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Bill Proposes Canadian Cellphone Unlocking Rights
SJrX sends in a CBC report that the Canadian New Democratic Party has tabled a bill requiring all cellphone companies to provide unlocked cellphones. (Wikipedia notes, "The party is regarded as falling on the left in the Canadian political spectrum.") This reader adds, "The fact that there is a minority government currently should help this bill's chances of getting passed." "The bill proposes three rules: cellphone carriers would be required to notify customers at the point of purchase whether a phone is locked to work only on their network; they would have to remove such a lock free of charge at any point after the conclusion of the customer's service contract; and they would have to remove it if the customer does not enter into a contract within six months of buying the device up front."
I find myself becoming increasingly inclined to vote NDP in upcoming elections.
Which is to say, you are playing precisely into Stephen Harper's hands. This is exactly what Harper's long-term goal is: to polarize the Canadian polity with big-government social radicals like himself on the Right, and big-government social radicals like Jack Layton on the Left. Nowhere will there be any genuinely small-c conservative options like the Mulroney PCs and the Cretien Liberals.
The voices from my tinfoil hat suggest you're actually a Stephen Harper shill, trying to push people away from the Liberals so that Canadians will have only a choice between Reform and NDP, resulting in the kind of dysfunctional radicallized polity we had in BC in the '70's.
health insurance
raises cost and/or lowers the quality of health care immensely
police services
mostly devoted to drug enforcement and harassing the population about petty things
fire departments
mostly serve insurance companies
curb-side trash removal
only begrudgingly provided, with new restrictions constantly added
labor regulation
supports busting unions
environmental regulation
a bureaucracy that will issue a waiver to destroy any feature of the environment you please
judicial services
a pretense to cover widespread injustice.
And all of these wonderful services are delivered with the utmost dishonesty at the bargain price of 3x what they should cost!
| "The party is regarded as falling on the left in the Canadian political spectrum."
The party is regarded as the Communist Party of Canada. "Falling on the left" is a gross understatement.
Be aware that in a Parliamentary system, only bills tabled by the governing party are treated seriously. It's very, very rare that a "private members'" bill such as this ever gets any traction. These are usually political exercises by opposition parties who hold no real hope of having it passed.