Occupy: Why Voting Isn't Enough

Overhead view of the Occupy Toronto encampment, St. James Park (from Torontoist)

Al Gore's book, "The Assault on Reason" is one of the best treatises on American democracy I've ever read. Written almost five years ago, the book goes into great detail about the many ways in which that democracy has been undermined in recent decades, and gives this warning:

"The derivation of just power from the consent of the governed depends upon the integrity of the reasoning process through which that consent is given. If the reasoning process is corrupted by money and deception, then the consent of the governed is based on false premises, and any power thus derived is inherently counterfeit and unjust. If the consent of the governed is extorted through the manipulation of mass fears, or embezzled with claims of divine guidance, democracy is impoverished. If the suspension of reason causes a significant portion of the citizenry to lose confidence in the integrity of the process, democracy can be bankrupted."

This is precisely the situation we find ourselves in today - more so in the States, but also starting here in Canada.

We are brought up to believe that democracy is a pure and noble process, and that government can be a perfect reflection of the will of the people so long as the people exercise their franchise by voting. Unfortunately, the process itself has become so thoroughly corrupted and manipulated that many have come to believe this is no longer the case.

Another Decree from King Stephen I

I've been wondering what it would take to rouse me from my municipal campaign-induced indifference to federal politics. This did the trick:

Ottawa bars ministers’ staff from appearing before committees
New Conservative policy says ministers, not their staff, should be held accountable

The Conservative government is launching another showdown with the opposition over the powers of Parliament, this time issuing an edict that only cabinet ministers – and not their political staff – can appear as witnesses before committees.

The new cabinet position, to be outlined in detail Tuesday morning, comes just days after the opposition and government resolved a heated dispute over Parliament’s power to see documents related to Afghan detainees.

This latest line in the sand will play out later Tuesday at the House of Commons access to information, privacy and ethics committee, where the Prime Minister’s director of communications, Dimitri Soudas, is scheduled to appear as a witness.

Mr. Soudas let it be known Sunday that he’s not coming.

Well, what could be wrong with that, you ask? Shouldn't a minister be the one to answer such questions and not their minions?

You would think so, except there's one little catch: a staffer, aide, or any other sort of ordinary citizen can be directly compelled to testify before a parliamentary committee. A minister cannot.

How convenient.

When I read all this, the first thing I thought was, "He can't do that! Can he do that?!" Well, no, he can't really. But he can try. And by trying, he can throw yet another wrench into the works of our parliamentary committees.

This option is starting to look better and better.

My Canada 150 Presentation: "The Creative and Competitive Economy"

What follows is an expanded version of what was supposed to be a five minute presentation at the Canada 150: Halton conference - and a MUCH expanded version of the 2 1/2 minutes I actually got to speak.
____________________________

Canadian Culture in the Digital Age

Canada has always faced unique challenges to establishing our cultural identity. We are geographically vast, culturally diverse, sparsely populated, multi-lingual... and we sit right next door to one of the most prolific producers of film, television and music in the world.

All we have to unite us as a people and as a culture across such vast divides are our stories, whether told through film, television, literature, music or journalism. But we need two things: the ability to create those stories, and the space to share them.

Looking at the rather vague subject of this challenge as a creative person, two questions interest me:

1) How do we develop funding models for the arts, film, television, and journalism in the digital age?

This is a problem not unique to Canada. The cultural industries and institutions of countries all around the world - especially in North America - are facing a crisis due to advances in technology and profound changes in how people access information, entertainment and culture.

Up until recently, reproduction and distribution of books, newspapers, music, film and television programming has been an expensive endeavor, requiring the participation of record companies, book and newspaper publishers, television broadcasters, film studios and so on.

Today, the function of these entities is eroding as technology enables many artists to produce and distribute their own work, and for their audience to access that work directly, all for minimal cost.

The problem is, people are used to the idea that they are paying for physical media. They buy records or CDs, not music. They buy DVDs, not films; books, not words; newspapers, not news.

Without physical media, how do we value these works, and how do we ensure that artists and writers are compensated for their work? Can we continue to use advertising and sponsorship as the primary means of monetizing broadcasting and news, or will we need to find more direct means as the functions of television and print media are increasingly transfered to the internet?


