Canada IGF



IGF 2010

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA

17 SEPTEMBER 10

SESSION R/N4

0900



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Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

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>> BYRON HOLLAND:  And also, of course, how would our local process then feed in to this larger international process, the Internet, this IGF.  So that's kind of the background on how we get to where we are at today.  For us the survey was very important because, you know, we don't have four, five days and five broad themes and nine separate tracks.  We don't have the opportunity, luxury to have that much content in our IGF.  So we really had to look what are the key core issues that the stakeholders are saying are most relevant to us and that's where the survey comes in.  

So survey participants were asked to rate their level of concern about or rank the significance of a number of Internet development related issues and access issues.  The majority of respondents indicated and this is survey terminology and control over online access to personal information and privacy.  Those were the issues that came out as most concerning to Canadians.  

Sort of next tier in terms of level of importance was around the need for public education on issues such as Internet rights, responsibilities and consequences of online actions.  I think we have all seen the press reports of, hopefully it's not us, press reports of people who do things online that have unintended consequence, not the least of our teenagers posting stuff on Facebook that I think we will all probably agree they will come to regret later in life.  So how do you behave on line in a responsible way.  Also significant concern expressed about the trustworthiness of online interactions with other users and institutions and also just about the security of the Internet infrastructure itself.  

Also issues around Internet use, misuse, Spam, phishing, things that we probably anticipate Canadians are concerned about.  Another interesting point that came out in the survey research was Canadians really wanting to see Internet tools and applications being used by Government to facilitate interaction between citizens and Government but also to increase involvement in general policy making and policy development in the Canadian public policy environment.  

Critical Internet resources, something that, of course, a top of mind here at this IGF and I think, of course, we have to recognize that those three words in this space come loaded with meaning, that when you speak to the average Canadian maybe there is not quite as much sensitivity to it.  As a result it was of less concern to Canadians than typically I think it is debated and discussed about here.  I think a lot of people don't know the nitty gritty.  The average consumer, users know the nitty gritty detail of how the system works, the who oversees the roles of root servers, et cetera.  So it wasn't critical Internet resources isn't showing up in research as important as one might think.  Less important is intellectual property rights.  Canadians are relatively satisfied with the way those elements are being handled right now.  So that's why they are not top of mind.  Well, over two thirds, significant majority felt it was important for Canadians to engage in dialogue in evolution and Internet use in other countries.  So the significant majority said issues in other countries are important.  That suggests a willingness to consider how the Internet impacts not just on Canadian landscape but the whole global Internet stakeholder.  

Canadians are concerned about processes for decision making around Internet issues.  They didn't really feel there was a clear place to go out and have that debate and dialogue regarding Internet or online issues.  And we anticipated that might be the case.  One of the questions we asked what institution do you think would serve or facilitate those type of discussions or debates.  And fortunately for us CERA, it was No. 1 by a considerable margin.  Named more than any other institution as a first pick of an organisation that could facilitate this type of Internet dialogue, public policy dialogue.  A few key messages that came through from the survey results.  The first there is absolutely a strong case to be made, a desire to establish a Canadian Internet Governance Forum, at least from the public perspective a space where these issues can be discussed in a meaningful way.  It is clear there is a desire among the engaged and informed for a mechanism like this and also there is the view that there isn't a place today where this is adequately being discussed.  So a desire and an opportunity but right now a vacuum.  

So this is a significant opportunity for CERA and our partners to champion a mechanism.  Second key them, a Canadian Governance Forum should include all stakeholders.  That it should absolutely be a broad tent environment and that we need to be able to therefore design a process that can actually engage with all of these stakeholders.  You know, the significant policymakers, the dominate stakeholders with strong advocacy positions and, of course, those who are starting to think about it and ideally people who are not thinking about it yet but we would like to engage them in the process.  The third key message that came through is that a CIGF should address issues of Internet development, access and use but also issue where the Internet impacts other public policy domains.  Not just specifically and narrowly the Internet.  

Clearly wasn't surprising that there were current hot button issues such as broadband infrastructure and the favorite for everybody and Canada, too, net neutrality.  It was definitely top of mind issue for many respondents but what was probably more surprising was a level of concern across wide ranging issues.  How it impacts on economic environment and social and governance domain.  Fourth key message that came through loud and clear in the survey was  CIGF should not only create a place for dialogue and I think this is important but also influence the advancement to policy.  

