Quotulatiousness

May 9, 2020

Sidewalk Labs pulls out of their Panopticon-on-the-harbour project in Toronto

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley clearly hoped the Google-affiliated Sidewalk Labs would turn out to be a benign addition to the Waterfront:

Sidewalk Labs Toronto demo, 17 April 2019.
Photo by Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Scalable Grid Engine via Wikimedia Commons.

It would be a mixed-income and family-friendly community: 20 per cent low-income and 20 per cent middle-income, with 40 per cent of units two-bedrooms or larger. It would be fantastically energy-efficient. It would discourage waste production using “pay-as-you-throw chutes” leading to pneumatic tubes that would rocket your trash, recycling and organic waste to the proper facilities.

Some of the details seemed a bit far-fetched, and some of the ideas came to naught at the design stage. But the Google family of companies is not known for wretched failure. To many Torontonians, it was a compelling vision.

Unfortunately, a lot of the very people it was designed to impress hated the hell out of it.

[…]

So there is blame to go around — and to be clear, no one is officially blaming the city bureaucracy or the project’s opponents for scuppering the deal. But the fact is, Sidewalk simply wandered into the wrong saloon. Toronto is an intensely conservative city in the strictest sense of the word. Its establishment doesn’t even believe things that work in other cities would work here. It’s why we pilot-project food carts to death, instead of just allowing food carts. It’s why we’re closing parks and crowding people on sidewalks during the pandemic, instead of following other the lead of other cities and dedicating roads to safely spaced pedestrians and cyclists. When Ontario loosened alcohol regulations, many Torontonians predicted tailgate parties and picnics-with-wine would lead to mayhem — and they really, really meant it.

Sidewalk wanted to do something no other city had ever done. You can imagine the terror and confusion it sowed. And that was over 12 acres — six football fields. Toronto has a great many things going for it. I have argued in the past that its conservatism, broadly speaking, has served it very well. But Sidewalk reminded us what we trade for that. If we can’t take a bit of a chance on 12 acres, it doesn’t bode at all well for the many hundreds of other acres in this city that have been begging for redevelopment my entire lifetime — not if we want them to be at all innovative or memorable, anyway.

May 4, 2020

The No 4, Mk I* Lee-Enfield: Introduction

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

britishmuzzleloaders
Published 21 Aug 2018

If you would like to support the Channel you can do so through our Patreon Page.
https://www.patreon.com/britishmuzzle…

Errata –
The labelling of the “wrongly stamped” Mk III sight should be better described as “confusingly stamped” … the designation refers to the leaf …

It should be clarified that the rifle has at some point spent time in India with resultant modifications and maintenance…

Also, as of the 1937 Manual, the safety catch should be applied with the forefinger of the right hand.

For your Martini and Snider needs email Martyn at xringservices@yahoo.com

And for further reading on all British Victorian (and earlier) arms stop by the British Militaria Forum and say hello. http://britishmilitariaforums.yuku.com

April 30, 2020

CITIZENS! Report any non-socially-distanced deviationist behaviour to this number immediately!

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Maclean’s, Jen Gerson admits that she has not (yet) reported any of her neighbours for their failure to obediently follow the rules of social distancing. She must be reported to the appropriate state authorities!

Commemorative badges of the German Democratic Republic’s Ministry of State Security (Stasi).
Wikimedia Commons.

Look, I know I’m going to get flak for this, but someone needs to say it: think twice before you narc on your neighbours.

Snitching may work, but the downsides to citizen-policing are grim — to say nothing of the historical antecedents.

Firstly, “you can play havoc with somebody just by snitching on them with an anonymous snitch line,” noted Sharon Polsky, the president of the Privacy and Access Council of Canada. In addition to the risk of malicious reports, if people of colour aren’t disproportionately subject to snitching, I’d be shocked.

Totalitarian states turned neighbour against neighbour and family against family, in order to maintain the illusion of social cohesion.

Authoritarians use this tactic because there are never enough police or soldiers to force compliance upon an entire population, not unless everyone consents to become an agent of his or her own mutual oppression.

The term “fascism” has an innocent history. It comes from the Roman term “fasces,” which means a bundle of sticks bound together. One stick breaks, but the fasces remains strong. It’s another term for unity. That’s what makes it so seductive, especially in times of uncertainty and mortal dread. We’re all in this together. Nary a stick shall stray.

