Quotulatiousness

November 26, 2020

“… the Liberals’ oft-stated commitment to listen to the experts and the frontline workers fizzles when said experts and workers disagree with a preferred policy”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Line, Matt Gurney explains why the Liberals are so in love with a set of proposed rule changes that will do almost nothing to reduce gun crime in Canada and might even end up creating criminals of previously law-abiding Canadians … but it polls well in Liberal ridings:

Restricted and prohibited weapons seized by Toronto police in a 2012 operation. None of the people from whom these weapons were taken was legally allowed to possess them.
Screen capture from a CTV News report.

Talking about gun policy in Canada is tricky, because the debate is highly technical. The regulation of firearms in this country, at least in theory, depends on the specifications of the firearm in question. Mode-of-operation, magazine capacity, ammunition calibre or barrel-bore width, barrel length, muzzle energy — these are all the criteria upon which a firearm is classified into one of three categories under Canadian law: prohibited, restricted or non-restricted. Any Canadian who wishes to own or borrow a firearm, or purchase ammunition, must be licenced, a process which includes mandatory safety training and daily automatic background checks.

Prohibited firearms are essentially banned in Canada; a relatively small number are held by private citizens who already possessed them when the current regulatory regime was brought in in the 1990s. The government of the day didn’t want to get into the thorny issue of confiscation, so it let existing owners keep them under strict conditions. The vast majority of guns in Canada, and all new guns sold for decades, therefore fall into the other two categories. Restricted guns are generally pistols and revolvers, but also some rifles and shotguns. Non-restricted guns are run-of-the-mill hunting rifles and shotguns, though some sports-shooting rifles (used for target practice) are also included.

The above is all somewhat theoretical, as the regulations are twisted and pulled in a variety of ways to suit political ends, leaving a system that’s tortured and confusing even for those of us who study it. But it gives you at least an idea of how the system is designed. If you know guns, of course, you knew all this already. If you don’t, I wouldn’t blame you if your eyes glazed over a bit while reading the above. Without a basic working familiarity with all the terminology and technical specs and regulations, it’s damn hard to follow the debates over gun control. This is why I have to ask you non-aficionados to take my word for it: the Liberal proposal is really bad.

Well, actually, you don’t have to take just my word for it. You can read the NPF’s position paper, which makes at least some of the case. It notes, correctly, that “military style assault weapons” aren’t actually a thing that’s defined under Canadian law; it can therefore mean whatever the government of the day wants it to mean. True military style battle weapons — fully automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines and full-sized ammunition — are already effectively banned in Canada and have been for decades. Further, the NPF notes, firearms are used in a minority of homicides in Canada, a majority of those homicides are committed with handguns, and a majority of those killings are directly linked to organized crime or gang activity.

You’re probably starting to see the problem: Going after the guns that aren’t being used in the crimes, and taking them from the people who aren’t committing them, isn’t a public-safety policy. It’s a political gift to the Liberals’ urban base, where the proposal is popular and gun literacy low (those two latter points are not unrelated).

While the ban is almost entirely a political sop, it’s probably a good political sop, alas. I’m sure the proposal will be very well received in ridings the Liberals would like to hold or flip. But it’s still a stupid policy, even if it’s popular. The Liberals are proposing to spend tons of money on this. They estimate hundreds of millions, but recall that the long-gun registry came in about 1,500 times overbudget. And all to “ban” some of the rifles used by a segment of the population — licenced and screened gun owners — that’s been found to be the several times less likely to commit murder than those without licences.

November 24, 2020

QotD: Canada’s economic Stockholm Syndrome

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Trade agreements are always about “concessions” in which foreign suppliers are grudgingly given — or, more often, indignantly denied — the right to sell Canadians goods and services at prices lower than what we pay now. Let’s be clear here: lowering the price of consumer goods and services has the exact same effect on household welfare as an increase in incomes. But I defy you to name an elected politician who will list “the ability to buy cheaper stuff” as the most compelling reason to support free trade: more than 200 years since Adam Smith wrote that paragraph, our trade agenda is still written by and for producer interests.

We’re stuck with a system in which producer interests — most notoriously the dairy cartel that operates under the name of “supply management” — hold the rest of us hostage. Dismantling the dairy cartel is an act that would significantly increase consumers’ buying power, but this is a measure that the Conservatives have all but ruled out under any circumstances, and the NDP has made maintaining the cartel a condition for supporting any sort of trade agreement.