2) Is there still a need to protect Canadian culture?

The sad fact is, we know more about American history and American democracy than our own because these things aren't just taught in schools - they are taught by the movies and TV shows we watch and the books we read.

One example: my son's grade 9 Canadian History class did a unit on World War II, and spent 11 hours of class time watching 'Band of Brothers' because the teacher couldn't find any film or television productions which depicted the Canadian experience in that war. I find that horrifying.

Another example: during the coalition 'crisis', many Canadians were under the impression that they had elected our Prime Minister directly - possibly because they were influenced by watching the electoral goings on south of the border.

When I was a kid, I lived in the suburbs. But I knew about downtown Toronto by watching King of Kensington, where people of many cultures, races and ethnicities all lived and worked peaceably together. This contrasted sharply with what I was seeing on American shows like 'All in the Family'.

I had never travelled to the west coast, but I knew what it was like there from watching The Beachcombers. In fact, my first impression of Native Canadians was from watching that show.

I have never travelled to Canada's arctic, but I feel that I know what life is like there from watching 'North of 60'. The U.S. show 'Northern Exposure' aired during the same period, and I remember watching it and thinking, "what's with all the white people? I thought this was the North!"

Ensuring that Canadian stories are told in film and television isn't just about nationalism or patriotism - in a country this vast and disparate, this is fundamental to how we know ourselves and understand each other. Short of moving into someone's house, film and television are perhaps the most powerful means of generating understanding between people because they allow us to see through another's eyes and walk a few miles in their shoes.

Without that ability, misunderstandings arise and soon fester. If 'King of Kensington' had been set in Calgary, we might not have some of the problems we have today.

So, what do we do about it? To start, here are three practical things I would recommend:

1) Abolish simultaneous substitution in television broadcasting.

When you watch a show on NBC or CBS that is also being shown on CTV at the same time, CTV overrides the signal coming in from the U.S. and substitutes their own - including their own commercials. In other words, Canadian broadcasters are double dipping, and are therefore rewarded for re-broadcasting hit US shows all night long.

Our private broadcasters have long claimed that Canadian content regulations prevent them from being competitive, and lower the quality of Canadian productions by shielding them from competition with American shows. But in reality, it is simultaneous substitution that is in fact protecting and shielding the broadcasters from having to compete.

By doing away with simultaneous substitution, Canada's private broadcasters will no longer have a monopoly on the airing of U.S. programming in Canada, and will therefore have an incentive to create something different from what the U.S. networks are airing. Something, perhaps, Canadian.

2) Don't take the punitive copyright protection approach.

Copyright doesn't protect artists - it was never intended to. It was originally designed to protect the state's licensing and control of publishing and theatre, and today serves mainly to protect publishers, broadcasters and film producers.

One example: a member of my family who shall remain nameless does props and wardrobe work in the film and television industry, mainly as an independent contractor. On one recent production, he decided to make a duplicate of one of the pieces for himself on his own time.

When he tried to sell this piece online, he immediately heard from the studio lawyers who informed him that despite the fact that he had designed and made the piece himself, had never sold it to the studio, and had never signed anything giving them rights to his creation, it nevertheless was their intellectual property.

He was told to not just remove it from sale, but to physically destroy it and submit photographs as evidence of its destruction. Which of course he did, immediately, because we're just not the kind of people who can afford to hire a team of lawyers.

So no, copyright law is not generally designed to protect artists.

Instead of following the U.S. example of locking up teenagers for downloading movies and music, or digitally locking down media so that it cannot be transfered or converted by the person who bought it, look at alternative ways of compensating artists such as levies on recordable media including IPods and MP3 players.

3) Focus on funding Canadian film promotion as well as production.

Your average Hollywood film production spends nearly as much on advertising and promotion as on making the film itself. In this country, Passchendaele succeeded largely because they spent money promoting it, but most other Canadian films are produced on such minimal budgets they can't afford any form of promotion or advertising at all.

The result is that even the best films this country produces cannot begin to compete at the box office or even the video store because no one has ever heard of them.