So while it was important to have a Forum for dialogue it was also loud and clear that out of the dialogue should come something tangible that can be utilized to actually foster or help drive public policy advancement in this space.  And I think that's certainly a very important thing and when we look at what our desired outputs are they are informed by this key message that came through.  

Finally the key message is that CIGF should be connected in to other international processes and connected to other issues.  Significant majority felt that whatever we came up with in the Canadian IGF should get pushed up in to the global IGF.  What we see as the core objectives for the Canadian IGF bearing in mind all the results of the research that we have, and considering best practices one thing was    one benefit, a significant benefit, of course, to having seen other regions do this already, and some for a number of years, is that, of course, we can learn from their best practices and, of course, potentially some of the things that didn't go so well.  So between the hard research we have done as well as looking at what all of the other regional IGFs have done we developed a set of objectives that we think are going to be key when we launch the first Canadian IGF in the spring of 2011, late in the spring.  

So the overall objectives are to provide a Forum for multistakeholder consultation and to facilitate and encourage multistakeholder participation here.  So obviously include the business communities, civil society, Governments, other governmental organisations to really create that broad tent environment.  So make sure we get stakeholders from all walks of life.  To not end up with all the usual suspects.  Identify the emerging issues and trends and certainly where appropriate where we can actually make some recommendations.  And address issues of Internet development access and use but also other issues where the Internet impacts the public    various public policy domains.  

Contribute to finding solutions and problems arising from the use of the Internet.  And also, you know, fundamentally that the CIGF or the Canadian because I realise there is also a Commonwealth one.  So we need to distinguish that this is the Canadian IGF also not only create a place for dialogue but really try to work towards the goal of being able to influence the advancement of policy and then connect in to other international issues and processes as a result and to fully publish all the proceedings and results of our CIGF.  

Of course, I would be remiss to not also acknowledge that CERA as an organisation has some objectives out of this.  While we do it for the community clearly we would also like to see some benefit to the organisation.  And one is to amplify the positive awareness of CERA if we are fostering this opportunity from a communicative perspective.  And out of that we want to engage stakeholders in part to help us find and redefine above our mission and vision for the organisation.  

You know, we believe that we are a thought leader locally in the space and we want to make sure we continue to position ourselves as such to be a thought leader in the Canadian Internet policy landscape and, of course, there is a little tinge of self or self interest here.  We want to raise the profile of CERA and dotCA as a brand to drive awareness and demand for the dotCA product.  So this year is our pilot year.  This is our fiscal year we are talking about.  So this is our pilot year.  Through all the research we have identified two key tracks or two major themes that we will be focused on.  First is Internet and economic development in Canada and that is a fairly broad theme and it can include issues of access, cybercrime, IPv6, et cetera.  And then the second core one is around digital literacy and that again is a fairly broad term but it can include privacy, trust, identity, social media, social cohesion.  Those will be our primary tracks.  We are working with two partners.  Another Canadian organisation called Media Awareness Network.  

In terms of process how are we going to do this.  We will be conducting six focus groups across the country to get a regional perspective and we will have    we will be providing background papers, just two to three background papers to all of the focus groups to really act as a catalyst to start the dialogue.  And following the focus groups we will have a significant national event.  It will be a one day event most likely in Ottawa where we are based out of but also the capital and that will be spring of 2011.  And the entire process will also include just an ongoing online Forum and discussion.  Out of that we hope to produce a white paper that will summarize all discussions but also provide actual concrete recommendations.  So when we start part of the discussion papers that will go to the focus groups, just two to four page highlights not to be exhaustive, it will focus on economic development and literacy issues.  The focus groups themselves as I mentioned there will be six across the country.  Most of probably realise that Canada is a pretty broad physical landscape.  So we will try to capture the east, west and centre and north.  We will be in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax.  Focus groups will be 15 to 20 people from a variety of stakeholder groups.  They will be invited guests so we are sure we capture a broad spectrum of participants.  

And I think that that will ensure that we get access to a broad, broad array of points of view.  Out of that process we will create some background papers, some more robust document, you know, that sort of 8, 10 page document that's informed by what we get out of those focus groups.  Capture the main and salient points coming out of that.  And then the main event as I mentioned spring of 2011 will be held in Ottawa.  That event will be open to all Canadians.  It will be a public event.  We will be promoting it across a broad array of stakeholders in society.  And, you know, being a bilingual country it will be simultaneously translated and broadcast in a webinar.  Keynote speakers, panel discussions and Q and A, Q and A from the floor as well as from the webcast participants.  From that the main event we will produce a white paper and it will attempt to synthesize all of the key points from the whole process but in particular from the main national event.  

