The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

25| O akville B eaver | T hursday,M ay 31,2018 insidehalton.com AyA Kitchens of oAKville 1195 north service roAdwest 905.847.1522 ayaoakville.com Net neutrality is safe in Canada after the House of Commons unanimously voted on May 23 to adopt a motion introduced by Oakville MP John Oliver to enshrine it in legislation. "I'm thrilled that after debate, my col- leagues from all parties agreed that this is a critical issue of our times," said Oliver. "It was very rewarding to see that work can be done across the aisle, and to have unanimous support of the House is amaz- ing. I think it sends a very clear signal that this is something that Canadians believe in." Motion M-168 calls on the federal gov- ernment to strengthen and protect an open Internet nationally by including net neu- trality as a guiding principle in its upcom- ing review of the telecommunications and broadcasting acts. Net neutrality refers to all web traffic being given equal treatment by Internet service providers (ISPs), which means us- ers experience equal access to web content and preventing ISPs from favouring their own material or that of others. "By setting net neutrality as a guiding principle in the review of these (telecom- munications and broadcasting) acts, it sig- nals a clear commitment to placing con- sumers and content creators first," said Ol- iver, noting he believed it was an importantiver, noting he believed it was an importanti signal to send. "I look forward to the robust conversa- tion about net neutrality between the gov- ernment and Canadians as an essential component of the review." The news from Ottawa arrived on the heels of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announcing earlier this month U.S. net neutrality rules would expire on June 11 - giving ISPs the power to decide how their consumers will be able to access the internet. Back in December 2017, the FCC official- ly repealed the president Barack Obama- era open-Internet rules, which were set in 2015. The big telecommunications companies CANADA House of Commons adopts Oakville MP's motion on net neutrality JOHN BKILA jbkila@metroland.com l See GOVERNMENT, page 40