The Hubka's

Last year, Netflix's chief content officer famously referred to the Canadian internet situation this way: "[It's] almost a human rights violation, what they're charging for internet in Canada."

Canadians' are financially gouged for Internet, Cell, Phone and TV.  Shaw and TELUS purposely slice and dice their TV channel packages so there is no "good" package.  You need to subscribe to several costly packages get what you want.

Now internet bandwidth (speed) has been sliced and diced into several packages in order for providers to charge more for what the public need.  It's all for profit, greed and keep the shareholders happy.

Years ago when phones were a government provided service the public were charged at cost.  Then we welcomed free enterprise.  Bring back government owned and operated internet.  Charge Canadians at cost.  Then deregulation came along.  Competition will lead to better pricing they said.   Maybe Canada is too small for there to be enough competition in some industries.  In Internet services that's the case.  We do not have enough providers and those we have appear to engaged in what I would call price fixing.  I mean step over the border and the price is double the U.S.

Bandwidth is no longer a luxury. It's an essential service.  Sometimes free enterprise is just bullshit!

Next time a knock comes on the door saying vote for me.  I will demand an answer to this.  Maybe the NICE people (Canadians) need to become the squeaky wheel.

Rick Hubka

June 8, 2012 we moved 90k south to the small town of Chemainus so I could be closer to my new computer programming job at the Municipality of North Cowichan.  It is a lovely ocean side community. Instead of driving 100k to work every day I am now only 14k away.  What a pleasure!

The only thing missing at our new home location is having a garage for my woodworking and guitar building hobbies so that is now my first priority.

Sherry is going to be learning a lot more about gardening because we have about 50 different flowers, shrubs and trees, etc in the yard.

Only a 10 minute walk to the ocean where our dog jumps in and is swimming instantly.

   Our 2 year old German Shepherd (Kage) is having a knee operation in a few days.  Poor Guy!  After the operation he will not be able to navigate the stairs to our house so yesterday I built him a 24 foot ramp.

German Shepherds have quite a history of have hip problems and he has that too.


After surgery and 5 weeks of rest, Kage will start a swimming program to build up strength without any load bearing.