It will summarize the common insights and concerns that cut across all events and ideally capture those recommendations so that we can put it forward to policymakers in the two primary areas of exploration.  Before I kind of wind up what we are doing I just wanted to pass it over to Heather from the IISD.  She has some comments she would like to add as well.  



>> HEATHER:  Thanks.  Scoot in a bit closer here.  Thanks, Byron.  We wanted to say how pleased we are to be working with CERA on.  When we ran the survey last year on behalf of CERA we found it an absolutely fascinating exercise.  We worked really hard with CERA to try to get that broad cross section of input and the findings were really truly very interesting and very strong interests from this cross section of Canadians on how the Internet really is central to a lot of what they do, how they think, how they are connecting with their friends or family.  How it underpins so critically their work.  And we felt that this was, you know, we really felt that this reenforced our view that this is a process that requires a public forum for ongoing sort of shared ownership across stakeholders and how the Internet supports Canadian economy and society.  So this broad tent is essential to moving forward.  Perhaps the other signal that was so interesting for us was how many Canadians felt that this really needed to feed in to international processes as well.  There was a really strong understanding that it is not just a Canadian issue.  That it is an issue that affects developing countries and affects our    relationship with the rest of the world.  And so I think that that part of it will be very interesting to see how that gets reenforced particularly in the international session.  

And maybe lastly just on why we want to go north as well is that this really is important for Canada's northern development and the interest we have in the north as the north opens up and we come to a better understanding of the wealth of resources and the position that the north has in Canadian society.  



>> BYRON HOLLAND:  Thanks very much, Heather.  Just in conclusion I think as I have really already mentioned that the research here was particularly interesting in a couple of ways.  One that obviously there is significant demand and appetite for this but that the Canadian IGF and I think this is the significant point, shouldn't just be about discussion and debate and dialogue but about outcomes.  That we really should be producing recommendations that can go forward in to the public domain.  So we will absolutely be doing that and we have great hope that as a result we will be able to provide a concrete tool that will assist in developing Canada's policy overall.  Can have an open, safe, secure, unbridled environment to deal with the issues of our time.  As I started with today the seemingly often esoteric issues discussed at the IGF really do have concrete day to day impact on the lives of end users and certainly our businesses.  As we can see from the issue with RIM and BlackBerry internationally, you know, the big policy issues of various countries can have massive impact on the end users, the citizens and also often some unintended consequences for our most successful businesses and even their very business model.  So the things we discuss here we hope will be able to provide significant guidance for public policymakers throughout the Canadian landscape and feed up.  Just to wrap up thank you very much for coming out on Friday at 9 a.m.  I certainly appreciate that and that's pretty much an overview of where we are at, how we came to this place and what we are going to be doing going forward.  So I would be happy to solicit feedback or questions.      



>> FRANK:  Thanks, Byron.  I should introduce myself.  My name is Frank Match.  I just wanted to say first of all, congratulations.  It sounds like a really great process you are going through.  And partly as a result of this particular IGF a group of us is absolutely convinced that we have to do exactly what you are doing, establish a national Internet Governance Forum because we are conscious of the fact that there is huge things in our society that are not involved in and they should be.  It looks like an excellent programme you are planning and I think we will shamelessly follow you.  That leads to a couple of questions.  One is the survey instrument you used available and can we get ahold of a copy of it because it sounds as though you have asked some excellent questions and elicited some responses.  Have you deliberately set out to involve your politicians from various sides of the political spectrum and if so how successful have you been.  



>> BYRON HOLLAND:  Thanks for the comment.  So question No. 1, yes.  We would be happy to share.  Question No. 2 in terms of involving politicians at this stage we haven't really involved them but as one of the stakeholder groups as we move forward absolutely.  And that's one of the reasons we selected Ottawa to be the host, the host city for the main event is because our goal is to facilitate and make it easy for politicians to come and participate.  Robert?  



