Published on 3 Dec 2014
Rick’s Rant for December 2nd, 2014.
December 8, 2014
RMR: Rick’s Rant – Turn Signals
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December 7, 2014
A Supreme Court decision that actually improved privacy rights for Canadians
The courts have far too often rolled over for any kind of police intrusions into the private lives of Canadians, but a decision from earlier this year has actually helped deter the RCMP from pursuing trivial or tangential inquiries into their online activity:
A funny thing happens when courts start requiring more information from law enforcement: law enforcers suddenly seem less interested in zealously enforcing the law.
Back in June of this year, Canada’s Supreme Court delivered its decision in R. v. Spencer, which brought law enforcement’s warrantless access of ISP subscriber info to an end.
In a unanimous decision written by (Harper appointee) Justice Thomas Cromwell, the court issued a strong endorsement of Internet privacy, emphasizing the privacy importance of subscriber information, the right to anonymity, and the need for police to obtain a warrant for subscriber information except in exigent circumstances or under a reasonable law.
The effects of this ruling are beginning to be felt. Michael Geist points to a Winnipeg Free Press article that details the halcyon days of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s warrantless access.
Prior to the court decision, the RCMP and border agency estimate, it took about five minutes to complete the less than one page of documentation needed to ask for subscriber information, and the company usually turned it over immediately or within one day.
Five minutes! Amazing. And disturbing. A 5-minute process indicates no one involved made even the slightest effort to prevent abuse of the process. The court’s decision has dialed back that pace considerably. The RCMP is now complaining that it takes “10 hours” to fill out the 10-20 pages required to obtain subscriber info. It’s also unhappy with the turnaround time, which went from nearly immediate to “up to 30 days.”
In response, the RCMP has done what other law enforcement agencies have done when encountering a bit of friction: given up.
“Evidence is limited at this early stage, but some cases have already been abandoned by the RCMP as a result of not having enough information to get a production order to obtain (basic subscriber information),” the memo says.
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December 6, 2014
The “low-information voter”
At The Gods of the Copybook Headings, Richard Anderson charts the sad decline of Michael Chong (whose brave attempt to reform our political system has been thoroughly neutered by the powers-that-be), and talks about the infamous “low-information voters” who somehow keep screwing up democracy … or something:
There has been much bemoaning in recent months about the “low information voter.” This is a polite euphemism for “lazy dumb asses.” The lazy dumb ass is a universal phenomenon but our age has take this once marginal figure and made him central to our political concerns. Different eras would have simply ignored the lazy dumb asses and restricted the franchise to people who give a rat’s ass about the political process. Oh what a Golden Age that was!
Why does it matter? A politician who knows that he must confront an engaged and informed electorate won’t try to pull half as many political stunts. Politics is the art of the possible which is another way of saying the art of whatever hell you can get away with. When a critical mass of the electorate are lazy dumb asses the job of the politician becomes easier. Lying is easier. Evading responsibility is easier. It’s the difference between dealing with an omniscience mother and an idiot man child. The electorate was never quite the former but it has now largely become the latter.
Sometimes half a loaf is worse than no loaf. Mr Chong earned some very impressive brownie points with the civic minded set when he resigned from cabinet and then proposed this bill. There was a kind of teary eyed delusion when it was first introduced. A principled politician making a principled stand on the very important principle of responsible government. Many of us nearly fainted from righteous appreciation.
The spectacle of the great and the good talking about the “low-information voter” is quite amusing: what you think they’re talking about isn’t actually the case. In most cases, they’re talking about you.
It’s been less than a century since the franchise was extended to most adults (by chronology, anyway) and a decade or so less for those with two “X” chromosomes. Harking back to some imaginary golden age when voters actually cared seriously about how to cast their votes is nonsense … the vast majority of voters — regardless of how broad or restrictive the franchise might be — were, are, and will forever continue to be low-information voters. This is because of our old friend from the dismal field of economics, the opportunity cost.