“We are now living amid the very tactics that the West [once] criticized,” Polsky added. “With state controls on commerce, industry, speech, and media.”

The federal government, for example, is already considering legislation that would bar the spreading of misinformation about COVID-19 online.

“Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures and it is about protecting the public,” Privy Council President Dominic LeBlanc told reporters with a line that should give any student of history the creeps.

“This is not a question of freedom of speech. This is a question of people who are actually actively working to spread disinformation, whether it’s through troll bot farms, whether [it’s] state operators or whether it’s really conspiracy theorist cranks who seem to get their kicks out of creating havoc.”

No doubt LeBlanc et al are operating under the noblest of intentions. But repressive measures buy conformity at a terrible price. Snitch lines turn us against one another. They teach us to fear the people we need to survive, thus making us more dependent on the apparatus of the state.

April 24, 2020

QotD: The best way to see Toronto (aka “Greater Parkdale”)

Filed under: Architecture, Cancon, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Asked by a visitor what is the best way to see Greater Parkdale, I replied, on your back in an ambulance. I was serious, of course. At street level, transient franchise shopfronts bear no architectural relation to the older buildings they have been stuck on. But from a reclining position, only the unmodified upper storeys can be seen, yet nothing above the second or third (thus deleting most of the appalling highrises). The city thus retains something of its fine and fusty Edwardian provincial order. Prone in this way, one might drive for miles through repulsively glitzy shopping districts, without seeing what’s been added since the Great War.

David Warren, “The scandal of interiors”, Essays in Idleness, 2018-01-25.

April 19, 2020

In healthcare matters, Confederation is working as intended

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Government, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley on the viewing-with-alarm concerns that we don’t have a single nation-wide standard of care, and why the Swedish approach to the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic is worth observing closely:

Front view of Toronto General Hospital in 2005. The new wing, as shown in the photograph, was completed in 2002.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Last week, Maclean’s reported on a group of University of Ottawa researchers who had found, to their consternation, that each province offers different advice to people who think they might be showing coronavirus symptoms. “Even in a cross-Canada pandemic as devastating as this, there is not a single, evidence-based Canadian standard of care simply for self-assessment,” the researchers wrote.

It’s strange how many Canadians seem uncomfortable with the most basic design of their country, which is that of a federation. What the U of O researchers find alarming is not just a matter of Canada operating as it was intended to operate, but also a good example of the benefits. Provinces and territories can shape their responses to the needs of their populations. They can learn from each other what works. It’s a living laboratory.

In the same vein, assuming things don’t go catastrophically wrong, we should be thankful that Sweden is sticking to its guns in avoiding a total lockdown. That, too, will provide very useful data in preparation for COVID-the-next.

It is important to realize that lockdowns take a human toll, sometimes fatal, just like coronaviruses (though probably not on the same scale). Emergency room doctors are worried about their lack of business nowadays, the National Post‘s Richard Warnica reported Friday. “Doctors believe … patients who are afraid of contracting COVID-19 are just waiting (to seek treatment) and getting sicker,” Warnica reported. The head of a Vancouver ER department noted that opioid overdose deaths are up, even as his hospital treats far fewer. Are they overdosing alone, whereas before they might have been saved? When we postmortem this pandemic, we will hear about sexual and domestic assaults, suicides and other isolation-related harms. They will need to be weighed against the risks inherent in a less draconian approach.

Sweden’s strategy has been somewhat caricatured. High schools and universities closed; people aged 70 or older were advised to self-isolate; large gatherings ceased. Easter travel was down a reported 90 per cent. More Swedes have reportedly filed for unemployment benefits than during 2008 crash. Restaurants, pubs and cafés remain open, which seems unfathomable to a Canadian. But “it’s a myth that it’s business as usual,” as Sweden’s deputy prime minister Isabella Lovin told the Financial Times this week.

April 17, 2020

Chris Selley – “… if John Q. Bylaw is hassling you just for taking a walk, for heaven’s sake get your smart phone out and make a righteous stink”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Our proto-surveillance society is moving rapidly toward all-surveillance, all the time and the current justification is to fight the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic:

For civil libertarians, these are alarming times — but less alarming than they might be. During a pandemic, when everyone agrees life cannot go on as normal, people who place maximum value on individual freedom are liable to look rather selfish. “Trust our leaders” types get a big boost.