Case in point: the two most nominated films for this year's Genie Awards are 'Polytechnique' and 'Nurse. Fighter. Boy.' You may have heard of 'Polytechnique' because there was some controversy about making a film about the Montreal Massacre, but most of you probably aren't aware of 'Nurse. Fighter. Boy.'

I can almost guarantee that you didn't see either of them in a movie theatre, unless you live in Quebec.

I went to Blockbuster recently to look for 'Nurse. Fighter. Boy.' hoping that the multiple Genie nominations might have inspired them to get at least one copy. I spoke to the manager, and not only had she never heard of the movie - she didn't even know what a Genie Award was.

While tax incentives and program funding are essential to film production in this country, more funding needs to be channelled into promotion and distribution. The government should also look into creative ways of promoting Canadian film and television in more general terms, as there continues to be an absurd stigma attached to our homegrown productions.

The digital revolution has created both challenges and opportunities fo Canadian culture. While technology has broken down many of the barriers we once used to protect our culture, it has also removed many of the financial barriers our creative community has faced relative to other countries by making production and distribution of their work affordable and accessible to all.

In a sense, digital technology and the internet have leveled the playing field. Musicians can create and sell digital copies of their own music without the need for studios or music labels. Film makers can finance relatively high quality films on a couple of credit cards and promote them independantly. Bloggers are challenging traditional journalism as the line between the two continues to blur.

Even television broadcasting is being transformed by PVRs and streaming video, destroying traditional restrictions of scheduling and dial position, opening up the potential for quality programming - Canadian programming - to finally break through the static.

With the right policies in place, 2017 will be a good year to be a creative Canadian.

NoProrogue in TO: The Video

(my favourite moment: 'Spartans Against Tyranny')

This is what Democracy Looks Like

This is important.

Wherever you are, whatever you were planning to do today - unless it involved your kids or your job, it probably isn't as important as attending an anti-prorogation rally.

Because people shouldn't be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

Go to NoProrogue.ca right now to find the nearest rally, and go. I'll be at the Toronto Rally at Dundas Square along with about a half dozen friends from Halton. See you there.

Waiting to be Consulted by Lisa Raitt

(the following letter was sent to the Milton Canadian Champion today)

To the Editor,

For the second time in just over a year, Stephen Harper has prorogued Parliament. Last time it was to avoid a vote of no confidence. This time it is to shut down the committee looking into the Afghanistan detainee question, and to re-set Senate committees with a majority of Conservative members.

These, of course, are not the reasons cited by the Conservatives, who keep insisting that this is all completely routine.

Let's be clear: prorogation is intended as a way to end a session of Parliament when the business of the government as laid out in the previous Throne Speech is largely completed. It is most certainly NOT routine to prorogue when more than half of the government's bills remain unpassed and committees are in the middle of important investigations.

To claim that this is just business as usual is a profoundly cynical attempt to once again play on Canadians' ignorance of their own political system. But judging by the level of outrage this latest move has provoked - even with most people off on holiday - it would seem that Canadians aren't quite as stupid as Stephen Harper thought.

Our Prime Minister claims that this extended break is to allow the government to "consult with Canadians over the economy". If that is the case, I will expect Lisa Raitt to be in her office every day between now and March 3rd and to start scheduling 'consultation' meetings with her constituents immediately.

I'll be checking, and I encourage others to do the same.

Yours truly,

Jennifer Smith

Our Government's Work Ethic

I'm blogging to you tonight from Georgetown, Kentucky, just north of Lexington, on my way down to Florida with the family.

We lost CBC somewhere near Toledo, but we've managed to keep the radio on a sequence of NPR stations, thus avoiding the canned pop music and right-wing talk that dominates the rest of the dial.

The big news down here, of course, is the health care bill passing in the U.S. Senate last night. While the question of whether or not this bill will actually improve health care remains unanswered, the point that caught my ear was this:

All 58 Democrats and the Senate's two independents held together early Monday against unanimous Republican opposition, providing the exact 60-40 margin needed to shut down a threatened GOP filibuster.

The vote came shortly after 1 a.m. with the nation's capital blanketed in snow, the unusual timing made necessary in order to get to a final vote by Christmas Eve presuming Republicans stretch out the debate as much as the rules allow.