Why would the [major parties] stubbornly insist on sticking to a policy that makes consumers worse off at the expense of producers? Because it’s a popular position. It’s one of the marvels of the Canadian electorate. Show Canadians a special interest group that uses its government-granted privileges to fleece consumers, and they’ll embrace it as a “national champion,” a “uniquely Canadian way of life” or some equally vapid catch-phrase.

This is from the Wikipedia entry for Stockholm Syndrome:

    Stockholm syndrome, or capture–bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them.

What we suffer from is the economic policy equivalent. Call it “Canada Syndrome”: a tendency for consumers to identify with the producer interests that are holding them hostage.

Stephen Gordon, “Our Stockholm Syndrome about supply management”, Maclean’s, 2013-03-05.

November 21, 2020

About that “Canadian content crisis” the feds are trying to “fix” with Bill C-10

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

Michael Geist begins a series of posts on the ongoing blunder that is the federal government’s “get money from the web giants” proposed legislation:

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, 3 February 2020.
Screencapure from CPAC video.

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault rose in the House of Commons yesterday for the second reading of Bill C-10, his Internet regulation bill that reforms the Broadcasting Act. Guilbeault told the House that the bill would level the playing field, that it would establish a high revenue threshold before applying to Internet streamers, would not impact consumer choice, or raise consumer costs. He argued that even if you don’t believe in cultural sovereignty, you should still support his bill for the economic benefits it will bring, warning that Canadian producers will miss out on a billion dollars by 2023 if the legislation isn’t enacted. He painted a picture of Internet companies (invariably called “web giants”) that have millions of Canadian subscribers but do not contribute to the Canadian economy.

Guilbeault is wrong. He is wrong in his description of the bill (it does not contain thresholds), wrong about its impact on consumers (it is virtually certain to both decrease choice and increase costs), wrong about the contributions of Internet streamers (who have been described as the biggest contributor to Canadian production), wrong about level playing field claims (incumbent broadcasters enjoy a host of regulatory benefits not enjoyed by streamers), wrong about the economic impact of the bill (it is likely to decrease investment in the short term), and wrong about cultural sovereignty (it surrenders cultural sovereignty rather than protect it).

With the bill starting its Parliamentary review, this is the first in a new series of posts on why a careful examination of the data and the bill itself reveals multiple blunders. There are good arguments for addressing the sector, including tax reform, privacy upgrades, and competition law enforcement. There are also benefits to updating the Broadcasting Act, but in an effort to cater to a handful of vocal lobby groups over the interests of the broader Canadian public, Guilbeault’s bill will cause more harm than good. The series will run each weekday for the next month, first addressing the weak policy foundation that underlies Bill C-10, then a series a posts on the uncertainty the bill creates, a review of the trade threats it invites, and an assessment of its likely impact on consumers and the broader public.

The series begins with a post on the fictional Canadian content “crisis.” Canadians can be forgiven for thinking that the shift to digital and Internet streaming services has created a crisis on creating Canadian content. Canadian cultural lobby groups regularly claim that there is one (Artisti, CDCE) and Guilbeault tells the House of Commons that billions of dollars for the sector is at risk. Yet the reality is that spending on film and television production in Canada is at record highs. This includes both certified Canadian content and so-called foreign location and service production in which the production takes place in Canada (thereby facilitating significant economic benefits) but does not meet the narrow criteria to qualify as “Canadian.” I have written before about the need to revisit the Canadian content qualification rules which enable productions with little connection to Canada to receive certification and some that directly meet the goal of “telling Canadian stories” that fail to do so.

November 20, 2020

Quebec makes Canada’s politics really weird

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

J.J. McCullough
Published 2 Mar 2019

Hypocrisies and blind spots stemming from the role played by French Canadians and the French language in Canada’s politics.

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November 18, 2020

The Consumer Privacy Protection Act

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Michael Geist looks at Bill C-11, which was introduced by Navdeep Bains on Tuesday:

Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Photo by S Nameirakpam via Wikimedia Commons.

Canada’s privacy sector privacy law was born in the late 1990s at a time when e-commerce was largely a curiosity and companies such as Facebook did not exist. For years, the privacy community has argued that Canada’s law was no longer fit for purpose and that a major overhaul was needed. The pace of reform has been frustrating slow, but today Innovation, Science and Industry Minister Navdeep Bains introduced the Consumer Privacy Protection Act (technically Bill C-11, the Digital Charter Implementation Act), which represents a dramatic change in how Canada will enforce privacy law. The bill repeals the privacy provisions of the current Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and will require considerable study to fully understand the implications of the new rules.