But if Canadian officialdom has not botched its response to this crisis, neither has it excelled. Theresa Tam’s defenders are right that official advice will naturally change over the course of a pandemic — but nothing justifies her proactive downplaying of the COVID-19 risk at a time when several Canadian governments were, we now know, woefully unprepared. The pandemic doesn’t care that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went to Harrington Lake, against advice from three governments including his own to stay away from any second homes — but it would have been so bloody easy for him not to go, to set an example. It’s equally inconsequential that Andrew Scheer added six more human beings than necessary to a government charter flight from Regina to Ottawa — and it would have been equally easy for him not to bring his family along.

Meanwhile, certain big Canadian cities have so obviously overstepped the mark, by cracking down on perfectly safe behaviours — walking in parks, notably — as to highlight the value of some don’t-tread-on-me pushback. An unscientific survey of social media suggests not a single real human being supports the City of Ottawa’s latest ridiculousness: Days after its bylaw officers threatened a father and son for kicking a ball around [noted here], fined a man $880 for walking his dog, and allegedly assaulted a man questioning his eviction from a park — none of which seems to be supported by the provincial emergency act they were ostensibly enforcing — a public health official now advises against exchanging properly distanced outdoor pleasantries with one’s neighbours lest it “turn into a parking lot or backyard party.” (Don’t laugh: Studio 54 was a cozy little jazz bar before Mick Jagger and Debbie Harry showed up one night with some records and a pound of blow.)

For civil libertarians who remember life before smart phones, meanwhile, the plan Google and Apple are working on to help governments control COVID-19 might as well be custom-designed to induce heebie-jeebies. The basic idea is that your phone’s operating system would reach out to other phones via Bluetooth and record the date, time, duration and location of the meeting. No personal information need be attached to those data points, just the identity of the device. When someone reports a COVID-19 diagnosis on an app, using a code provided by their public health department, devices that had been nearby would receive a warning that their owners might have been exposed, and should take such measures as local authorities advise.

It could be the stuff of dystopian sci-fi. You can just see the guy with the giant translucent computer screen shouting “magnify! Enhance!” Really, though, this comes down to a simple question: Whom do you least distrust? A co-production between Google, which is not at all known for respecting users’ privacy, and Apple, which at least seems to make an effort? Or governments?

April 16, 2020

The (temporary) return of “dazzle” paint schemes for the Royal Canadian Navy

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Well, two RCN ships, if not the entire fleet … Joseph Trevithick reports for The Drive:

HMCS Regina in her dazzle camouflage paint taking part in Task Group Exercise 20-1 in April, 2020.
Canadian Forces photo via The Drive.

Air forces around the world will often give their aircraft specialized paint jobs to commemorate anniversaries and other notable occasions, but it’s far less common to see navies do the same thing with their ships. Recently, however, the Royal Canadian Navy’s Halifax class frigate HMCS Regina recently took part in a training exercise wearing an iconic blue, black, and gray paint job, commonly known as a “dazzle” scheme, a kind of warship camouflage that first appeared during World War I.

At the end of March 2020, Regina, and her unique paint job, had joined HMCS Calgary, another Halifax-class frigate, along with the Kingston-class coastal defense vessel HMCS Brandon and two Orca-class Patrol Craft Training (PCT) vessels, Cougar* and Wolf*, for Task Group Exercise 20-1 (TGEX 20-1) off the coast of Vancouver Island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. The training continued into the first week of April. TGEX 20-1 was part of Calgary‘s Directed Sea Readiness Training (DSRT) in preparation for that particular ship’s upcoming deployment.

Regina had first emerged in the dazzle scheme in October 2019 ahead of the U.S. Navy-led Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise, a massive naval training event that takes place every two years and includes U.S. allies and partners from around the Pacific region. It reportedly took 272 gallons of paint and cost the Royal Canadian Navy $20,000 to give Regina the dazzle treatment.

The frigate will wear the camouflage pattern until the end of 2020. The Royal Canadian Navy also painted up the Kingston-class HMCS Moncton, which is homeported in Halifax on the other side of the country, in a similar scheme. The paint job on both ships is in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the end of the Battle of the Atlantic. This refers to the Allied fight to both enforce a naval blockade of Germany during World War II and secure critical maritime supply routes from North America to Europe. The battle officially ended with the surrender of the Nazi regime in May 1945.

HMCS Moncton in dazzle camouflage, 2020.
Canadian Forces photo via The Drive.