>> ROBERT GUERRA:  My name is Robert Guerra.  My hat I guess for this session is I am the managing director of private TERA.  I am a Canadian that's here that have long followed the WSIS and the IG process and I would like to make a couple of comments hearing kind of your presentation.  First it is great to hear that CERA will be conducting a series of consultations and doing a national IGF.  There have been concerns expressed in Canada by several well known commentators like Michael gives and others about how CERA was not engaging the public in policy and that's hopefully being connected and the mandate that's here got back in the late 2000s and being involved in Internet policies around the world where CERA was not doing as much.  It is great that CERA came to last year's IGF and is here as well.  It is great.  Historically what I will point out though is there have been consultations in the past as well during the World Summit on the information process in district Canada together with the Canadian district for UNESCO did conduct consultations and brought stakeholders together.  There was a two day session in Winnipeg that was held and kind of brought concerns of Canadians together.  So I hope that that experience and that knowledge also gets brought together and we are not in a way starting from scratch.  

Secondly I am a little bit concerned in terms of the time that is being taken.  Most of the national IGFs that are being done elsewhere are one year processes that kind of feed in to the IGF and I am kind of hearing a two year process kind of consultation across Canada which I think is great and then an IGF that comes later.  But, you know, some of it is involved in the IGF that I want to make sure; that the IGF has a very kind of a short deadline in terms of being able to organise panels and sessions and that process starts in February.  And so, you know, if the Canadian view and concerns, you know, I think one of the points that you made is to bring those to the international fora.  And if this is one of the international fora proactively think it is whether it is CERA, Industry Canada need to make sure there is a space for that view to be presented.  Whether the consultation you are presenting or interim results is particularly useful.  

The other thing is doing a survey and working from there is a bit innovative.  It shows it is  a bottoms up process and I definitely encourage being in touch with other national IGF and regional IGF on how that's being done.  Given the diversity of Canada and its geography I would definitely suggest also that you get in touch with the folks from dotAsia because the CEO actually happens to be Canadian and is based in Toronto and their experience in working across languages, different points of view and linking also, I mean we have a very large Asian community in Canada as well and how those views would be shared there as well.  The linguistic issue I didn't hear necessarily come up, culture diversity issues, that's something that's very kind of unique to Canada and how that issue could really help, for example, the issue of Canadians may not know as much but I think they have a lot to contribute, testing and use it as well.  Each encouraged to hear.  I am very keen to be involved myself and hope that going forward other ways that, you know, I can bring my knowledge and experience but also I have been involved in the Asia regional, IGF the U.S. IGF as well and happy to connect you with those stakeholders as well.  So again thank you.  And best of luck.  



>> BYRON HOLLAND:  All right.  Thanks, Robert.  Maybe a couple of comments really.  Certainly in terms of the previous consultations that have been typically a little bit more Government led we absolutely will be taking lessons from that.  As you probably know we work closely with Industry Canada on a number of fronts and Heather who is here today, Heather Dryden is also on our board as a representative from Industry Canada.  So definitely taking those lessons.  As far as the timeliness issue we are in a sense a late comer to that.  That's absolutely true.  We, you know, we have taken the position that we would rather spend a little bit of extra time up front planning and making sure we do it right or as best as we can based on lessons learned from others.  And part of it is pure logistics.  And the biggest project we have been doing lately is we have actually completely replaced the core technology and registry which happens October 12th of this year.  So as an organisation that has been our focus.  But I am absolutely committed to the CIGF and I think like I said one of the key benefits of coming a little later there is a lot of lessons out there and we intend to take those so we can produce a really top quality first event.



>> ROBERT GUERRA:  Just a quick followup on a logistical issue one of the key things that are being used at this IGF and many others is Twitter.  So I have proposed on Twitter that IGF CA be used as the tag.  So I am hoping that    people are asleep in Canada and when the session started some of your introductory comments didn't appear but they started five minutes late.  The transcription will be available for Canadians to hear, both the audio and text and I think that will be helpful to share with folks in Canada as well.  



>> BYRON HOLLAND:  Great.  Thank you very much and the suggestion on dotAsia are good, too.



>> ROELOF MEIJER:  I am Roelof Meijer.  I would echo most of what Frank said.  I think you have a very sound approach and I do hope that in the future we will continue to exchange information about our national activities.  I have one question looking at your two themes that you identify which are like you said very, very broad.  If you combine it with I think the good choice that you want outcomes, not only discussion.  Don't you think that you need a bit more focus to be able to do that?  



