P.E.I.’s network of 38 Community Access Program (CAP) sites will not be closing after all, says federal Industry Minister Tony Clement.
In a one-on-one interview with The Guardian Tuesday, Clement confirmed all of the sites will remain open. He said funding will continue throughout the 2010 year.
“All 38 are going to be funded,” Clement said from Ottawa.
“They’ll be funding out of a different fund but no one really cares about that. That’s just internal accounting. What they care about is the fact they are going to be funded and they will be.”Last week, Industry Canada sent letters to CAP site operators informing them the funding criteria had changed. The federal government said any group within 25 kilometres of a library would no longer be funded. Because of P.E.I.’s network of small, community-based libraries, that would have meant none of the province’s 38 CAP sites would qualify for funding.
Prince Edward Island would have been the only province to lose all of its CAP sites.
But Clement said the funding was never in jeopardy. He blames poor communications.
The federal minister said P.E.I. will continue to get the same level of funding this year. He would not say what will happen after the 2010 year.
In 1994, Doug Hull, the best civil servant in the country, developed a comprehensive plan for getting Canada off the ground for the web. He got his minister (IC) and the his ex boss the Minister of Finance's attention and the Schoolnet program and CAP sites were the outcome.
He aimed at where kids were and directly at the digital divide - still points of leverage. He made the web part of the core plans of the country.
OK so the money for poor old PEI is back - for a year - but where is the vision?
The US has been backward regarding the web as well. Like Canada, it has been content to protect our terrible IP's and has been fussing about copyright.
But the new US plan is clear - the web is the railroad - the highway system - steam - it is the platform on which the economy and society will be based.
As Doug and I talked about all of this 16 years ago, we kept returning to the memory that Canada was created as a nation by a project to build a connecting network - the CPR.
That dream - The National Dream - is more valid than ever. Doug and Paul Martin saw it back when the web was tiny. Now that it is pervasive but Canada has fallen way behind, where is the vision?
Come on Ottawa and the 5th floor - you can surely do better than this?