This post covers six of the biggest issues in the bill: the new privacy law structure, stronger enforcement, new privacy rights on data portability, de-identification, and algorithmic transparency, standards of consent, bringing back PIPEDA privacy requirements, and codes of practice. These represent significant reforms that attempt to modernize Canadian law, though some issues addressed elsewhere such as the right to be forgotten are left for another day. Given the changes – particularly on new enforcement and rights – there will undoubtedly be considerable lobbying on the bill with efforts to water down some of the provisions. Moreover, some of the new rules require accompanying regulations, which, if the battle over anti-spam laws are a model, could take years to finalize after lengthy consultations and (more) lobbying.

Trudeau’s internet policy — cash grab or power grab? Embrace the healing power of “and” (TM Instapundit)

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

The Canadian government is taking advantage of the ongoing economic and social disruption of the Wuhan Coronavirus to widen their existing regulation of both broadcasting and internet entertainment. It’s not just a bit of maple-flavoured cultural imperialism, but it’s also a blatant cash grab:

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, 3 February 2020.
Screencapture from CPAC video.

I see, in the Globe and Mail, that Justin Trudeau and Steven Guilbeault want to further regulate the broadcasting services in Canada. Their goals seem to be, in part, a cash grab ~ online streaming services, like Netflix, are offering Canadians, for a price, what they want, while the CBC offers Canadians, thanks to a $1+ Billion annual subsidy from taxpayers like you and me, what we, pretty clearly, do not want to watch and the Liberals want a share of that money ~ and also an appeal to those who play identity politics.

I think we need to look at the “products” of broadcasting ~ information (news and “public affairs” and documentary programmes) and entertainment, including sports, as “consumable products,” rather like food and, say, soft drinks.

We do allow, even demand that governments exercise some important regulatory functions in regard to food and soft drinks: we want to make sure that they are safe to consume and Canadians want to know what is in the food we consume.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was, originally, conceived to solve a fairly simple problem: allocating broadcast licences. Government engineers calculated how many radio channels could be used in any given place but they didn’t want to have to decide who should get to use them. Politicians didn’t want to do it, either, because while the successful applicant was (usually) happy the more numerous unsuccessful ones were disappointed and politicians hate to disappoint people. Thus they created an arms length agency to make the tough decisions for them. Licence allocation is still an important job for the CRTC. But the CRTC’s mandate was expanded with the birth of cable TV. Companies, like Rogers, built cable systems ~ and they received both direct and indirect government support to reach more and more Canadians ~ and then “sold” access to consumers. In the normal course of events one might have thought that the government would attach some business conditions to its loans, grants and tax deductions, but there was an ever-growing demand, from the Canadian cultural community ~ based almost entirely in Montreal and Toronto ~ to regulate the fledgling cable and “pay TV” market to ensure that Canadian programmes were not shut out but, in fact, could have privileged positions in the cable lineup, which led to the government, in the 1960s, telling the CRTC to regulate how companies like Famous Players, Maclean Hunter and Rogers configured the private product they sold to individual consumers.

The initial government argument was “we regulate all kinds of things for the common good: that’s why we all drive on the right, for example, and the delivery of broadcasting by cable is like that.” “No it’s not,” the cable operators replied, “you build and maintain the roads, using taxpayers’ dollars, so you’re allowed to regulate how they’re used, plus it’s a safety issue. Cable service and ‘pay TV’ are private, commercial transactions between us, the companies who built and operate the systems, and the individual consumer who wants to subscribe to what we offer. You don’t presume to regulate, beyond the laws against libel and pornography, what people can read in MacLean’s magazine or the Globe and Mail, why is ‘pay TV’ and cable different?” It’s still a good question. But the cable operators surrendered gracefully and the CRTC has been, broadly, for the last half-century, protective of the rights of incumbents in the infotainment markets. In return the cable and internet operators have agreed to “tiers” of programming which means that if you want to watch, say, BBC World Service or Deutsche Welle or Fox News, you must also pay for CBC News Network and CTV News Channel and, no matter who you are and what your individual preferences might be, when you subscribe to a cable/internet service you must also support a number of French stations/channels; it’s the law. And now Minister Guilbault wants to ensure that you pay for the output of indigenous producers, writers, actors and so on, on both indigenous networks ~ to which you must already subscribe if you have a “basic” Canadian cable or satellite TV package ~ and, it appears to me, in programmes produced by Canadians and even by Netflix.