>> BYRON HOLLAND:  That's certainly a good point.  We are trying to find that delicate balance between being specific enough that we are not everything to everyone and in a first event than potentially setting ourselves up for not actually being able to come up with anything versus not precluding anything.  That's why we picked those two tracks and I did actually    I summarized this at a pretty high level.  The research drills down in to those subjects.  We will certainly put forward some more specific issues and elements.  But again we don't want to preclude people from coming up with their own.  So I mean it is a fine balance.  Will we nail it perfectly?  I hope so.  But, you know, that's the tension that we are trying to resolve.  I think we have got there and I think we have the results which will put us in the right space, but if feedback starts to flow on other topics and subject, we will certainly be open to it.  I am sorry, I don't know your name.



>> CHAD LUBELSKY:  Good morning, I am Chad Lubelsky.  I am based in Montreal.  So Canadian.  Firstly big thank you to CERA and IISD for all the work.  It is really nice to hear that we are going to be doing something.  That's great.  Thank you.  At the same time I have a few concerns and a couple of questions.  So maybe I will start with just picking up Robert's point on the cultural diversity.  Looking around this room and this is an all    not at all slight against I don't think we represent the cultural diversity of Canada.  But who is here does not represent the cultural diversity of Canada.  One as a Montrealer I was disappointed there was no mention of    the whole meeting was just going to in be in English and people couldn't speak French or anything like that.  On the diversity related to the regional focus groups I was surprised and disappointed it sounds like they are going to be closed and those discussions feed in to shaping the national agenda.  I wonder if the national agenda will have the broad tent that I heard you espousing and looking for.  I don't understand the rationale for having closed focus groups.  So I want a bit more clarification and the survey, how many people responded and how many were distributed.  It sounds like we are relying a lot on the survey and I just want a little more background.  



>> BYRON HOLLAND:  Thank you, Chad.  So in terms of cultural diversity, there was a few questions around cultural diversity.  Absolutely that's something we are looking at.  Just in terms of the surveys we specifically went out and tried to ensure that that was captured.  We did a lot of the survey work within our registrant base.  So 1.5 million domains.  The better part of a million domain holders.  And it was random survey research through that group.  Does that guarantee we have captured cultural diversity?  No, it doesn't but it is a pretty broad spectrum.  And then we went out additionally to specific groups, from business to religious to arts communities and we maybe    I am going to hand this over to Heather in a second because they did the actual piece of research but there was about another 10 specific communities that we went out and hit above and beyond our whole registrant base.  So I think I am quite confident we did actually capture a diverse set of views that fed in to the research.  

Now about the focus groups, again this is always a tension and a balance between the resource and the magnitude of the first event and we have to be somewhat pragmatic and realistic that we can only do what we can do in the first one.  Our goal is to specifically identify 15 to 20 stakeholder types and groups that will help inform and shape.  I think if we have 20 folks per focus group because just you also got to run a focus group.  The logistics of running it if you get too big they become unmanageable.  That will shape discourse for the national dialogue but we are not precluding anything.  So again we have to try to put down an agenda in a general shape to get this thing going.  But we are open to any ideas that come from the floor at the time.  So I am not sure if that's a perfect answer to your question but that's the thinking behind it.  

The survey I believe there was 986 respondents there.  So it was just shy of a thousand.  So it is quite representative.  And now maybe I will pass it over to Heather for any further comments on the research piece itself.  



>> HEATHER:  Just in terms of distribution, yes, we put considerable effort in to identifying a very wide range of NGOs, business associations and so on to get the survey in to as wide a distribution as we could and we went to faith based groups.  We went to trade unions.  We went to environmental organisations.  We went in to the international development community based in Canada.  I mean we really pulled out as many stops as we could.  We used media a little bit.  We promoted it through SPARC and the CBC and we pushed it as best we could.  And for an initial effort like we were really quite delighted at the kind of response we got.  So maybe that's one point.  And what I can do later after this is over I can    I have got a copy of the survey with me and I can actually pull that out and tell you in more detail a little bit about the actual numbers issue.  I am sorry, I just don't have that top of mind at the moment.  Maybe quickly, too, on the focus group process there will be supporting all of this online opportunities that will be as wide open as possible.  So that we can kind of balance the logistical part with limited time and resources.  We can get real focused input but at the same time leave it open for broad commentary as well.  



>> BYRON HOLLAND:  Thanks, Heather.  I wanted to add one point because I didn't address it from your question and that was about language issues.  The whole thing will be simultaneously translated.  So I think we are capturing and facilitating the need to communicate in both official languages.  Sure.  You have another point?  