Wow. I can't remember our MPs ever being late for dinner, let alone sticking it out into the wees.

No, our government is a little more laid back. Like those Conservative members of the Special Committee on Afghanistan who gave themselves an extra-long Christmas break, thanks to this note from Official Afghanistan Obstructionator Laurie Hawn:

Dear Ms. De Pape,

I am writing to inform the committee that Conservative Party members of the Special Committee on Canada's Mission in Afghanistan will not to be attending Tuesday's meeting called under Standing Order 106.4.

The Christmas and Holiday Season is a time to spend with family, friends, and loved ones. One would hope that only the most serious of emergencies should interfere with these moments.

There is presently nothing urgent needing study on the subject of Taleban prisoners. The alleged events in question took place over 3 years ago under two different Governments. Subsequently, Canada's prisoner policy was improved by the present Government and remains the "Gold standard" of our NATO allies.

Please pass this correspondence along to opposition members so they do not make unnecessary travel arrangements during this Christmas and Holiday season.

I would also like to wish yourself and all committee staff a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays over the coming weeks.

Oddly enough, that reads exactly like the note my son forged last week to get out of school on Friday. Except his said "Social Studies" and not "Taliban Prisoners".

How To Build a Better Candidate

I've found myself thinking a great deal lately about the quality of our MPs and candidates, and what sorts of people I would like representing me and making decisions on my behalf.

Part of this reflection came from listening to Gerard Kennedy speak at our fundraiser last month. I've admired Kennedy ever since he was the outspoken director of the Daily Bread Food Bank, and it got me thinking about how much that background has informed his views and his priorities as a politician. It also made me wish we had more MPs with a background like that, which in turn led me to investigate just how many of them actually did.

I decided to go through the list of MPs on the Parliamentary website and find out what they've done besides working as MPs. The little profile they give is hardly detailed, but it does list previous occupations and electoral history. I wasn't going to go through all of them, so I just did the 100+ from Ontario since that's my region, and the three major parties are all well represented here (keep in mind that most MPs have multiple jobs in their background, so percentages are going to add up to more than 100%).

What I found was interesting, but not really surprising. To start, nearly half - 47% - of our Ontario MPs come from the corporate world. Among Conservatives its 53%, but even the NDP caucus has more than 1/3 of their members with a corporate background. When I compare that to the number of people I personally know who are corporate execs, managers or directors, I can't help but think that this is a grotesque over-representation.

The next most common profession or background at just under 30% was municipal politician, which I consider to be a good thing. In general, town councillors, reeves and mayors are less rabidly partisan, more practical, and more cognisant of the effect of their decisions on real people. The NDP have the most municipal politicians on their roster, followed by the Conservatives and lastly the Liberals.

Then come the lawyers and the teachers, tied at 17%. The Liberals have the most lawyers (24%) and the same percent with an education background. The NDP have the most teachers (29%). Teachers and professors are good. Lawyers are ok, although there are vastly different kinds of law and a constitutional lawyer, a criminal lawyer and a corporate attorney are going to have very different perspectives.

My favourites, the social workers, social activists and the dreaded "community organizers" only account for about 10% overall, with the vast majority being NDP members. I like these people as politicians because like municipal politicians, they have the needed organizational and administrative skills without ever losing sight of the fact that they are working for the benefit of people.

We need more of these people in the Liberal Party, and in politics in general.



Getting back to those corporate people. I've tried to distinguish wherever possible between corporate 'business people' and people who actually run a business (usually listed as entrepreneurs) because I consider them to have completely different mindsets. I'm a business person. I started a numbered corporation and opened my first business when I was eighteen. I've managed everything from bookstores to print shops. I've run the same mail-order crafts business for over 20 years. My website is as old as eBay.

I've never made a great deal of money with my current business, but I consider it to be successful because a) it let me be home with my son when he was little, b) I get to do something I love and can take pride in, and c) people around the world buy my wares and write me back to tell me how much they appreciate what I've made for them.

If I were a corporate executive, I'd be a total failure. If I were a corporate manager, I'd be outsourcing my inefficient one-person crafts workshop to one of the dozen or so companies from India who email me every month offering to duplicate my work for pennies a piece.