The cost to you for educating yourself about the political situation and the current contenders in any given election is almost always orders of magnitude higher than any possible benefit you might personally derive from getting your vote “right”. As a rational being, it’s insane for you to spend any time at all in figuring out who to vote for — this is why party labels are so important. You don’t know whether to vote for Saba Chen-O’Toole-Wenger or Mohammed Jean-Claude Campbell-Mirkovich? Check their party affiliations for a cheater’s guide. Ms. Chen-O’Toole-Wenger is for the Jacobins, while Mr. Campbell-Mirkovich is for the Falangists at least lets you know whether option A is better (for you) than option B. I’m not really a fan of the party system, but it clearly does provide a useful benefit in the voting booth.
November 30, 2014
Working for free
In Maclean’s earlier this month, Colby Cosh addressed the brief flare-up of controversy around comments by the Governor of the Bank of Canada on the topic of doing work for free:
It is inherently difficult to feel sorry for the guy whose signature is on the money. But the governor of the Bank of Canada, Stephen Poloz, has been receiving what must be an unfamiliar burst of catcalls for comments he made about underemployed youth on Nov. 3 and 4.
Canada, Poloz was explaining, is making a somewhat gimpy recovery from the financial bubble-burst of 2008-09. A lot of the lost employment has been superficially replaced, but an unusual quantity of the new work consists of part-time jobs being performed by people who would like full-time ones, and there are some 200,000 young people who are “out of work, underemployed, or trying to improve their job prospects by extending their education.
“I bet almost everyone in this room knows at least one family with adult children living in the basement,” he added. “I’m pretty sure these kids have not taken early retirement.”
The next day, at a hearing of the House of Commons finance committee, Scott Brison followed up, asking if Poloz anticipated a long-term “scarring” effect on young people whose entry into the labour market has coincided with a lingering recession. Poloz’s response has been summarized as: “Go work for free.” What he actually said was: “When I was asked yesterday, I suggested, as I have privately to young folks who ask me what they should be doing in this job environment, that people volunteer to do something which is at least somewhere related to their expertise, so that it’s clear they are gaining some learning experience during that period.”
In fewer words: yeah, go work for free. The remark led to a curious revival of this year’s earlier controversy over unpaid internships, particularly in the magazine industry. Poloz hadn’t technically said anything about unpaid internships, which are hardly the only means of amassing job experience by working for free, and in many cases probably not the best one. (If you want magazine work, don’t take an internship. Start a blog.) Nonetheless, there was a fresh round of recrimination for companies that faced legal and moral pressure months ago and stopped providing internships as a result.
One gets the sense that Poloz and his critics are talking past one another. The critics complained that not every underemployed young person has the luxury of living with his parents. But it is hard to see how that would contradict his personal advice to those who do have it. Everybody should make maximum use of their advantages in creating a career path. And a comfortable basement with no rent attached is one of the most widely available.
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November 29, 2014
Lorne Scots unveil two Cenotaph additions in Brampton and Georgetown
My old militia regiment was in the news recently:
The communities of Brampton and Georgetown paid a special tribute to veterans of Afghanistan during Remembrance Week, adding the 12-year mission to local cenotaphs dedicated to Canada’s war dead.
On the year that the Canadian mission in Afghanistan drew to a close, civic leaders in both communities determined that adding “Afghanistan,” beneath the names of Canada’s other major conflicts would be a fitting tribute.
In separate ceremonies during Remembrance Week, The Lorne Scots (Peel, Dufferin and Halton Regiment) were given the honour of unveiling the new additions to the cenotaphs at the Brampton War Memorial and the Georgetown War Memorial.
“We are honoured by our communities and their tributes, this is a fine way to honour the soldiers who fell or were wounded in Afghanistan,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Duane Hickson, Commanding Officer of the Lorne Scots and an Afghanistan veteran. “And it’s very fitting to be doing this during Remembrance Week.”
The Canadian Armed Forces first deployed to Afghanistan in October, 2001, just weeks after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
The first Lorne Scot deployed in 2004, with the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, with the Regiment’s biggest contributions in 2008, 2009 and 2010. The final Lorne Scot returned in September 2013 as part of the final rotation of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.
By the end of the mission, the Lorne Scots had deployed 46 soldiers and officers, nearly 25% of the unit, to Afghanistan, with the last soldier returning in 2013.
The Lorne Scots take pride in their role in their communities, participating in community events and parades every year, and represent them to the nation and on the world stage when they deploy abroad. LCol Hickson said the Regiment was honoured to be asked to take part in the unveiling and will continue to serve their nation and their communities.
