Minister wants telecommunications plan from telecom companies
The national outage of Rogers services is unacceptable.
That’s according to Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne. Friday’s outage left millions of people without internet, cell, and landline services and disrupted the ability to call 9-1-1.
Throughout the country, the Interac system was crippled causing businesses to only take cash or credit.
In 60 days, Champagne wants to see a formal agreement between Canada’s big three telecom companies.
That will include a plan to improve the time it takes to recover from an outage of that magnitude.
He says the outage, caused by a systems failure after a maintenance upgrade, will be investigated by the CRTC.
Meanwhile, a class-action lawsuit has been filed by a Quebec Rogers customer seeking 400-dollars-worth of compensation for each customer affected by Friday’s outage. A judge has yet to sign off on the suit.
The Premiers meet
The federal government says it will sit down with the provinces and territories to discuss
health care funding, but there’s a dispute over the numbers.
The premiers and territorial leaders are calling for a sharp increase in federal payments to support the system, saying Ottawa’s contribution has fallen to 22 percent of the total.
Raising it to a 35 percent level would cost 28 billion dollars a year.
But Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc says the premiers aren’t taking into account the billions of dollars the federal government has sent to the provinces in one-time payments.
The premiers will also consider the shortage of workers as they wrap up their two-day session in Victoria, B-C today.
Ukraine prepares for an onslaught
Ukrainian officials say they’re preparing for a renewed Russian onslaught in eastern regions of their country, following widespread artillery and rocket attacks over the last several days.
The Ukrainian military command says the heavy attacks are preparations for another ground offensive, this one, aimed at taking control of Donetsk province.
That’s part of the Donbas region, which Russia has stated it wishes to control.
A rocket attack on an apartment complex in a small eastern Ukrainian city on the weekend has, so far, claimed 31 lives, with many victims still thought to be trapped in the rubble.
Replacing British PM process is underway
Britain’s Conservative party is moving quickly to replace Boris Johnson, following his announcement last week that he’ll step down as soon as a successor is chosen.
Nominations to replace him open and close today, and candidates must have at least 20 MP’s backing their bid to be considered.
The MPs will vote in two rounds, tomorrow and Thursday, to narrow the field to two.
Those two will then be put to a vote of all party members by mail-in ballot, with the results to be announced on September 5th.
Johnson, whose government has been rocked by scandals, has been criticized for not stepping aside immediately and allowing a caretaker prime minister to take over.