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Improving Canada’s Digital Divide

Canada is failing on the digital connectivity report card. What can we learn from leading nations?

Canada is failing on the digital connectivity report card. What can we learn from leading nations?

Canada’s strategy for addressing the digital divide—the gap that exists between those that do and do not have access to digital services—has long focused on ensuring “access.” 

Access refers to internet connectivity at a reasonable speed for Canadians to conduct their personal and professional lives online, whether it be completing work tasks, accessing public services, or engaging online with their friends and family. 

Thanks to a national Connectivity Strategy and significant infrastructure investment programs like the Universal Broadband Fund, Canada has largely sought to meet its national connectivity goals primarily through infrastructure investments.

But the reality today is that this “access” goal has already generally been achieved for most Canadians. A recent study by the Dais on digital connectivity in Toronto found that 98 percent of households reported having access to the internet. On a federal scale, an Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) update shows that 93 percent of Canadians have access to broadband at 50/10 mbps speeds. 

Yet, Canada is not a leading digital nation based on global ranking. In fact, we have been falling, now ranking 47th in efforts to use information technologies to promote access and inclusion. 

A key factor of our underperformance is Canada’s narrow focus on expanding broadband infrastructure, neglecting other aspects of the digital divide such as digital skills and media literacy. 

The digital divide is especially prevalent among vulnerable groups like youth and seniors. Contributing to this divide, is the fact that Canada is one of the few OECD countries without a digital education strategy. Other aspects to the digital divide include cost barriers to internet access and devices for low-income Canadians across the country, along with siloed efforts in the digitization of public services and low business digital adoption. 

Without simultaneously addressing these crucial needs, gaps in knowledge to navigate digital spaces and uncoordinated digitization of services remain barriers to truly bridge the digital divide. 

To climb back up the global ranking, Canada needs a coordinated strategy to tackle all aspects of the digital divide at once. This entails bridging the digital skills gap by equipping Canadians with the know-how to navigate digital spaces, and bolstering public sector digitization efforts and business digital adoption, in order to fully enable digital inclusion and capture the benefits of a digital society.

Modelling Finland: A leading digital nation

Finland ranks ninth worldwide in efforts to use information technologies to promote access and inclusion through a comprehensive national digital strategy approach.

Finland’s approach has stood out in its ability to address multiple aspects of digital transformation at once. Guided by the national Digital Compass Strategy, established in line with the EU’s Digital Compass targets, the country has mobilized cross-sectoral efforts to work towards its goals – coordinating across the skills, infrastructure, public services, and business sectors to build a digitally capable Finland. 

The Strategy is built upon clearly articulated values and a national ‘digital vision’ for 2030: “Together building a digitally capable Finland that is attractive, competitive, sustainable and prosperous.” The country’s approach is rooted in its aim to recognize all levels of digital divides, which can’t be bridged solely by improving infrastructure or solving issues related to internet access, which has been the focus of Canada’s strategy. 

Instead, Finland’s strategy simultaneously focusses on areas like security, support and equally distributed benefits from digital technologies usage. The Strategy outlines four objectives and areas of activity. 

The first is skills. Through its top ranking education system, Finland aims to ensure all citizens are equipped with the necessary skills to utilize digital technologies, integrating digital literacy into the country’s national curriculum. The results have been powerful, with 82 percent of the population (aged 16-74) having basic or above basic digital skills, compared with the EU average of 56 percent.

While Canada has launched federal initiatives like the Digital Literacy Exchange Program and Digital Citizen Initiative, which funds organizations to strengthen digital literacy skills and resilience to mis/disinformation for the broader population, current digital literacy efforts have often been time-limited and lack coordination across initiatives. Despite the government providing rounds of funding to organizations that deliver digital literacy training, geared towards various population groups – such as seniors, newcomers and young children, for example, the  training landscape in Canada remains fragmented due to a lack in program continuity with funding cycles. In other words, when the funding cycle runs out, the training program will likely end as well. 

Critically, these activities are not coordinated across K-12 and postsecondary education in Canada. This is the same for digital literacy school curriculums, as different provinces and territories take their own approaches to teaching these concepts to students. The current approach risks excluding traditionally vulnerable populations from digital skills education, and creates an imbalance in digital literacy abilities across the country. 