    * Wikipedia points out that the Orca-class are not formally commissioned ships in the RCN and therefore do not carry the designation “Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship” (HMCS).

Canada’s temporary foreign workers

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Economics, Government, Health — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley points out some of the weirdness of Canada’s claimed dependence on temporary foreign workers because “Canadians still need to eat.”:

Temporary foreign workers picking fruit in a Canadian orchard.
Image from http://www.yorkfeed.com/apple-picking-urgently-canada/

If all goes as it should at Canada’s airports, temporary foreign workers will be informed of their responsibilities. They should be made aware of their employers’ responsibilities as well. And there’s no particular epidemiological reason to worry about them more than anyone else landing on a Canadian runway from abroad — or domestically, for that matter. The vast majority of temporary foreign workers are from Mexico, Jamaica or Guatemala, which have reported 39, 25 and nine COVID-19 cases per million residents. Canada’s tally works out to 713 per million.

But the official advice to employers provides little comfort. It doesn’t prohibit putting people up in shared accommodations; it merely says residents must be able to keep two metres from each other at all times. We know the limitations of such measures from experience in seniors’ homes and homeless shelters. It’s not necessarily “the state’s duty” to quarantine arriving temporary foreign workers, as Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet argued this week. But the state could certainly do far more than it is.

For one thing, the cities in which workers typically first arrive are much better suited to proper self-isolation — i.e., in a hotel or motel room — compared to the farm country they are eventually headed for. Sourcing 45,000 hotel rooms is a huge job even in cities — that’s roughly how many rooms there are in the entire Greater Toronto Area — but it will never be easier than right now. It would prevent any bad-actor employers from breaking the rules. It would be much more reassuring than a government cheque for what works out to less than $80 per worker per day of isolation.

The whole situation is completely bizarre, though — one of several longstanding, bizarre and sometimes embarrassing Canadian situations that COVID-19 has highlighted. Economically speaking, the idea of temporary foreign workers essentially amounts to cheating. It reaches peak absurdity when businesses like Tim Hortons outlets claim to need them — that is, when they’re being brought in to do work that Canadians are demonstrably willing to do. It’s just a skeevy way to artificially depress wages and the price of fast food. People seemed to sense that back in 2014, when the government tightened the rules.

In agriculture, however, the idea seems thoroughly entrenched. Perhaps it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind. But it’s the same absurdity: If you can identify a group of 45,000 people without whose labour we literally wouldn’t be able to feed ourselves — or so we are told — then on what possible grounds are we denying them a path to Canadian citizenship? In 2017, the Toronto Star profiled a 66-year-old Saint Lucian man who had busted his hump on Canadian farms for 37 years in a row, with his paycheques deducted for income tax, EI and CPP, but who had no claim to stay. The highly skilled and educated immigrants we compete to attract bring many important things to Canada’s table; they don’t bring anything more important than food. And food is something COVID-19 has very much taught us not to take for granted. Who would have thought supermarket checkout clerks would achieve hero status?

April 10, 2020

“In Flanders Fields” – Sabaton History 062 [Official]

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Media, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Sabaton History
Published 9 Apr 2020

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row.” These words, written by John McCrae in his famous war poem “In Flanders Fields”, immortalize death and dying in the Great War like only a few others. It is said, that shortly after the death of his dear friend, McCrae looked over the parapet and onto the battlefield once more. In all the mayhem, the smoke, the exploding shells and the dead bodies on the ground, he saw that the little red flowers, the poppies, still grew. After a strong wind, their pedals would fly across the field, and lay there strewn, like the blood that was shed by the soldiers that had to die there.

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Watch the Official Lyric Video of “In Flanders Fields” here:
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Check out the trailer for Sabaton’s new album The Great War right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZP1…

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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
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April 9, 2020

You know you’re entering a police state when the police can just make up new “laws” to enforce

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I was surprised to see the name of someone I used to work with pop up in a story about over-enthusiastic enforcement of imaginary “laws” in the Ottawa area:

On Tuesday, the City of Ottawa’s bylaw enforcement team tweeted out an important clarification to a recent news report: An Orléans man had not been and would not be issued a $700 ticket for “playing soccer with his son in an empty field.” Rather, the city maintains, he had only been issued a “verbal warning” for playing soccer with his son in an empty field.