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November 28, 2014
Niagara’s wineries … too many too soon?
Michael Pinkus shares a cringeworthy report from a foreign wine writer on a recent winery tour in the Niagara region:
After giving it some thought it came to me as a sports reference: have we hit that expansion team overload amongst the wineries of Niagara? What I mean by that is a watering down of the talent available. For example: when a league (NHL, NFL, CFL, etc.) expands to include more franchises the biggest worry is that there will not be enough high-caliber talent in the pool to feed that new franchise and keep it competitive. Now apply the same theory to the wineries: with more and more wineries opening every year is the talent pool of engaged and conscientious prospective “manpower” really there to staff them? Is that the problem? Or should we just blame training and be done with it?
A wine writer from another country (who will remain nameless) wrote to me about a visit he recently made to a winery in Niagara (which will also remain nameless). Here were some of his comments about the tour he took:
“Worst tour: Inexperienced tour guide who didn’t understand what she’d been taught and gave a series of garbled ideas … e.g. windmill in vineyard uses propane to heat the vines, grafting is done because it’s too cold here to grow on own roots, [also] told us we wouldn’t enjoy the wines in the tasting and that their barrel fermented and aged Chardonnay was best in a spritzer.”
I’m not saying all wineries are bad, but there are some that leave, for lack of a better expression, a bad taste in the mouth — even when their food (or, for that matter, wine) is delicious. One of the wineries we visited in Niagara-on-the-Lake provided us such a lousy experience that they almost did not make our top five … but their food was just so memorably delicious, it was the thing that saved them — now imagine if they did not have that food, it would have been memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Whether it’s the lollygagging behind the counter, chatting with co-workers to the point where you indicate where to go with your chin (“it’s over there”), ignoring a guest until they approach you, or just being grumpy and surly, it all takes its toll on the winery’s reputation. A bad experience sticks in your mind more and longer than a good one. I especially remember a tasting at a famous Niagara-on-the-Lake winery about 10 years ago where, after buying two cases of wine between the three people I was with, the staff member who served us chased us out into the parking lot for the $5.50 tasting fee … I have never, ever forgotten that one.
I wonder if that last winery was the same one I’ve been avoiding for the last ten years … the experience wasn’t exactly the same, but it soured me on ever having anything to do with them again. Bad customer service in the wine trade has a much greater long-term than it does in, say, the fast food business.
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November 26, 2014
Michael Geist – Uber’s privacy problem
Michael Geist looks at one of the less obvious issues in the Uber dispute with Canadian regulators:
The mounting battle between Uber, the popular app-based car service, and the incumbent taxi industry has featured court dates in Toronto, undercover sting operations in Ottawa, and a marketing campaign designed to stoke fear among potential Uber customers. As Uber enters a growing number of Canadian cities, the ensuing regulatory fight is typically pitched as a contest between a popular, disruptive online service and a staid taxi industry intent on keeping new competitors out of the market.
My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that if the issue was only a question of choosing between a longstanding regulated industry and a disruptive technology, the outcome would not be in doubt. The popularity of a convenient, well-priced alternative, when contrasted with frustration over a regulated market that artificially limits competition to maintain pricing, is unsurprisingly going to generate enormous public support and will not be regulated out of existence.
While the Uber regulatory battles have focused on whether it constitutes a taxi service subject to local rules, last week a new concern attracted attention: privacy. Regardless of whether it is a taxi service or a technological intermediary, it is clear that Uber collects an enormous amount of sensitive, geo-locational information about its users. In addition to payment data, the company accumulates a record of where its customers travel, how long they stay at their destinations, and even where they are located in real-time when using the Uber service.
Reports indicate that the company has coined the term “God View” for its ability to track user movements. The God View enables it to simultaneously view all Uber cars and all customers waiting for a ride in an entire city. When those mesh – the Uber customer enters an Uber car – they company can track movements along city streets. Uber says that use of the information is strictly limited, yet it would appear that company executives have accessed the data to develop portfolios on some of its users.