The second objective is business. Its continual investment in growth opportunities for Finnish companies through initiatives like the 6G Bridge program (€130 million) and the Data Economy program (€135 million) are supported by intentional collaboration between industry and academia. Almost 85.6% of SMEs have at least a basic level of digital intensity, and 79.5% of enterprises use cloud, artificial intelligence, or data analytics.

In Canada, there have not been many digital adoption opportunities for the business sector. The recent cancellation of the promising Canada digital adoption program (CDAP) which was meant to assist businesses in updating their online technologies, ended due to budget cuts, with criticisms around its rigidity and cumbersome application process. Other business digitization initiatives are localized by province, such as Ontario Centre of Innovation’s Digitalization Competence Centre, leaving Canada without a federal business digital adoption strategy.

The strategy’s third objective is public services, of which Finland has ranked highly in the EU’s DESI index for its provision of well-functioning and trusted public administration and digital public services. With interoperability and human-centric design prioritized across ministries through the National Interoperability Framework, data sharing and cross-sectoral collaboration has led to the delivery of well-functioning and easily accessible public services for citizens in Finland.

By contrast, Canada has struggled to deliver digital public services – outdated IT systems, siloed innovations that are rarely scaled across government, and difficulties in evolving legacy to agile, user-centric approaches has held Canada back from designing and delivering digital services. 

This is followed by the final objective – infrastructure, which is holistically divided into three categories: the data economy, cyber security for critical infrastructure, and digital infrastructure expansion. Digital infrastructure is framed as the foundation for the data economy and digital services, another exhibit of intentional, coordinated efforts to bridge the digital divide. Despite regional differences in the growth of broadband availability, rapid progress is being made – with a 5% increase to 78% of households with access to a maximum download speed of at least 100MB between 2022 to 2023. 

The UK: Leading on bridging the digital divide

The UK has been successful in taking a targeted focus on infrastructure, to close the urban-rural broadband connectivity gap, which leads the pack in closing the urban-rural broadband divide with only a 7% difference. With a 99.7% national connectivity rate, the country has been able to reach 91% of rural areas with access to broadband connectivity. 

The country’s Wireless Infrastructure Strategy outlines policies and programmes like Project Gigabit – a £5 billion government programme providing contracts to broadband service providers, and the Shared Rural Network programme – developed by the country’s four mobile network operators and Government, to provide 4G coverage to 95% of the country. 

Dedicated programming and funding, public-private partnerships, intentional planning and monitoring of network delivery, and revisiting of connectivity targets to connect rural areas has enabled the UK to gradually minimize its urban-rural connectivity gap. 

Towards a new national digital strategy for Canada

As Canada looks to increase its efforts to undergo a digital transformation, the current digital connectivity strategy must likewise consider all levels of digital divides,  to go beyond a narrow focus on the country’s broadband infrastructure expansion. 

Establishing national standards for digital literacy curriculum across all age groups, investing in partnerships between industry, academia, and government to fill connectivity gaps, and collecting more data on the different levels of digital divides within Canada are good places to start.

Digital literacy education and capacity-building programs must ensure that efforts aren’t duplicated with existing programs. These programs should reach various geographic locations, and create opportunities for collaboration, evaluation and sharing of best practices across stakeholders in the digital literacy space. 

The strategy should also be expanded to include public service digitization efforts coordinated at all levels of government, and business digital adoption plans to both holistically address all levels of digital divides, and to provide easy-to-access, strategy-backed support and accountability to digitization and adoption efforts.

Pairing the strategy with regular progress tracking checkpoints and reporting is also necessary for accountability and transparency around this work. Both Finland and the UK’s regular reporting, transparency and progress monitoring approaches have allowed governments to reassess its goals and funding over time. 

This approach would provide evidence-based targets and a rationale for maintaining federal investments, in contrast to the current method of running separate programs which broadly align with Canada’s principled approach.

It’s high time for Canada to establish an all-encompassing new digital strategy. Broadband and connectivity efforts cannot be pursued in isolation from other considerations like capacity-building, digital literacy education, and the distribution of benefits reaped from digital technologies.  Unbarriered internet access is a right. Our prosperity and well-being depends on our capacity to be digitally connected to vital services, economic opportunities and social networks. A comprehensive national strategy capturing all of the above elements is necessary to bridge the digital divide and claim our place as a global leader in digital adoption.