Corporations have their place I suppose, but here's the thing: you CANNOT run a government like a corporation. You just can't. You can sort of run it like a business because real businesses provide tangible goods and services, and frequently measure success by something other than pure profit.

Corporations exist to make money for their shareholders. Period. They don't have to care about the people they employ or the communities they set up shop in or the products they produce, except to the extent that these considerations might impact their quarterly statement.

Governments are in many ways the exact opposite of corporations because their primary purpose is to provide services and other tangible benefits to the public. They accomplish this using the taxpayers' own money and so are obligated not to waste it or spend it frivolously, but it's understood that any given government program or service is not necessarily going to be 'profitable'. Many are distinctly unprofitable and inefficient by corporate standards - but they are also carefully regulated and made accessible to all according to their need. The measure of their success is public benefit, not profit.

A corporate manager would look at Canada Post and ask why they charge the same minuscule amount to send a letter across the street or across the country. They would ask why post offices or RCMP stations or even roads exist in remote communities when centralization is so much more efficient. They would question the wisdom of hiring Canadians to print or process government forms - or make those little Canadian flags - when such work could be done in Mexico or India far more cheaply. They would question why the government is running operations like the LCBO or AECL at all when they would be so much more profitable being run by the private sector.

The fact that such questions are, in fact, being raised indicates to me that there are far too many people with a corporate mindset running our government.

So what would I look for in a political candidate? I'd look for someone who's been in the trenches. Someone with a lot of volunteer hours, or experience working for a charity or an NGO. Someone who has run their own business, or has a real job producing something, creating something, or providing a useful service. Someone who has been involved politically on a practical level, served on planning committees or riding boards or administered local programs. Someone with enough education and life experience to see the bigger picture and make informed decisions. Someone who has demonstrated a real desire to do good in their community and has actually done something about it.

These are the kinds of people we should be actively recruiting as candidates and even public servants. Not just for the Liberal Party, but in general.

What I do NOT want to see is more CEOs, CFOs, corporate managers, or people who seem to do nothing but sit on boards of directors. I'm sure they're very nice people and have skills to offer, but we already have plenty of people like that running the country, thank you very much.

Travers, Turner and May on Democracy in Crisis

Michael Enright discusses the sorry state of Canadian democracy with Elizabeth May, Garth Turner and the Star's James Travers on this Sunday Edition podcast.

Every citizen of voting age in this country should listen to this episode. Then go read (or re-read) Travers' extraordinary editorial that splashed across the country like a glass of ice water last month. Then read Turner's book, and May's.

Sleepers, awake!

We the Sheeple

When I attended the Liberal Party Convention in Vancouver earlier this month, the number one question I was asked by MPs, bloggers and fellow delegates alike was, "Is Garth going to run again?"

The answer, apparently, is no.

I knew he'd been back and forth a couple of times on this since he lost the election last fall, but as far as I and the rest of the Halton Riding Association were aware, he was ready and willing to take another shot. So when he started telling the media in recent weeks to "stick a fork in me, I'm done", I thought he was just messing with them. But while nothing is 'official'-official yet, it looks like he's serious this time.

Who can blame him, really? Since he was ejected from the Conservative Party he's had garbage dumped on his lawn, had his vehicle followed and photographed, his wife and his campaign manager have had sexually degrading comments about them spewed across the internet, and he's been inundated with an endless barrage of harassing and threatening emails and phone calls. He's certainly not the first politician ever to be targeted in this way, but as someone who got to take a couple of those calls during the campaign I can personally attest to the devastating emotional effect they can have. Anyone who can stand up and take that sort of abuse for any length of time and continue doing their job the way that they see fit deserves our respect.

So rejoice, oh ye haters - you won't have Garth Turner to kick around anymore (that thud you just heard was the sound of Steve Janke's blog stats crashing to the ground).

