Justine Trudeau is "very concerned" about Net Neutrality...

.. and, since Canada and Mexico are busy renegotiating NAFTA with the United States right now, that might not just be posturing. As reported by Motherboard:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says President Donald Trump’s plan to roll back net neutrality protections for the internet “does not make sense” and that he’ll be looking into what he can do to defend net neutrality for the whole internet.

“I am very concerned about the attacks on net neutrality,” Trudeau said in Toronto on Wednesday, in response to a question from Motherboard about Trump’s plans. “Net neutrality is something that is essential for small businesses, for consumers, and it is essential to keep the freedom associated with the internet alive.”

[...]

Trudeau wouldn’t comment specifically on whether he would convey the message to Trump directly.

“We are just absorbing the position the president has taken and looking at the impact it’s going to have in the United States and in Canada,” Trudeau said.

The FCC's decision just happened, so I'm not surprised that the official Canadian response to it is still in the works, but it's good to know that at least one government outside the U.S. is treating this like the international issue that it is. It's looking more and more like the world needs some sort of more distributed internet infrastructure, though, rather than just relying on the U.S. to continue to be the backbone of the entire global communications network. The other sovereign nations of the world need to know that the U.S. can't dictate to everyone and everyone, by fiat, what sort of communications traffic can flow, along with when, where, and how.

UPDATE:  

Naturally, Canada's PM isn't the only world leader speaking out on the issue, as reported by HuffPost:

Speaking at the Global Conference on Cyberspace held in New Delhi on Thursday, India’s minister of law and justice, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said that “right of access” to the internet should be “non-negotiable.”

“Internet is supposed to be democratic. It is a big global platform, but must be linked the local ideas and concepts,” Prasad said, according to The Indian Express.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who also attended the event, similarly expressed his support for net neutrality, saying that the protection “lowers the barriers of entry by preserving the internet as a fair and level playing field and helps businesses and entrepreneurs to thrive online.”

“Open internet facilitates the marginalized and oppressed segments that are not adequately represented in the mainstream media, to tell their stories and to mobilize justice, as we have seen in recent times,” he added.

Tellingly, even some member of the FCC are against the way Ajit Pai is hijacking the FCC to enrich his telecom friends. Still quoting HuffPost:

On Wednesday, a top FCC official urged the American public to “stop us from killing net neutrality.”

“Reach out to the rest of the FCC now,” FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed. “Tell them they can’t take away internet openness without a fight.”

Unfortunately, Trump himself is desperate for ways to prove to his racist base voters that he's "putting America first," which means that all this opposition will more than likely just harden his position, rather than shifting it. The U.S. Congress could step in, except that they haven't been able to do anything at all, so the chance of a save coming from that direction is basically zero. I guess time will tell, but I'm essentially resigned to waiting for the next U.S. Administration to fix the mess that Trump is making of so many files.

Is 2017 fucking over yet?