indian Country. Heres a spoiler: its really violent and people get hurt right here in America. So if ceremonially disemboweling the careers of some Kathy Griffins or some Bill Mahers is what it takes to start getting liberal heads right and get us back to something like normal, count me in.

Excerpt from:
A Week Of Surfing On A Sea Of Liberal Tears - Townhall

A lot has changed in Alberta over the past century.

Half-tons have replaced horses on our streets; the oil and gas industry has supplantedfarming as the province's economic engine;and Calgary, the province'sCowtown,has grown from a small city of 35,000 to a bustling metropolis of more than a million.

Provincial politics, too, isbarely recognizable.

In June 1917, the Liberal Party of Alberta was celebrating an election victory that would turn out to be its last.

Today, itholds just one seat in the legislature. A hundredyears removed from electoral success, andmore than a decade from any real political relevance, Alberta's Liberals sit idling at a dustyprairie crossroads.

On Sunday, party members choosebetween two candidates willingto jumpinto thedriver's seat anddetermine which direction their party will take.

The question facingDavid Khan and KerryCundal: Should they continue to fight on under the Liberal flagor allow the tattered brand to simply fade away,folding it into something new.

For Khan, it is a simple choice. If he wins the party leadership, he hopes to lead the Liberals down the road to redemption and into the next provincial election.

Premier Arthur Sifton, front left, and his Liberal government in the Alberta legislature circa 1917. (Glenbow Museum)

"I am very optimistic about the next election," he said. "I think the NDP are going to lose a lot of seats and I want them to lose them to us."

Khan believes his Liberals canwin at least five to eight seats in 2019, mainly in Calgary and suburban Edmonton.

The source of that optimism is hissense that with the NDP in power, and the imminent demise of the Progressive Conservative Party,centrist voters in Alberta are looking for a new home.

"We have got a huge opportunity because there is a huge opening in the centre, and much of that NDP vote in the last election was a protest vote," Khan said.

And he believes that under Justin Trudeau,the Liberal brand is now a strength rather than a weakness.

"We elected two federal MPs for the first time since 1967 in Calgary,and two more in Edmonton I think federally and provincially, the Liberal brand is on the rise here in Alberta."

There is a precedent for this kind of comeback.

Oneneed look no further than the B.C. Liberals, who went from having no seatstoOfficial Oppositionto forming governmentin just two elections in the 1990s.

Of course, staying the courseisn't the only way forward.

Liberalleadership candidate Kerry Cundal agrees that many centrist voters in Alberta are up for grabs, but the Calgary lawyer isn't ruling out co-operating with other parties to get them.

David Khan, left, and Kerry Cundal are vying for the leadership of the Alberta Liberal Party after Nolan Crouse, who had been the lone candidate, dropped out two days before the nomination deadline. (Stephanie Wiebe/CBC News; Kerry Cundal/YouTube)

"If we share the same principles and the same vision for Alberta, then we should be working together, not against each other," she said.

Cundaltook part in a"unite the centre" meeting in Red Deer in April and says that she would consider merging with another party or dropping the Liberal name if party members supported it.

"By July orAugust we will be in a position to know how we are going to move forward," she said, "whether it is under the existing label, whether it is under a new labelor whether it is going to be a formal co-operation with another party."

Cundal saysher greatest fear is that Alberta will become a two-party system where voters in the centre are forced to choose between two extreme choices.

"We don't have to look too far south of the border to see what that looks like you just end up in loggerheads, with people butting heads and not getting anything done."

But it may simply be too late for either strategy to work.

Political scientist Keith Brownsey says thatthe provincial NDP have governed"well within spitting distance of centre," making the current government a reasonable option for centrists.

And Brownseyadds that the past decade has not been kind to Alberta's Liberals.

Interim party leader David Swann is the sole Liberal member of Alberta's Legislative Assembly. (Mike Spenrath/CBC News)

"It's a disaster there is no question about that,' he said. "They have fallen apart for all sorts of reasons, everything from lack of organization to poor leadership."

On the surface, that may make a merger with another party or a renamingof the Liberal Partymake sense. But Brownsey says that could be a mistake.

"The Liberals have a brand, they have a loyal core of supporters, they have five to seven per cent of the province you can build on that," he said.

Building on thator building something new, however, will take timeand moneytwothings the party has little of these days.

That meansthat even after a century of wandering Alberta's political wilderness, the province's Liberals may need to march a little further still.

Originally posted here:
After a century of stumbles, Alberta's Liberals march on - CBC.ca