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OpenMedia's #UBB invades Parliament

Earlier today, Stephen Harper ordered his government to review the CRTC's usage-based-billing (#UBB) ruling, a move that came just hours after the Liberal party officially condemned the now-infamous decision.

Following up on Liberal technology critic Marc Garneau's statements from yesterday, Michael Ignatieff took to twitter this morning to officially condemn the CRTC decision: 

 

The tweet linked to a press release in which the Liberals subtly trace the connection from UBB to their broader aspirations: "...this is just the beginning. Conservatives are digging in their heels. New Democrats will never get results. Only the Liberal Party can replace the Harper government – and overturn the CRTC’s decision on UBB." 

Then around noon, Dimitri Soudas, the Prime Minister's communications director, ponied up released a tweet that vaguely resembled a response: 

 

An hour later, the Prime Minister himself dusted off his own derelict twitter account, which he had used just twice in the last month, saddled up and echoed Soudas's tweet, this time in the first-person singular: 

 

Meanwhile, a brief review of Jack Layton's twitter feed shows that the NDP came out way ahead of everyone, albeit to little acclaim. Yesterday Layton re-tweeted a link to a NDP press release from January 20th that outlines the NDP's opposition to UBB:


 

This vocal response from Parliament came as OpenMedia's petition surged past a quarter million signatures, drowning Tony Clement's inbox with messages in the process of winning popular support across the country. 

"This is a giant stride toward an affordable public Internet, and an incredible victory for those over 260,000 who have signed the Stop The Meter petition,” said OpenMedia.ca's founder Steve Anderson. "Citizens have come together and caught the attention of their nation’s politicians, and have truly made a difference today. We hope that Harper and the Conservatives will not squander this opportunity to champion a cause that touches so many of us. We encourage Canadians to continue to sign the Stop The Meter petition so that the Government overturns the CRTC decisions that sparked this spat of public outrage." 

Whether or not the government's "concern" is genuine or a mere gesture to quell any threat of populist action remains to be seen. But it is safe to say that due to efforts of OpenMedia and those who signed the petition, UBB has officially become an election issue that is now up for grabs.

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