We met with Mélanie Joly’s top advisors about the ISP tax. Here’s what went down.

Your OpenMedia team met with Canadian Heritage Minister Joly’s top advisors to urge them not to impose an arbitrary new tax on all Canadian Internet users.

Continuing our whirlwind week of high-profile meetings and public hearings in Ottawa, your OpenMedia team met Tuesday with top officials at the Department of Canadian Heritage, which is currently considering imposing a costly new Internet tax on Canadian Internet users.

Our community were represented at the meeting by Digital Rights Specialist Katy Anderson, Campaigns Director Josh Tabish, and our Executive Director Laura Tribe — and the message they delivered was clear: imposing new Internet fees on Canadians will raise our already-high Internet bills even further, and will force many Canadians offline entirely.

As Internet users are all-too-aware, Canadians already pay some of the highest prices in the industrialized world for Internet access, causing huge gaps in adoption of broadband services. For example, reports have demonstrated that nearly one in five of all households have no residential Internet connection. Low-income households are especially hard-hit, with a CRTC report last week revealing that 36.5% of low-income Canadians do not have home Internet access.

As we told Heritage Minister Joly’s top advisors, for many low-income Canadians the proposed new ISP tax will make the difference between being barely able to afford Internet, and having no Internet at all.

Furthermore, as Denise Williams, head of the First Nations Technology Council wrote in a joint piece for Motherboard with our Josh Tabish, a new Internet tax will hit Indigenous communities the hardest, including many in rural, remote, and northern regions who are already hampered by high prices, slow speeds, and punitive overage charges.

Here’s an overview of the case against a new Internet tax that we made to Minister Joly’s team:

• It will harm affordability. The CRTC’s Review of Basic Telecommunications services demonstrated that Canada is in the midst of an affordability crisis. 1 in 5 households do not have an Internet connection, with that figure almost doubling among low-income households.

• It will harm innovation. Creating new barriers to broadband affordability is at odds with the government’s Innovation Agenda and mandate to “Increase high-speed broadband coverage and work to support competition, choice and availability of services...”

• It will lead to fewer Canadian content creators. A wide and inclusive cultural policy includes bringing as many people online as possible, and encouraging productive uses of technology, not just consumptive. We need to bring more Canadians online to create more Canadian content, and an ISP tax will do the opposite.

• It will not save the publishing industry. Proposals for new Internet fees, whether that’s a new tax on our monthly bills, or an EU-style ‘Link Tax’, will lead to market uncertainty, a decrease in media plurality and diversity, and entrench incumbency. In short, they are the last thing our publishing industry needs.

In short, new Internet fees amount to an arbitrary, ineffective, and counterproductive way to support Canadian culture, especially when, as experts like Michael Geist have pointed out, there are far better alternatives that will not raise Internet prices for the average Canadian and hit vulnerable members of our society the hardest.

We’ll have much more to say on this over the weeks ahead — so be sure to stay tuned to all the latest on our Facebook and Twitter streams.