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November 24, 2014
QotD: “… a modern Tory version of Mackenzie King”
Harper is now the 6th longest serving PM in Canadian history having just surpassed Borden and Mulroney. The former fought a major war and the later revolutionized international trade policy. Harper? He abolished the Wheat Board. A sensible thing really. Not a big thing. This is not a government of big things, it is a government of small things. Harper is, as Lord Black has pointed out, a modern Tory version of Mackenzie King.
Now King did fight the Second World War. Sort of. He thought the whole thing rather a bother, getting in the way of his equivocating and crystal ball polishing. The general impression in Ottawa during the early Forties was that CD Howe was running the country. The only time in Canadian history when an engineer was given real power. I neither condemn or condone that fact, I simply point it out.
Harper would, of course, never delegate any important authority. Even the late Big Jim Flaherty was kept on a shorter leash than Paul Martin. A modern day CD Howe, assuming he could get elected, would never last five minutes in the Harper cabinet. Big Prime Ministers breed small cabinet ministers.
This leads to one of the essential problems of quasi-Presidential Prime Ministers. When the King falters so does the Kingdom. The Pearson government bungled along for five remarkably influential years. Mike had little idea of what was going on but with one of the strongest cabinets in Canadian history the business of government carried on.
If the PM doesn’t have any new ideas there are plenty of competent ministers more than willing to fill the gap. This is how men like Macdonald and King survived for political eons. How great Dynasties like those of the Tories in Ontario and Alberta were forged. If the King falters there is no shortage of Princes to carry the load.
Richard Anderson, “Steam Punk”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2014-11-18.
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November 22, 2014
QotD: The first “American” college football game
… the first college-football contest was not played in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton, but in 1874 between McGill and Harvard. The game the two New Jersey schools played was something close to soccer, with players (25 per side) allowed to kick the ball or bat it with their hands, and points scored by kicking the ball into the opponents’ goal. This game spread to a handful of other northeastern colleges in the next few years, under varying rules.
Meanwhile, Harvard played a different, more rugbyish game that allowed the ball to be carried and thrown. In 1874 it agreed to a two-game series in Cambridge with McGill, which also played a rugby-type game. The first game, played on May 14 under Harvard’s rules, was an easy victory for the home team. The next day they played under McGill’s rules, which permitted more ball handling, used an oval ball (unlike Harvard’s round one), and scored points with a “try,” similar to the modern touchdown. The contest ended in a scoreless tie, but Harvard’s players decided they liked McGill’s rules better than their own.
The “Boston game” soon became more popular than the kicking-oriented variety, and when representatives from four American colleges met in November 1876 to standardize football rules, they largely adopted the McGill/Harvard version. So while the 1874 game was quite different from today’s football, it is at least recognizable as an ancestor, whereas the game Rutgers and Princeton played in 1869 was an evolutionary dead end.
Fred Schwarz, “Why American Football Is Canadian”, National Review Online, 2014-11-13.
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November 16, 2014
Breaking: Stephen Harper installed in quiet coup by CIA!
It was such a quiet coup that even the media failed to see it! Mark Taliano screams to us Canuckian sheeple that it’s time to wake up!
The biggest threat to Canada’s national security is internal. It is the offshoot of an extraordinarily successful quiet coup that imposed itself on the country with the federal election of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) in 2006, and solidified its impacts with the election of a Conservative majority in 2011.
Author, poet, academic, and former Canadian diplomat Prof. Peter Dale Scott recently disclosed a WikiLeaks cable indicating that the International Republican Institute (IRI), an off-shoot of the CIA, and a subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), helped install Stephen Harper as Canada’s Prime Minister. This was the coup.
Point 12 of the cable explains that “In addition to the campaign schools, IRI will be bringing in consultants who specialize in party renovation to discuss case studies of political parties in Germany, Spain, and Canada which successfully carried out the process”
My GOD! Canadian political parties bringing in American advisors? This must be resisted! We won’t stand for filthy imperialistic Yankee scum polluting our pristine and uncorrupted political sphere!! Oh, wait … Justin has American advisors too? Oh. Move along: nothing to see here. Move along.