Happily, none of this has prevented the man from continuing to speak out about the sad state of our democracy - specifically, the effect of having our elected representatives forced to toe the party line instead of being free to speak on our behalf. His own personal experience with this phenomenon is detailed in his new book, "Sheeple: Caucus Confidential in Stephen Harper's Ottawa". I'd give you a review, but sadly our rapidly expanding town still has but one tiny bookstore (not counting the excellent 'Recycled Reading'), and the two copies they ordered disappeared before they even hit the shelves.

Turner speaks about his book and his experiences in this excellent interview on CBC News: Sunday. There is apparently a later panel discussion with Turner, Elizabeth May, Michael Enright and James Travers which I'm hoping will be posted later.

By the way, before you write off 'Sheeple' as sour grapes or the revenge of the rejected, Turner isn't the only one concerned about the bubble of obedience that Stephen Harper has created around himself, both in caucus and in the PMO:

Mr. Jaffer, whose is married to Minister of State for Status of Women Helena Guergis (Simcoe-Grey, Ont.), said there are "caucus morale" issues in the Conservative caucus and he questioned whether there is enough of a "culture of dissent" within the party for Mr. Harper to be made fully aware of the political situation inside and outside of caucus.

"I often challenged certain things because I wanted to be sure he got the best information; whether he liked it or not was another thing," said Mr. Jaffer. "But that's always a challenge and the Prime Minister has to take a step back and ask himself that; is he being served in the best possibly way from the people who are currently around him? If he thinks that he's not, and, in particular, if he doesn't have that culture, if it's become more of a 'yes' culture than a culture of dissent, then he has to ask that question and maybe he has to make some changes, but only he can really be able to do that."

Whatever you think of Garth Turner and his ways, there does seem to be a growing consensus that there are some fundamental problems with our democratic system that must be addressed. Some are attempting to do that through digital democracy, electoral reform, or overhauling their own political parties to make them more internally democratic. Others, like Turner, are questioning the very role that political parties play in our system. They point out, as does Hassan Arif in a recent editorial, that Canada has one of the most rigidly partisan political systems in the world. Even in the U.S., where the relationship between Red and Blue is commonly characterized as a war, votes in Congress rarely fall strictly along party lines, negotiation is the norm, and each representative is fully expected to express the wishes of their constituents and not just their party.

Compare that to our current Parliament, where nearly every vote of any significance is a whipped vote, and any MP who goes against that can expect to be disciplined or expelled. What does that do to the ability or even the willingness of our representatives to actually represent us? What does it say when most MPs spend all of their time (and our money) parroting talking points, re-distributing identical pamphlets and essentially selling their party's position to their constituents? When was the last time you heard an MP speak an opinion that wasn't identical to the opinion of every other MP in his or her party? When was the last time your MP asked you what you thought about anything, or responded to an email with anything other than "Thank you for your comments"?

I used to have an MP. Now I have a spokesperson for the Conservative Party of Canada.

I'm gonna miss you, Garth.



(crossposted from HaltonWatch)

James Travers' Lament For a Nation

Go. Read. Mourn. And then bloody well DO something about it.

UPDATE: Commenters suggest a couple of ways to do something. Go wander over to Senator Elaine McCoy's place, or check out Rural's newest project,



And if I might also recommend, pick up a copy of Al Gore's 'The Assault on Reason'. Different system. Same issues.

On What The GG Knew and Could Not Know

H/T to Adam Rawlings, who has put us all onto this fascinating post by a former philosophy professor of his. Here's the nut of it:

If the PM enjoys the confidence of the House of Commons, then the Governor-General must do his or her bidding. On Thursday December 4th, Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked the GG to prorogue Parliament so that he would not have to face the House on a vote of confidence. Should she have acceded to his request? If he had the confidence of the House, she was obliged to do so. If he did not, she was obliged not to do so.

Here's a problem in what I call constitutional epistemology. Does the GG know that Harper did not have the confidence of the House? Well, in the ordinary sense, yes. Nobody could doubt that a majority of members of the House had no confidence in him. They said so. They signed pieces of paper to that effect.

Nevertheless, they had voted to receive the Speech from the Throne. So when the Commons had voted last in a confidence measure, they demonstrated confidence in Harper's government. Thus, the GG does not know, in a constitutional sense, that he does not have the confidence of the House.

I love tidy reasoning like that. Nice.