Canada's Vision of the Global Information Society

Canada's vision of the global information society is one that includes all people. We believe that everyone has the potential to participate in the information society, and that people everywhere should have opportunities to benefit from the possibilities it brings in all areas of human life. These benefits include improved governance, sustainable economic development, strengthened social cohesion, expanded knowledge and new forms of cultural expression.

In preparing for the World Summit on the Information Society, we should recognize that our future depends on deriving these universal benefits from information-related activities that are — or can become — common to people everywhere.

The information society should be a society of shared abundance, since it is based on the most widely distributed elements in the human universe — elements such as intelligence, creativity, self-expression, empathy, understanding, the sense of justice, and a natural desire to communicate.

We are very far from realizing this vision.

In today's world,

• there are enormous disparities in people's rights, capacities and opportunities to access, create, communicate, use and benefit from information and knowledge;
• there are equally enormous disparities in people's access to and capacity to use the electronic information and communication technologies (ICTs) that allow us to perform these activities on a scale and with a speed that has never been possible before.

This digital divide is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that not only separates developed and developing countries, but also separates groups of people within countries — whatever their level of development — on the basis of factors such as gender, wealth, geographical location, cultural and linguistic heritage, and mental and physical ability.

Fundamentally, our challenge is to create new approaches to poverty alleviation and sustainable development — approaches that harness technological means to development ends, by empowering people and involving them in decisions about how ICTs should be developed, deployed and used.