November 17, 2020

“We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty. One. Times.”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Alyssa Ahlgren ponders the fact that we North Americans take our unprecedented-in-human-history prosperity very much for granted:

I’m sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of Democratic candidates calling for policies to “fix” the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around.

I see people talking freely, working on their MacBooks, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we’ve become completely blind to it. Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose.

These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don’t give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty. One. Times. Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful.

Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, “An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity.”

Never saw American prosperity. Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I’ve ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Now, I’m not attributing Miss Ocasio-Cortez’s words to outright dishonesty. I do think she whole-heartedly believes the words she said to be true. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let’s just say I didn’t have the popular opinion, but I digress.

Let me lay down some universal truths really quick. The United States of America has lifted more people out of abject poverty, spread more freedom and democracy, and has created more innovation in technology and medicine than any other nation in human history. Not only that but our citizenry continually breaks world records with charitable donations, the rags to riches story is not only possible in America but not uncommon, we have the strongest purchasing power on earth, and we encompass 25 percent of the world’s GDP. The list goes on.

November 13, 2020

Oddly, the Canadian media evince no interest whatsoever in the Trudeau government’s malign plans for the Internet

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

In The Line, Peter Menzies shows how little the mainstream media outlets in Canada care about the power grab the feds are attempting with their proposed “get money from web giants” shakedown:

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, 3 February 2020.
Screencapure from CPAC video.

In order to understand where media and public attention has been the past couple of weeks, all you had to do was listen in on Monday morning’s Ottawa news conference.

Six days after Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault had introduced ground-breaking legislation to regulate content online, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced more cash to bring better Internet to rural and remote communities. There were also some COVID-19 updates and something about help for agriculture.

And, of course, the questions asked by the media were about the U.S. election. What else could possibly be of interest?

Eventually there were a few inquiries about Telesat and low-Earth-orbit satellites, but you get the point: things that matter to people’s daily lives such as cable bills, data plans, Netflix, cellular service, crappy WiFi and slow Internet connections haven’t been of much interest to Canadian media lately.

So there has been a dearth of chatter about Guilbeault’s controversial plan to (my words, not his): restrict consumer choice, tax Netflix to finance certified Canadian content (Cancon) and bring to an end the greatest period of prosperity in the history of the Canadian film and television industry. Did I mention stifling innovation, increasing streaming subscription costs and scaring away investment? No? My bad. Those too.

Guilbeault has decided that the agency dedicated to defining the nation’s TV and radio diet — the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) — is now going to be in charge of what you are allowed to dine on online as well. No longer will you be able to manage your preferences. No more popcorn and candy for you. Going forward, Cancon spinach and broccoli will be on your plate every evening. Breathtakingly, Guilbeault has “modernized” communications legislation by giving authority over the Internet to something called a “radio-television” commission by using something still called the “broadcasting” act.

QotD: Military allies

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military, Quotations, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Partnership implies the burden is shared more or less equally. If I bought twenty quid’s worth of shares in The Spectator and started swanning about bitching that Conrad Black didn’t treat me as a partner, he’d rightly think I’d gone nuts. The British in their time were at least as ruthless about such realities as the Americans are today. For example, in September 1944, in one of the lesser-known conferences to prepare for the post-war world, Churchill and Roosevelt met in Quebec City. They had no compunction about excluding from their deliberations the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, even though he was the nominal host. There’s a cartoon of the time showing King peering through a keyhole as the top dogs settled the fate of the world without him.

And guess what? Militarily speaking, Canada was a far bigger player back then than Britain is today: the Royal Canadian Navy was the world’s third-biggest surface fleet, the Canucks got the worst beach at Normandy — but hey, why bore you with details? In those days that still wasn’t enough to get you a seat at the table.

Mark Steyn, “The Brutal Cuban Winter”, The Spectator, 2002-01-26.

November 12, 2020

The history of Canada explained in 10 minutes

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Cancon, France, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Epimetheus
Published 19 Jan 2019

The history of Canada explained in 10 minutes

Support new videos on this channel on Patreon! 🙂
https://www.patreon.com/Epimetheus1776

Canadian history from the discovery of the Vikings to the French and English colonization until modern times.