One can understand the Orléans man’s confusion. As David Martinek told it to the Ottawa Citizen, he was kicking around a ball with his four-year-old son William, who has autism and “more energy than needed to power the City of Ottawa,” when a bylaw officer arrived, took note of his licence plate and mentioned the $700 figure. He quite logically expected a summons in the mail.

The good news, such as it is, is that Martinek is no poorer to the tune of $700 (though he could have crowdfunded that in about 90 seconds). The remarkable thing about the city’s clarification, however, is that it actually paints a more offensive picture. A ticket is something you can fight — and such a ticket would deserve to be fought unto its demise, because Martinek doesn’t seem to have been doing anything illegal. As such, the “verbal warning” serves only as intimidation against a harmless, indeed beneficial activity.

The City of Ottawa’s website lays out the “rules and restrictions” in force due to COVID-19. It notes that bylaw officers have been empowered to enforce Ontario’s Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act. Regulation 104/20, made under said act, orders the closure of “outdoor recreational amenities that are intended for use by more than one family.”

It defines “outdoor recreational amenities” as off-leash dog parks, community and allotment gardens, “all portions of park and recreational areas containing outdoor fitness equipment,” “all outdoor playgrounds, play structures and equipment,” “all outdoor picnic sites, benches and shelters in park and recreational areas,” and “all outdoor sports facilities and multi-use fields, including baseball diamonds; soccer fields; frisbee golf locations; tennis, platform tennis, table tennis and pickleball courts; basketball courts; BMX parks; and skate parks.”

Considerable thought went into those very thorough prohibitions, you will agree. Yet they conspicuously do not prohibit two members of the same household kicking a ball around. Martinek says he questioned the bylaw officer as to whether they were on city parkland, but there’s nothing in the act prohibiting intra-household kick-arounds in parks or anywhere else. “Nothing in this order precludes individuals from walking through or using portions of park and recreational areas that are not otherwise closed and that do not contain an outdoor recreational amenity described,” the regulation reads.

April 6, 2020

QotD: North American downtown “architecture”

Filed under: Architecture, Cancon, Economics, History, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Real brick-and-plaster substance is, perversely enough, often smooshed then overlain with a plastic parody of some “olde” style. We live today in urban environments which are comprehensively fake — a contributing factor to the fakeness in ourselves. The tactic of developers is to append “poetic” associations from a happier past, to their ghastly provisional installations. This odonymical abuse has been going on for some time: “mountain-view” where there is no mountain, “river-side” where there is no river, “park-dale” with neither park nor dale. “Old-world charm” that consists of ticky-tack boxes, with stacks of brutalist concrete poking through.

The “downtowns” of cities in the eastern half of this American continent were built before the automobile, with pedestrian compactness. So prosperous did we become, so quickly, and so extensive was the building towards the latter end of the nineteenth century, that plentiful evidence remains. The ground-cover is still mostly older buildings, paradoxically thanks to rocketing property values: new buildings must accommodate phenomenal densities, upon tiny footprints. But ten-thousands of apparently “old houses” remain, going on and off market at a million apiece. The principles of money-management have “evolved” over the years, and the idea of “home” as a fungible investment has been universalized. All one needs to acquire one is a small saving and a large credit line. Then one is cut in for all subsequent rounds of poker.

You move in and “re-decorate,” less from personal taste than in anticipation of re-sale. After this process has been repeated a few times, nothing remains of the older building except its “historical” façade, itself somewhat tarted. Travelling about by foot and trolley, I have watched a likely majority of the city’s more attractive “landmark” buildings reduced to fronts only. These are propped by girders, while entirely new (and disproportionately larger) new constructions are bunged in behind.

Thus, nothing remains that is “authentic.” All continuities are destroyed, beyond this tip of the hat — the aesthetic equivalent of that homage which vice pays to virtue.

David Warren, “The scandal of interiors”, Essays in Idleness, 2018-01-25.

April 5, 2020

Ontario premier Doug Ford surprises many observers – “Wasn’t this guy supposed to be Canada’s Donald Trump?”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley on the surprisingly solid performance of Ontario premier Doug Ford during the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic response:

Ontario premier Doug Ford as new Progressive Conservative leader at the 2014 Good Friday procession in East York, Canada.
Photo via Wikimedia.

