The Tyee has an extensive article on why net neutrality needs more attention in Canada. Quick save the internet!
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On January 17, Bryan Zandberg wrote an article on The Tyee about net neutrality and the lack of attention this issue is getting in Canada.

Quote: Canada Sleeps Through War to ‘Save the Internet’
Pitched battle in U.S. over ‘net neutrality’
Digital democracy at risk if telecoms get their way say opponents.

What’s Net Neutrality?
It’s the internet as we know and love. A data network that does not discrimate or allow degraded service for one group of people (or companies) over another. Meaning, downloading a video from YouTube is the same as downloading a video from CNN and the same as downloading it from my website. Same costs, same amount of time for you as a user–same costs and time for me, CNN and YouTube to upload the info. It’s neutral.

The controversy is that the telcos want to create tiered service. So maybe CNN pays the telecos a bunch of money to get preferred service but YouTube doesn’t. For you as a user, you can quickly download video from CNN but try my website or YouTube and churn, churn, churn.

There’s not a good reason for hierarchical service. There’s not a shortage of bandwidth. There’s just a shortage of ideas within telcos on how they can make more money.

My explanation is less sound than those in The Tyee.

Read the article here.

Or at least read these highlights:
Quote: ‘In 2005, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) redefined “broadband,” recasting it as an information, rather than a telecommunication, service.

‘ “It sounds like an innocuous change, but it isn’t,” explains Ben Scott, a spokesperson for net neutrality for Free Press, a media democracy NGO based in Washington, D.C. With the stroke of a pen, Scott says the decision undid the entire regulatory regime attached to telecom services, thrusting them into “a category that has virtually no regulations.”

…

‘Whereas previously telcos were legally obliged to deliver packets of bits and bytes blindly, as an information service that restriction was no longer in force. This opened the door for what Scott calls a “CEOs-go-to-Wall-Street” scenario: almost immediately, the major carriers began to toy with the idea of creating a two-tier Internet, replete with a fast-track for content creators willing to pay for preferential service, and a slow lane for everyone else.

…

‘Just like in the States, net neutrality in Canada hovers in a state of legal limbo; the threadbare language of the Telecommunications Act means that two-tier Internet is more than a distant possibility; it’s already here.

…

‘[Kevin] McArthur goes further. He says companies are in effect creating a problem so they can charge to fix it. “[Even] if everyone paid for a tier-one service, it would be THE EXACT SAME service we have today,” he wrote by e-mail. “Quality of service only works while someone else is getting screwed.”

‘”It’s an attempt to extract more rent out of your server,” [Michael]Geist summarizes, “even if it comes at the expense of both their users’ interests and the broader interest of the Internet as a whole.”‘