Tags:
Canadian history documentary, Canadian history crash course, Canada history, history of Canada documentary, history Canada summarized, Canada, history, Canadian history, Canadian American history, animated history of Canada, canadian history in a nutshell, canadian history for kids, educational, Canada Indians, Canada great Britain, English Canada, Quebec, French Canada, French English Canada,

November 11, 2020

Mark Knopfler – “Remembrance Day”

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Bob Oldfield
Published on 3 Nov 2011

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”.

November 2, 2020

Federal government to web giants: “BOHICA!”

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

Michael Geist provides an unauthorized backgrounder on the Canadian government’s quixotic attempt to shakedown the likes of Netflix for money to give to “struggling” Canadian media companies:

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, 3 February 2020.
Screencapure from CPAC video.

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault is set to introduce his “Get Money from Web Giants” Internet regulation bill on Monday. Based on his previous public comments, the bill is expected to grant the CRTC extensive new powers to regulate Internet-based video streaming services. In particular, expect the government to mandate payments to support Canadian content production for the streaming services and establish new “discoverability” requirements that will require online services to override user preferences by promoting Canadian content. The government is likely to issue a policy direction to the CRTC that identifies its specific priorities, but the much-discussed link licensing requirement for social media companies that Guilbeault has supported will not be part of this legislative package.

These reforms mark the culmination of a dramatic reversal in government digital policy. After then-Heritage Minister Melanie Joly unveiled her 2017 digital cancon strategy that focused on market-based solutions and emphasized exports of Canadian culture, extensive lobbying gradually let to a major policy flip flop. The CRTC reversed its prior position on Internet streaming regulation in 2018 with a regulate-everything approach, the deeply flawed Yale report released earlier this year provided the blueprint for CRTC-led regulation, and Guilbeault jumped on board with a declaration that his top legislative priority was to “get money from web giants.”

On Monday, the government will undoubtedly line up the lobby groups that supported the reform to provide positive quotes, suggest reforms will lead to billions in new revenues, and claim the bill ensures regulatory fairness by requiring that everyone contribute. Yet much of the policy is based on fictions: that this levels the playing field, that there is a Cancon crisis, that discoverability requirements respond to a serious concern, that this will result in quick payments to the industry, that this is consistent with net neutrality, or that consumers will not bear the costs of reform.

None of this is true. But beyond those issues – each discussed in further detail below – this most notably represents a significant new source of speech regulation. We do not require government authorization to publish newspapers, blog posts, or to simply voice our views in a public forum. That we require governmental authorization in the form of licensing for broadcasters was largely justified in furtherance of cultural policies on the grounds of limited access to scarce spectrum. That justification simply does not apply to the Internet, no matter how many times Guilbeault refers to the inclusion of Internet companies within the “broadcast system.” This is not a matter of Internet exceptionalism. Laws and regulations such as taxation, competition, privacy, and consumer protection are all among the rules that apply regardless of whether the service is offline or online. But speech regulation by the CRTC should require a far better justification than the lure of “free money” from Internet companies.

October 31, 2020

Modern Halloween costumes show us how wealthy we have become

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, History, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Richard Lorenc looks back at the “costumes” for Halloween from the 1970s and 1980s to help illustrate how much our general economic picture has improved since those dark days:

While my husband and I were recently struggling to figure out our costumes for this Halloween (and we still don’t have any idea), he pulled up some old commercials on YouTube. The off-the-shelf options that trick or treaters had were, in a word, pitiful.

Basically, costume makers thought it was ok to make a front-only plastic mask (in any color, really) of a character and top it off with a plastic smock featuring an illustration of said character with either its name or the name of the show or movie it comes from. There was no attempt to dress in the character’s actual attire. If you wanted that, you’d either have to know a professional costumer or cobble together something from your closet.

Take a look for yourself at just how costume-poor we used to be:

Obviously, every costume is an opportunity to generate interest in a brand or franchise, and slapping on a logo is an easy way to get a name out there, but these costumes truly heralded a dark time for Halloween. Some may even argue that it demonstrated crass consumerism at its worst, with cynical companies taking the easiest route to grabbing a couple of bucks from desperate parents.

The truth of the tragedy of terrible old Halloween costumes has to do with a simple idea: specialization.

[…]

The next time you compare our screen-accurate store-bought costumes of Darth Vader and Mr. Incredible to those of yesteryear, remember that we enjoy them today not because previous generations didn’t care for accurate costuming, but because growing trade across the globe has generated so much wealth for each of us that we can now demand things we may have only imagined previously.