The premier has attracted much praise for his performance during this crisis, and it is deserved. His last misstep was advising families to head off on March Break as planned, viruses be damned, but that might as well have been 100 years ago. We were all clutching at optimism. Former premier Kathleen Wynne, who clearly understands Ford, graciously said she heard a man “trying to calm the waters … out of the goodness of his heart.”

Since then Ford has struck the right tone: often visibly alarmed, but calm, scripted and plain of speech. He has been gracious to everyone on the right side of the fight, from doctors and nurses to supermarket clerks and frantic, unemployed people stuck at home, to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to his fellow premiers of all political stripes, and even to journalists. And he has been galvanizingly withering to those on the wrong side, most notably a few price-gouging businesses who have been helpful enough to offer themselves up as common enemies.

More than a few people have remarked: “Wasn’t this guy supposed to be Canada’s Donald Trump?”

Indeed, once upon a time, those comparisons flew thick and fast. But they were always absurd — a toxic by-product of the Canadian media’s mortifying obsession with all things American. No First World politician is remotely like Donald Trump. I have filed many thousands of words over the past decade on what I view as Doug Ford’s inadequacies as a politician, and it would never have occurred to me to compare him to such a transparently awful president.

Ford, too, has levelled many vastly over-the-top accusations against his opponents. But he has basically set them all aside now. While federal Conservatives continue battling federal Liberals on the carbon tax file, Ford has refused to discuss it and happily applauds the feds’ anti-coronavirus efforts. Where once Ford railed at his media critics, now he praises their efforts covering the crisis and informing Ontarians. His relatively plain talk is noticeably more reassuring than the messaging some other Canadian heads of government, who fancy themselves far more polished, are dishing out — Trudeau in particular.

April 3, 2020

QotD: Canadian senators

Filed under: Cancon, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

When I heard that Sen. Tommy Banks had died of leukemia at age 81, I thought maybe the newspaper notices ought to be left to the people who knew him better — and in Edmonton that number comes to thousands upon thousands of people. I interviewed Banks a few times as a young political reporter. I think every such person has learned the procrastinator’s trade secret that if you’re doing an issues story, senators are easier to get hold of on a short deadline than elected MPs, and a lot easier than cabinet ministers, especially if you’re an unknown lightweight.

This, at least, used to be the case. I am not sure whether it applies to the Brave New Senate that now exists after the somewhat cynical appointments of Stephen Harper and the experimental renovations of Justin Trudeau. But if you have ever wondered why political beat writers and old codger columnists often have surprisingly positive sentiments about the Senate, which nine-tenths of the people reading these words despise, this is probably one reason: a senator might call you back soon enough to be of some use.

And there’s another, related reason. In phoning a senator to chat about issues because you can’t get a “real” politician to return your inquiry, you would (or, anyway, I would) sometimes find surprisingly strong evidence that the Senate quietly lives up to its original constitutional promise. Spared the effort of endless electioneering and toilsome constituent service, senators do have time for deep study of projects and problems, and some freedom to develop independent opinions. I do not say that most of them use the time and the freedom, but it was, and I’m sure it still is, fairly easy to avoid the duds.

Colby Cosh, “R.I.P. Senator Tommy Banks, a figure from Edmonton’s pantheon”, National Post, 2018-01-26.

April 1, 2020

Getting the federal government out of the media business

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Far from subsidizing the faltering mainstream media, the Canadian government should follow Ted Campbell’s advice here:

Direct subsidies will make many Canadians suspicious that the media has been bought and paid for and is little better than a government PR agency. Government advertising will bring charges of taxpayers’ money being used to publish propaganda. I wonder if tax breaks might help … maybe, as long as they are available, equally, to The Star and Rebel Media, and the North Renfrew Times, too I suppose. But where does it stop? Is my blog a news source? No, quite clearly not, it is almost 100% opinion, but what about blogs like Vivian Krause’s Fair Questions? It looks a lot more like reporting than what I do. In fact, some of her reporting looks a lot better than what the CBC does, doesn’t it? So where would the bureaucrats who draft the laws and regulations and then implement them draw the lines? Let’s assume that the traditional, mainstream media ~ the Globe and Mail and Global TV and so on ~ get tax breaks, and let’s assume that I don’t qualify. Who else does? Who makes that decision? Is it a politician, someone like the current Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault? Is it another the so-called “arm’s-length” boards that act as surrogates for the ministers? Or is it a team of bureaucrats? Who do we trust? None of the above?