Dr. Anthony James Hall, Professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge, in Alberta, explains the genesis of the Harper Conservative assault on the “Red Tory” traditions of Canada’s indigenous conservative party in Flanagan’s Last Stand?:
The assault by the Harper-Flanagan juggernaut on the generally friendly orientation of Canadian conservatism towards the state, towards Indigenous peoples, and towards the institutions of Crown sovereignty helped clear aside obstacles to the importation from United States of the Republican Party’s jihad on managed capitalism. Flanagan and Harper took charge of the Canadian version of the Reagan Revolution aimed at transforming the social welfare state into the stock market state.
I’d love to say this was just a parody, but I think at least some people on the left really do believe all of this.
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November 14, 2014
Either kink is now pretty much mainstream … or Quebec is a hotbed of kinksters
In Reason, Elizabeth Nolan Brown reviews the findings of a recent survey on what kind of kinks are no longer considered weird or unusual (because so many people fantasize about ’em or are actively partaking of ’em):
Being sexually dominated. Having sex with multiple people at once. Watching someone undress without their knowledge. These are just a few of the totally normal sexual fantasies uncovered by recent research published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. The overarching takeaway from this survey of about 1,500 Canadian adults is that sexual kink is incredibly common.
While plenty of research has been conducted on sexual fetishes, less is known about the prevalence of particular sexual desires that don’t rise to the level of pathological (i.e., don’t harm others or interfere with normal life functioning and aren’t a requisite for getting off). “Our main objective was to specify norms in sexual fantasies,” said lead study author Christian Joyal. “We suspected there are a lot more common fantasies than atypical fantasies.”
Joyal’s team surveyed about 717 Québécois men and 799 women, with a mean age of 30. Participants ranked 55 different sexual fantasies, as well as wrote in their own. Each fantasy was then rated as statistically rare, unusual, common, or typical.
Of course, the statistics also show where men and women differ in some areas:
Notably, men were more likely than women to say they wanted their sexual fantasies to become sexual realities. “Approximately half of women with descriptions of submissive fantasies specified that they would not want the fantasy to materialize in real life,” the researchers note. “This result confirms the important distinction between sexual fantasies and sexual wishes, which is usually stronger among women than among men.”
The researchers also found a number of write-in “favorite” sexual fantasies that were common among men had no equivalent in women’s fantasies. These included having sex with a trans woman (included in 4.2 percent of write-in fantasies), being on the receiving end of strap-on/non-homosexual anal sex (6.1 percent), and watching a partner have sex with another man (8.4 percent).
Next up, the researchers plan to map subgroups of sexual fantasies that often go together (for instance, those who reported submissive fantasies were also more likely to report domination fantasies, and both were associated with higher levels of overall sexual satisfaction). For now, they caution that “care should be taken before labeling (a sexual fantasy) as unusual, let alone deviant.”
It would be interesting to see the results of this study replicated in other areas — Quebec may or may not be representative of the rest of western society.
Update, 28 November: Maggie McNeill is not impressed by the study at all.
But there’s a bigger problem, which as it turns out I’ve written on before when the titillation du jour was the claim that fewer men were paying for sex:
… the General Social Survey … has one huge, massive flaw that was mentioned by my psychology professors way back in the Dark Ages of the 1980s, yet seems not to trouble those who rely upon it so heavily these days: it is conducted in person, face to face with the respondents. And that means that on sensitive topics carrying criminal penalties or heavy social stigma, the results are less than solid; negative opinions of its dependability on such matters range from “unreliable” to “useless”. The fact of the matter is that human beings want to look good to authority figures (like sociologists in white lab coats) even when they don’t know them from Adam, so they tend to deviate from strict veracity toward whatever answer they think the interviewer wants to hear…
So, what does this study say constitutes an “abnormal” fantasy?