I only realized as I got ready to schedule this post that it was an article I’d blogged a couple of years back, but the point of the story is still relevant even in our pandemic-wracked economy of 2020.

October 30, 2020

Cancelling Halloween? I thought the Grinch only worked Christmas…

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

At The Line, Jen Gerson argues against cancelling the Halloween trick-or-treat candy hoarding:

“SHA Halloween ‘trick or treat’” by U.S. Army Garrison Japan is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Look, I can empathize with the impulse to do something, DO ANYTHING, to stem the concerning growth of COVID-19 cases. But if you were to craft a low-risk family holiday that offered a psychologically necessary reprieve from the joyless grind of the last year, you couldn’t do much better than trick-or-treating.

It’s children (low risk), outdoors (low risk), in masks (low risk), engaging in the briefest possible social interactions (medium risk). Yet Canadians have received mixed advice about the tradition; some jurisdictions have cautioned parents to skip it. Gatineau has, reasonably, restricted Halloween parties, but permitted trick-or-treating with restrictions.

I’ve asked several doctors — The Line‘s personal panel of COVID-19 experts — to weigh in on Halloween. Their responses on trick-or-treating prohibitions ranged from: “(this is) extraordinarily dumb” and “I would write something about it but I wouldn’t be able to express myself without extreme profanity.” To “pretty safe” and “shouldn’t be cancelled” as long as reasonable precautions are enacted — like masking, distancing, and perhaps re-thinking trick-or-treating in apartment buildings. Leaving a bowl filled with candy on the porch, rather than opening the door for every little germy ghoul, is also a reasonable precaution.

One person expressed concern that trick-or-treating would inevitably lead to adult schmoozing — but this does not bear a resemblance to any version of this tradition that I have ever experienced. The purpose of trick-or-treating is to maximize the efficient collection of candy; any adult who dawdled or took a drink at a neighbour’s house would find himself deeply at odds with his screaming and fitful progeny. But then, I was somebody’s particularly terrible progeny.

Then there’s this piece of advice from Oregon, noted in the video above, in which a beclowned public health official advised against “trick or treat events because of the high risk of people crowding and people congregating in areas close together.”

If your memory has not yet blanked this absurdity out, it’s vaguely similar to the logic of Ottawa public health officials who last April advised against chatting over the fence with a neighbour because: “It kind of starts with that and then a couple more people add on and before you know it you have a parking lot party or a backyard party.”

(Ottawa walked that recommendation back shortly afterward.)

October 29, 2020

How to fix the CBC

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

… aside from cutting off the massive subsidies from the federal government, which would be my preferred solution if “nuke it from orbit” isn’t a viable choice. Let it sink or swim as a purely private media entity — I’d be betting on the “sink”, personally because they don’t currently have to compete thanks to their funding from the feds and are not noted for their quick adaptation skills. However, Peter Menzies isn’t quite as anti-CBC as I am:

In a recent piece here at The Line, I lamented the current status of the CBC. That’s easy enough to do, but it’s fair to ask what can actually be done to fix it. These ideas don’t provide all the answers but, implemented with conviction and speed, here’s where to start. Because there are some things that can be done, and relatively quickly, to revitalize the institution: the CBC may well be hell-bent on its own destructive dualism but clarifying its role and purifying its soul are still possible by getting it out of the advertising business and turning it into a proper public media.

Right now, the CBC is neither fish nor fowl. Sometimes, as with radio, it is a popular public broadcaster. At others, with its television channels, it fancies itself a commercial broadcaster, albeit a publicly-funded and relatively unpopular one. It plows both of those personalities into its commercial online operations and supplements them with reportage of the kind traditionally associated with newspapers. Like a creature of mythology, it shape-shifts through all of these roles as best suits its needs and moods.

On top of that, its OMG obsession with Trump’s America has drawn it far away from its content mandate to ensure Canadians learn about each other wherever they live in this vast and beautiful country. While its performance indicates otherwise, CBC’s purpose is not to secure a large audience share in the GTA or, in French, in Montreal, in order to earn more revenue. Nor is CBC News Network’s mandate to compete with CNN. The Corp’s raison d’etre, as defined in legislation, is to tell Canadians each other’s stories — even if the GTA and Montreal don’t care.

The only way to purify the CBC then, is to ban it — once and for all — from collecting advertising revenue from domestic consumption of its product. As its radio operations are already advertising-free this means no more ads on its TV or websites. Done. Finished.

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