The better answer, it seems to me, is to do pretty much exactly the opposite of what Daniel Bernhard recommends:

  • First: defund most of the CBC. Make it a national (and international) radio network (actually, two networks: one English and one French). Sell off ALL of the CBC’s TV broadcast licences and ALL of its TV production facilities and many of its major radio production facilities, too. Keep a fair number of local studios, especially in rural and remote regions, and a handful (five or six?) larger regional news centres and two (one English, one French) national and international newsrooms that will provide both voice and text reports ~ over the air and on the internet, free for all Canadians and totally free of copyright so that any news agency can use them;
  • Second, provide no, zero, nada, zilch funding to any news organization. Watch and see how they shake out in this rapidly changing environment. Remove or reduce most foreign ownership restrictions. Encourage “bundling” ~ allow e.g. telecom companies like Bell and Rogers to own and to integrate newspapers and TV stations and radio stations and internet platforms and entertainment sources, too; and
  • Third, get the CRTC out of the business of the internet and cable. There is a legitimate role for an independent regulator to manage scarcity. Over-the-air radio and TV channels are always in limited (and often in short) supply and they need to be allocated (licensed) to individual broadcasters; that’s a useful job for the CRTC. There is no scarcity of capacity on the landlines, cables and even satellite links in Canada. The market does a first-rate job of regulating them; the CRTC does, at best, a third-rate job.

I am certain that there are useful, profitable business models for media out there. The fact that we don’t seem to have one in Canada is, in my opinion, because of the existence of the CBC, which distorts the market too much, and the constant efforts of governments (national, provincial and even local) to try to “support” commercial favourites. The right move is to stand back and remove the heavy hand of bureaucracy and let the media find its own, profitable business model. There is a very limited role for government but Canada does not need a Ministry of Truth.

March 29, 2020

Can we keep a few of these innovations after the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak is over?

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Food, Government, Law, Wine — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley finds a few of the changes to business practice in Ontario to be definite improvements that we should retain once the panic subsides:

“The Beer Store” by Like_the_Grand_Canyon is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Prepping my urban coronavirus hermitage involved packing my freezer with comforting made-ahead delights: pulled pork, chili, various pasta sauces including a life-altering Bolognese ragout recipe from Marie in Quebec City, who runs foodnouveau.com. Mostly, however, I’ve found myself wanting to eat … a bit more downscale. Supplies of Pogos and Bagel Bites are shamefully depleted, well ahead of schedule. And I do love that chicken from Popeye’s.

My superb local fried chicken joint has come up with a very simple and reassuring way to fill walk-up orders. It’s explained on the locked door: You phone in your order from outside, then retreat eight feet; an employee comes to the door with the credit/debit machine, makes eye contact, demonstratively puts on a fresh pair of gloves, opens the door and places the machine on a stool outside, along with the box of gloves. The customer dons a pair of the gloves, completes the transaction, discards the gloves in the waste basket provided, and retreats eight feet again. The employee, wearing fresh gloves, returns with the order and places it, with a smile, on the stool.

This is neither particularly ingenious nor unique. The food-delivery industry has taken to calling it “contactless delivery,” which is an amusingly jargon-y term for “pay in advance and we’ll leave it wherever you tell us and run.” I found myself weirdly impressed, though. Popeye’s system might not scale to Ronald’s place across the street, and I’m certainly not questioning McDo’s decision to shut down everything in Canada except delivery and drive-through. But especially living in a city where most everyone seems to be treating COVID-19 with suitable respect, it’s nice to appreciate the ingenuity that will keep those of us lucky enough to be sentenced to house arrest as comfortable as possible.

And it has been striking to see governments getting out of the way. Ontario, where change is generally about as welcome as a dry cough and fever, is all of a sudden a jurisdiction where licensed foodservice establishments can sell alcoholic beverages with takeout or delivery meals. It’s a place where supermarkets licensed to sell booze can do so as of 7 a.m. British Columbia made the same call on booze delivery and takeout. Alberta has allowed restaurants to sell their booze, period.

It’s hard not to notice that these loosened restrictions come as government-run bottle shops in Ontario and Quebec shorten hours. In Ontario, the Beer Store, a foreign-owned quasi-monopoly, has reduced hours and refuses to refund empty bottles. (There is no other place to refund empty bottles in Ontario.) They say you find out in a crisis who your friends are.

blogTO shows how some Toronto restaurants are getting creative with wine and food delivery options.

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