“Clinically, we know what pathological sexual fantasies are: they involve non-consenting partners, they induce pain, or they are absolutely necessary in deriving satisfaction,” Christian Joyal, the lead author of the study, said…The researchers found that only two sexual fantasies were…rare: Sexual activities with a child or an animal…only nine sexual fantasies were considered unusual…[including] “golden showers,” cross-dressing, [and] sex with a prostitute…
Joyal’s claim that sadistic and rape fantasies are innately “pathological” is both insulting and totally wrong; we “know” no such thing. And did you think it was a coincidence that pedophilia and bestiality were the only two fantasies to fall into the “rare” category during a time when those are the two most vilified kinks in the catalog, kinks which will result in permanent consignment to pariah status if discovered? Guess again; as recently as the 1980s it was acceptable to at least talk about both of these, and neither is as rare as this “study” pretends. But Man is a social animal, and even if someone is absolutely certain of his anonymity (which in the post-Snowden era would be a much rarer thing than either of those fantasies), few are willing to risk the disapproval of a lab-coated authority figure even if he isn’t sitting directly in front of them. What this study shows is not how common these fantasies actually are, but rather how safe people feel admitting to them. And while that’s an interesting thing in itself, it isn’t what everyone from researchers to reporters to readers is pretending the study measured.
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November 11, 2014
Slipping a few F-35s in through the back door
Aviation Week has a fascinating tale of politico-military skulduggery involving the on-again, off-again purchase of F-35 fighters to replace the RCAF’s aging fleet of CF-18s:
A radical fast-track plan to jump-start Canada’s stalled effort to buy the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is revealed in a briefing document obtained by Aviation Week.
The Oct. 27 brief from JSF Program Executive Office director USAF Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan to Air Force secretary Deborah James calls for Canada to receive four F-35s next year, by diverting them from U.S. Air Force low-rate initial production (LRIP) Lot 7 orders. Canada would then buy four Lot 9 aircraft that would be delivered to the Air Force in 2017. According to the briefing, Canada would sign a letter of intent within days — “mid-November” — and Congress would be notified by the end of November.
Neither the JSF Program Office nor the Canadian Department of National Defense responded to repeated inquiries about the planned deal this week. The legal basis for such an exchange, absent an urgent operational need, is uncertain. The proposed LRIP 9 replacement aircraft are not on contract, and as far as is known, negotiations for them have not started.
Mark Collins thinks he sees the real motivation here:
1) The RCAF gets four darn expensive LRIP 7 F-35As in 2015 essentially for free (the “swap” and thus the need for Congressional notification); our government can say it’s not spending any money – but at the same time is effectively committing to the plane (the letter of intent and “beddown” – horny for the Lightning II?);
2) Canada pays for four, appreciably less costly, F-35As from LRIP 9 and gives them to the USAF as replacements (almost Lend-Lease!).
Hence: Canada decides slyly on the aircraft and the US, also on the sly, probably gets the largest current foreign F-35 commitment (still 65?) after the Aussies (72). Sweet, eh.
Canada’s last casualty during the Great War
The last Canadian soldier to die during the First World War was killed just two minutes before the ceasefire:
George Lawrence Price was a typical Canadian soldier in the First World War, except for the timing of his death, writes Nelson Wyatt of the Canadian Press.
[…]
He holds the sad distinction of being the last Canadian and last Commonwealth soldier to die in the meat-grinder conflict that claimed more than 60,000 Canadians in its four years.
A total of 10,000 men were killed, wounded or listed as missing from all participating armies on the last day of the war, according to historical records.
Price, a 25-year-old farm labourer before he enlisted, was struck by a single shot and killed two minutes before the 11 a.m. armistice went into effect on Nov. 11, 1918.
A native of Port Williams, N.S., he moved to Moose Jaw, Sask., as a young man and joined the army there in October 1917. He would become part of the last allied push that broke the German army.
On Nov. 11, Price was part of the Canadian advance through the outskirts of Mons in Belgium, where the one of the earliest battles of the war had been fought in 1914 and where the first British soldier had been killed.
“They were clearing through the village and people in the village told them to be careful, the Germans are still here,” said Maj. Jim McKillip, a historian with the Canadian Forces directorate of history and heritage. “He pushed on anyway and he got shot.”
Author James McWilliams, in a 1980 Reader’s Digest article entitled “The Last Patrol,” reported that Price and several colleagues were checking out possible German machine-gun nests in the village when the enemy opened fire. Civilians waved to the Canadians, urging them to take shelter in their home.
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Mark Knopfler – “Remembrance Day”
A Remembrance Day slideshow using Mark Knopfler’s wonderful “Remembrance Day” song from the album Get Lucky (2009). The early part of the song conveys many British images, but I have added some very Canadian images also which fit with many of the lyrics. The theme and message is universal… ‘we will remember them’.
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