[93Aero]

Ok so does this mean all the rants about America killing BlackBerry will stop.

Posted via CB10

[edu3110]

Well said OP.

Post via my AWESOME Q10! BBM Channel: C12140D

[dracolnyte]

personal business... in other words, personal stuff? not government business?

[Edward in Toronto]

So what you're saying is that the USA government and their agencies should not use BlackBerrys, because it's anti American, that they should only use iPhones.

Canada and the US are friends and allies, and share the North American economy. I don't see a problem with them using iPhones.

[Gunner24]

personal business... in other words, personal stuff? not government business?

Sorry, should have said "Government Business"

[bobbob1016]

Last week it was revealed that the Canadian government was planning to allow MPs and their staff to choose iPhones to conduct their government business as opposed to the BlackBerry-only mobile strategy that was in place before (MPs will soon have choice between iPhone and BlackBerry - Politics - CBC News). This is outrageous for the following reasons:

1. BlackBerry is a Canadian company that employs thousands of its employees in Canada, contributes billions to the country through taxes and investment and the majority of its shareholders are Canadian citizens and taxpayers.
2. BlackBerry is a Canadian company and part of the role of Members of Parliament is to represent their country and its industries overseas. This should include using Canadian products wherever and whenever prudent to do so.
3. The Canadian Government owes a special "duty of care" to BlackBerry as its survival is important to the national security of the country and her allies. This is especially evident as the Canadian government turned down takeover overtures from Chinese-owed Lenovo. If you are not going to let foreign entities invest in the company you have a duty to support the company yourself.
4. There is no practical or logical reason for having the Canadian government purchasing iPhones for MPs and their staff. BlackBerry10 devices are fully capable and efficient of carry out the business of the government. If an MP wants to FaceTime his girlfriend or play Temple Run during committee hearings he is perfectly capable of using some of his $100K+ salary to purchase an iPhone for his own personal use.
5. SECURITY!!! Not only is their no logical reason to purchase iPhones for MPs and their staff, it is actually a disaster! BlackBerries running on BES can claim to have the Gold Standard in security as it integrates server, software and hardware encryption. It is the full-service turn key solution employed by other governments, major banks and the defence industry. It is the only phone the President of the United States is allowed to use. With details of military procurement and trade deal negotiations being discussed by MPs, why are we risking exposing these discussions to the massive NSA surveillance or Chinese espionage activities just so an MP can have the trendiest phone at the local high school?
6. $$$. Deploying more than one type of operating system will be more expensive and less efficient - period. It requires additional tech support from staff and will be more difficult to transfer and sync information across devices. That is why the largest corporations always go with one supplier for computers, phones etc. Additionally, iPhones will likely cost the government in the neighborhood of twice as much as the BlackBerry equivalent Z10 to purchase. This amounts to a huge waste of taxpayers money and a moral indignation that should outrage all Canadians!

What can you do about it? First, send a quick email to your MP letting them know how upset this makes you. A list of MPs and their contact info can be found here: Find your Member of Parliament using your Postal Code

Send an email to John Duncan - Government whip and a spokesman for internal economy board that made the decision: PARLINFO - Parliamentarian File - Contact Information - DUNCAN, The Hon. John , P.C., B.Sc.F.

Send an email to Prime Minister Harper: PARLINFO - Parliamentarian File - Contact Information - HARPER, The Right Hon. Stephen, P.C., B.A., M.A.

and the Leader of the Opposition: PARLINFO - Parliamentarian File - Contact Information - MULCAIR, The Hon. Thomas J., P.C., B.C.L, LL.B.

and the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada: PARLINFO - Parliamentarian File - Contact Information - TRUDEAU, Justin, B.A., B.Ed.

Thank you very much CrackBerry community! Just like we pressured Rogers to reverse the Z30 decision, lets win this battle as well.

1 and 2 are really opinion. Apple, Google, and MSFT likely employ people in Canada, and pay taxes there and so on. On that logic, should I get rid of my less than a week old Z10 because "'MERICA!"?

3, still opinion. Why do they owe BB that? Yes, it's survival is important to Canada, but do you want them to do a bailout? Yes, they didn't allow Lenovo to take them over, but then I could say "The US government didn't allow a 50 year old from another country purchase my daughter. They owe me money!" The government was likely privy to information that said that the buyout would have been worse for Canada.

4, again, mainly opinion, with a bit of fact. It can do everything they need, but not what they want. Do you want a bunch of people going around showing that they only use their BB for work? They would also then badmouth BB every chance they got "I can't get app XYZ for it!" "There isn't XYZ device compatibility!" "YOU MEAN I HAVE TO INSTALL A THING IN CHROME, THEN GET AN ANDROID PHONE TO GET A CODE, THEN DOWNLOAD A FILE TO MY COMPUTER, THEN COPY IT TO MY BB, JUST TO GET SPOTIFY?!?!?!?!" (I found it easy, but some people would complain)

5, valid point. But the "Chinese espionage" goes against your point 3, where it would have been good for them to let the Chinese Lenovo buy BB (I have no issue with that, but just pointing out points).