>> HEATHER:  Yeah, just on the cultural diversity issue.  One of the things that we will certainly look at in Winnipeg and in the north with strong associations group.  We have very strong connections with various of the First Nations Councils in the far north.  So given the growing engagement of First Nations in the Canadian context we are going to make every effort to do that as well.  



>> BYRON HOLLAND:  Thanks.  Heather Dryden.  



>> HEATHER DRYDEN:  Thank you, Byron.  I wanted to make a couple of comments.  For those of you who don't know me I am Heather Dryden.  I work for Industry Canada.  I wanted to thank you first for your presentation.  But point out that I am actually quite pleased that you have adopted an approach that may be uniquely Canadian to the IGF and I really think that's the idea behind having national IGFs, regional IGFs is that those communities really identify what's of interest to them and are able to discuss that.  And the second thing I wanted to mention is this idea of linking to other IGFs.  We have the global IGF where we are now but there are others.  I know that as part of the organizing committee for the Commonwealth Internet Governance Forum they would be quite keen to find ways to involve the Canadians in those efforts and it is a large membership within the Commonwealth IGF.  More than 50 member Governments at least in the inter Governmental Commonwealth format.  So you touch quite a broad and diverse group within that formulation.  So I would also invite, you know, exploring or thinking about how to make those linkages because I think one of the things that's really come out of the IGFs of all the levels today there is value in that and finding out ways to link to those efforts would be welcomed, and, of course, Industry Canada is looking forward to participating however we can in these efforts.  So we are looking forward to that.  So thank you.  



>> BYRON HOLLAND:  Thanks for your comments, Heather.  And we certainly absolutely agree.  There is a lot of value out of the other regional local IGFs and we have called already considerable value just by working with some of our friends in the various other IGFs and I think that, you know, I am quite confident we will have much to give in return as well.  This is a distinctly Canadian IGF.  Just how I think we have approached from what we have heard somewhat unique and it will    it really is to foster the domestic environment.  We want to have the materials we produce trickle up to the national or regional IGF creating that domestic Forum.  We just have a couple minutes left.  So if there are any other questions    yeah.  



>> GORDON CAMPBELL:  Hi I am Gordon Campbell.  I am Canada's director of eBusiness development.  Heather works in another branch than I do but I am new to this.  So I wanted to briefly introduce myself and also to commend you on your regional inclusiveness particularly going up to remote world communities.  So it sounds like you are making a particular effort I think which can be a challenge in Canada as you point out from the geography.  The fact that there is over 600 First Nation communities and then thousands, if not tens of thousands other remote and rural communities.  Again I think you have definitely got the right focus there in terms of your cross Canada geography and particularly demonstrating by going to UNIVIT and a lot of people don't for various reasons.  So thank you for that and I look forward to working with all of you in the future.  



>> BYRON HOLLAND:  Thank you for your comment.  Yeah, and it is    Canada is a tough geography to try to capture everyone.  It is a significant endeavor to span the whole country.  The other thing that I was somewhat remiss I didn't actually introduce myself.  I am Byron Holland.  I am the CEO of the CERA.  



>> ROBERT GUERRA:  Just looking at the folks in the room and I noticed the presence from someone from our end who is very much involved from our end.  I am just curious what collaboration or coordination might take place because they are involved in one of the resources related to the Internet and their jurisdiction does kind of involve Canada as well.  So I am just maybe asking you or Megan how they see this and how that consultations might fit in to the consultations they do as well.  If I am not mistaken there was a meeting this past year.  So that's another venue.  I am curious what the coordination or collaboration will be.  



>> BYRON HOLLAND:  I will just jump in to start.  As a key member of the technical community ARIN would be one of the groups, one of the groups that we would absolutely hope will come up and visit us during our CIGF.  So from our perspective that's where it lies.  We do have some common threads in terms of board membership.  So I intend to leverage those fully.  



>> Yes, we do have an ARIN meeting in Toronto in April I believe and we have had meetings in Vancouver and Montreal as well in the past.  We haven't officially talked about this but we are happy to help.  But we are involved here and we are happy to jump in.  So we will be chatting.  



>> BYRON HOLLAND:  Great.  Well, it is 10 o'clock.  Since I don't see any further questions I just want to say thank you very much again for participating and you can always find us on the Web.  Myself or my colleague Katherine.  We very much hope to and would encourage any further suggestions or comments because we still have time to fine tune and tweak.  So any quality input we are all ears.  Thanks very much.