NCF believes the digital divide mirrors and exacerbates existing social inequities. To help combat these effects, NCF works to ensure digital equity in our community.
Visit our time capsule for thirty video perspectives on digital equity equity, one for every year since NCF was founded in 1992.
We sell high-quality and affordable high-speed internet services, supported by our award-winning HelpDesk. We run digital literacy workshops and public education campaigns around online safety and privacy. We offer free digital services like locally-hosted email and basic web hosting. And we advocate for fairer laws and regulations to the government, CRTC, and other relevant agencies.
Here is some of our recent advocacy work:
2023:
2022:
2021:
2020:
As part of this work, we co-founded Digital Equity Ottawa with the Social Planning Council of Ottawa to help address the need for affordable internet, connected devices, digital literacy, and digital capacity across the community sector, especially in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to United Way East Ontario for the funding to make this happen.
Here are three reports we produced in 2021 to explore digital equity challenges and opportunities, during the pandemic and beyond:
We can't achieve digital equity on our own. That’s why since the beginning we have worked with community partners — like Ottawa Public Library, Ottawa Community Housing, the Internet Society, CompuCorps Mentoring, the low-income rights group ACORN, the Ottawa PC Users’ Group, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, the Pinecrest-Queensway Employment Services and many more — to provide context and get the word out.
It's why we founded Digital Access Day in 2018 with support from CIRA and in partnership with CompuCorps, a tech charity, and the Internet Society Canada Chapter.
It’s why we pushed for the Internet to be considered a basic service at the CRTC in 2015 and marched for net neutrality on Parliament Hill in 2007.
We’re a small team, but we’re proud of what we have done so far. However the stakes are only getting higher and we plan to do more, with the power and passion of our members coming together with the wider community.
To get involved with our advocacy work, please email our Executive Director at execdir@ncf.ca.
To donate to our advocacy work: www.ncf.ca/donate
Listen to audio from the 2018 Digital Access Day of Ken Sanderson, former Executive Director of Broadband Communications North, a not-for-profit ISP serving Indigenous communities in Northern Manitoba:
