IT HAS COME TO OUR attention that a headline of ours last week has caused some misunderstanding.
Last week, the office of Industry Minister Christian Paradis issued a press release noting he was taking part in a pre-budget round table discussions with leaders from the information and communications technologies sector in Toronto.
It was one of a series of planned round tables that also included a stop earlier this month in Montreal. At the meetings, the Minister said that he is seeking to engage private sector stakeholders on how best to ensure that Canada's economy continues to produce jobs and growth in a difficult global economy.
Our headline in the original story, which you can read here, said the Minister was staging "pre-700 MHz auction discussions". That was not so, as the rules surrounding that auction have not even been announced.
As the entire wireless industry sits on edge, lobbying their various viewpoints while awaiting the federal government’s long-overdue decision on what the rules of the next wireless auction will look like (Bloomberg says “this month”, Industry Canada has been stone silent), we were much too cheeky with our headline. We shouldn’t have tied the pre-budget consultations with the auction the way we did in a news story (even if that was likely a strong topic of conversation when Minister Paradis met with members of the Canadian ICT sector), and regret the confusion it caused.
Greg O’Brien
editor and publisher
Cartt.ca