6, more money deploying, but likely less money training. If they only had to train people once, then yes, training on the iPhone after already training on BB would waste money. But as the people trained on BB are cycled through, there will, unfortunately, be more people who instinctively know how to use an iPhone/Android.

Do Apple/Google/MSFT not pay taxes? Yes, they're US companies, not Canadian, but still. Brothels pay taxes to the US, so isn't the US government indebted to them? Pedophiles do too, so all governments owe them, I guess proportionally to their % of total taxes. (I do not mean to compare BB to a brothel or pedophile, I mean to make the "% of taxes" thing a moot point) That would then mean that governments are explicitly indebted to those who pay more taxes. Not just morally. Morally, yes, they should support local companies, but I don't want it to be a legal thing, because that would be he who has the most $ makes the rules.

[DigitalMadness]

A few years ago, it was our elected official that brought the Iphone/ipad into the provincial government.
They just told someone to go to future shop to pick up these devices. Then they told IT to make it work.
Even though the support service and infrastructure for these devices weren't there and the CIO was against it. Those devices came in because of the VIP service that we give these elected officials.
Fast forward to 2013, the direction to combat BYOB is to give people choices. Now people could select from a small selection of PC and desktop. And they have a choice between BB, Iphone and Android (Samsung).

[Gunner24]

Just spoke with BlackBerry - there is no plan and they have not been notified about any iPhones to be activated on BES. This announcement caught them off guard as much as it did us. As far as they know, these phones are going to be operated on a non-BES MDM. This is even worse for government security than initially thought.

[europolska00]

Speak for comprehension yourself, I'm not arguing BYOD anymore. "Whatever man" is my submission of the fact it is a unimportant point.
And you're right. The Canadian government supporting a company that has fired THOUSANDS of staff, selling land and hurting the economy with quarter after quarter of terrible results is something I don't understand. But I guess the side I'm on is going to be losing with the Crackberry forums.

You're right, I can't outsmart you. Good luck to you.

Posted via CB10

[enzo4vpc]

I am outraged... I sent an email message to all MPs listed in the thread.

[R Field]

Our military tries to produce and buy as much as they can from CANADIAN companies (Revision, Colt Canada, Hyperstealth, Arcteryx General Dynamics, Kantar Marine, Rhinmetall Defense Canada, Rampart International etc). Our aerospace and infrastructure purchases most of the time goes to CANADIAN companies (Bombardier, Cascade aerospace, Halifax Shipyard, Viking Air) Why does this not apply to technology purchases as well?

BlackBerry 10 devices will do everything they need and then some. I'll be damned if my tax money goes to MP's so they can purchase iPhones just so they can play Candy Crush and use Instagram. They should be working and BB10 devices will give them the freedom to have a proper device for work and personal life.

Let them buy devices they want for personal use they don't need a iPhone for work sorry. There was the whole "buy US products" movement down in the US why should that not apply here. Its not as if it's not upto par for what they need. The government support for this has been pathetic that they haven't made a big purchase order yet for BB10 devices. The German, Denmark and US DoD departments approved of it and made decent sized orders. Canadian government should've been the first in line. They have a $250 million dollar budget for ADS for the economic action plan that does nothing to help the economy but they can't even use a small portion of that to invest in upgrading tech in Parliament and investing in Canadian jobs.

[bambinoitaliano]

While I agree with your stance in a public or private company and for private individuals, this is the federal government that has involved themselves in the situation of BlackBerry.

This is a government that receives serious amounts of money from that company. A company that supports schools, and employees in high tech, high paying positions within this country. Additionally, those employees also pay their income taxes to this government. That government is therefore indebted to these people more so than they are to Apple.

Additionally, at a time when government is talking about trying to find way to save money and bring their budgets in line its highly hypocritical for them to go shopping for one of the most expensive lines of phone hardware when the local competition which is almost have the price for a comparable unit is readily available to them.

Furthermore, they will be using the BES servers I believe, so this is not a question of a backup for BlackBerry folding this is just them trying to get something they think would be cool even though it doesn't help them with productivity.

Which brings me to my final point, the iPhone will not allow them to do anything more than the comparable BlackBerry product will because it will be locked down just like the BlackBerry would be. In fact in terms of communications, the BlackBerry is recognized as the stronger of the two and would likely be a better fit for them anyway.

So don't go on without accusing people of bias when in fact for once the BBRY faithful are correct. Its a waste of money, takes away revenue from a local company and does nothing to help its stakeholders(who are largely Canadian citizens) continue on with their lives.

Isn't this the same government who strikes down the Lenovo take over of Blackberry? At least show some genuine patriotism by deploying BlackBerry devices for the entire government. Like the hacking on foreign governments by the NSA should have been a concern enough already.

[byex]

So I guess it's safe to say Canadian government will be even more unproductive now.

[GooberNS]

How many people in this thread actually work for a government or a large corporation, AND in a position of buying power.

How many of you are ACTUAL security IT specialist?



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Are you implying you are all 3 of those? Because judging by the collar dogs you are just a corporal, so that knocks you down to just 1, Govt employee.


Posted via CB10

[GooberNS]

Our military tries to produce and buy as much as they can from CANADIAN companies (Revision, Colt Canada, Hyperstealth, Arcteryx General Dynamics, Kantar Marine, Rhinmetall Defense Canada, Rampart International etc). Our aerospace and infrastructure purchases most of the time goes to CANADIAN companies (Bombardier, Cascade aerospace, Halifax Shipyard, Viking Air) Why does this not apply to technology purchases as well?

Agreed!

Posted via CB10

[iPomps]

The president of the US uses a blackberry because of its security etc, our gov't are morons for not using BlackBerry for its merits, not to mention patriotism and promoting Canadian business.

Posted via CB10 on the awesome Z10

[phylez]

Are you implying you are all 3 of those? Because judging by the collar dogs you are just a corporal, so that knocks you down to just 1, Govt employee.


Posted via CB10

Nothing like a dude in his DEUs taking a selfie and then using it as a profile pic. Watch out though... He might even be PLQ qualified. That's gotta count for something right?


Posted via CB10

[Kris Simundson]

So neither of you have anything to add to the thread other than just making assumptions?

As far as my military credentials and qualifications, the general public does not need to know those.

Sent from my Yellow Nokia Lumia 1020

[xBURK]

Thank You OP for writing this thread. Great work getting all the contact information. I've emailed everyone of them. This is how you get things done for the right reasons. If you don't agree, just move to the next thread. Really not hard.

Posted via CB10

[semperfi45]

Are you implying you are all 3 of those? Because judging by the collar dogs you are just a corporal, so that knocks you down to just 1, Govt employee.
Posted via CB10

Good point, however, corporals do the work.
Wear red on Friday to Support our Troops. All of our troops!

[texazzpete]

Hypocrisy at its peak here. Some of you were cheering wildly at the news that the French and German government was sticking to BlackBerry phones. Perhaps they should have only bought home grown phones too?

[anon(5624621)]

Hypocrisy at its peak here. Some of you were cheering wildly at the news that the French and German government was sticking to BlackBerry phones. Perhaps they should have only bought home grown phones too?

If the only reason to buy BlackBerry was nationalism you would have a point. But that's not the only reason.

Posted via CB10. Join C001A8DC6 for bento-inspired lunch ideas

[BoldPreza]

Hypocrisy at its peak here. Some of you were cheering wildly at the news that the French and German government was sticking to BlackBerry phones. Perhaps they should have only bought home grown phones too?

For the love of...

Are you freaking kidding me? It's not simply because it's Canadian!!!

It's a matter of value to all Canadians. The iPhone is a much more expensive piece subsidized or not.

It's a matter of which is the best communication devise. Given all of BlackBerry's options iPhone shouldn't even be mentioned.

At the end of it it's about our elected officials showing some concern for their constituents who may not have jobs if the company folds and the fact that they could help by utilizing thousands of these devises across all government divisions/departments.

I have asked (this will be the third time) for someone arguing for this in the thread to give me a good reason they should be doing this by demonstrating an advantage the iPhone has over its BlackBerry counterpart. I have yet to see it.

Also, any of those governments have a products that can compete? No? Good so it's irrelevant.

Posted via CB10

[GoJaysGo]

Sorry but the iPhone is FIPS certified, just like the BlackBerry. And unless you need a certain department of defense security clearance, there is nothing wrong with iOS. That's the thing I like about living in Canada and being a proud Canadian. We have choice, and thanks to our government to giving us choice, and not ramming an obsolete piece of **** in my pocket to read my emails. In case you haven't heard the latest earnings, no one is buying BlackBerry devices, and there is a reason. CHOICE! Please don't tell me you're more productive on a BlackBerry than other devices. The only reason, I can see anyone being more productive on a BlackBerry is from the lack of apps to begin with...

[GoJaysGo]

I have asked (this will be the third time) for someone arguing for this in the thread to give me a good reason they should be doing this by demonstrating an advantage the iPhone has over its BlackBerry counterpart. I have yet to see it.

It's the same reason if I asked you what advantage does BlackBerry have over iOS, and the answer is the same. There is none.