Quotulatiousness

February 4, 2020

CRTC regulating the internet – “Nobody elsewhere is proposing anything like it, and for good reason: because it’s insane”

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

Ted Campbell suggests that the Canadian government most recent brainfart is a “Tea Party moment” for Canadians:

One commentator on social media dubbed this […] the moment when Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said that the Trudeau regime plans to license news websites as a “Boston Tea Pary moment.”

N. Currier. Destruction of tea at Boston Harbor, 1846. [New York: N. Currier]
Retrieved from the Library of Congress – https://www.loc.gov/item/91795889/

She was referring to the protest, in December of 1773, when angry American colonists (many dressed as Native Americans to try and hide their true identities) dumped several hundred chests of tea, imported by the East India Company, into Boston harbour to protest the taxes, on almost everything, that had been imposed, by Westminster to pay for the Seven Years War. Westminster felt it was only fair to tax the colonists equally, along with the people of the British Isles, because much of the war, called the French-Indian War, now, by Americans, was fought to protect them and their vital commercial interests. The American colonists disagreed, many on the principle that they should not be taxed without being represented in parliament. We know where it all ended.

It’s a good question. Most commentators seem to agree with me that the Trudeau regime has seriously overreached in supporting the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel’s recommendations that, somehow, the distribution of “news” should be regulated by the government. That is a far, far greater intrusion into the liberty of free Canadian citizens than a tax on staples was to Americans in 1773.

Andrew Coyne, writing in the Globe and Mail, opines that “The whole thing is just breathtaking – a regulatory power grab without precedent, either in Canada or the democratic world. Nobody elsewhere is proposing anything like it, and for good reason: because it’s insane. This kind of bureaucratic micromanagement, with its obsession with ‘cultural sovereignty’ and ‘telling ourselves our own stories,’ would have been hopelessly outdated in 1990. In 2020, it’s just embarrassing.” He’s right to use the word “insane,” ~ the proposal is quite possibly unconstitutional, just for a start, it is, certainly based on a deeply mistaken idea of what the internet actually is ~ and he’s equally right to say that every Canadian who doesn’t, actively, protest against this must be embarrassed because each is, for no good reason at all that I can see, supporting a proposal that makes Canada less, far less, of a liberal democracy and more like Ethiopia and Senegal (both with scores below 6.0, the threshold for a Flawed Democracy in the well regarded Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest democracy index) where he will visit this week … perhaps to learn from the leaders of authoritarian regimes what his next steps should be to embarrass Canada further.

Michael Geist on the jaw-dropping performance of Trudeau’s Canadian Heritage Minister last weekend:

In June 2017, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage committee recommended implementing tax on Internet services in a report on media. Within minutes, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked about the proposal at a press conference in Montreal. Trudeau’s answer – which literally came as committee chair Hedy Fry was holding a press conference on the report – was unequivocal: No. The government was not going to raise costs of Internet services with an ISP tax. The committee recommendation was minutes old and the government wasted absolutely no time in killing the proposal.

Last week, the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel proposed a far broader regulatory vision for the Internet. Indeed, it is difficult to give the full breadth of this plan its due. I will be posting this week on some of the most harmful aspects of the plan, including regulating media organizations around the world with penalties in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for failing to obtain licences, regulating streaming companies despite their massive investment in Canada, regulating everything from app stores to operating systems, creating liability for harmful content that violates Canada’s commitments in the USMCA, undermining net neutrality, and increasing the costs of Internet-based services for Canadian consumers.

Over the weekend, Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault was asked about the proposal. In particular, he was asked about the proposal to licence foreign news sites (the example used was Breitbart but it could just as easily have been the New York Times, BBC, CNN, Fox or MSNBC). The answer should have been easy: no.

Instead of “no”, Minister Guilbeault’s response was that it was “no big deal.”

On Monday morning, the minister appears to have reconsidered being quite so blatant in indulging his inner authoritarian control freak:

Guilbeault walked back the comments on Monday, stating that the government had “no intention to impose licensing requirements on news organizations,” nor will the government “regulate news content.”

“… Our focus will be and always has been that Canadians have diversity to high-quality news sources,” said Guilbeault to reporters in Ottawa.

This announcement comes after deep criticism of a previous announcement by the Liberal government, where they said they would force news organizations to apply for a licence.

Guilbeault’s announcement faced intense scrutiny from across the political spectrum with some commentators suggesting that it would be a dangerous attack on the freedom of the press.

February 3, 2020

Royal NW Mounted Police Ross MkI Carbine & MkII Rifle

Filed under: Cancon, History, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 31 Jan 2020

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

One of the very early clients of the Ross Rifle Company was the Royal North West Mounted Police (later merged with the Dominion Police to form the RCMP). The Mounties purchased 500 Ross MkI carbines, which were actually the only factory-made Ross carbines ever produced. The guns were made in 1904 and delivered in 1905 — and quickly began to show problems. In particular, the bolt stops were unreliable and many springs had poor temper and lost strength. The RNWMP complained to Ross, who agreed to replace the carbines with new MkII Ross rifles.

Those new rifles did not arrive until 1909, and in the intervening years the police went back to issuing their old Lee Metford carbines. When they did finally get new rifles, the police commissioner was leery of their quality, and chose to hold them in storage at Regina headquarters and used for training and marksmanship competition only until he was confident that they were suitable for issue to his troopers. Before that confidence could be gained, however, a fire in the Regina warehouse destroyed all but 34 of them. Ultimately, the force was able to purchase Lee Enfield carbines from the British government in 1914, and never did successfully issue a Ross.

Many thanks to the collector who provided these original RNWMP guns for me to show you!

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

February 1, 2020

Trudeau government’s unwillingness to define what they mean by “middle class”

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

The phrase has taken on almost an Alice in Wonderland quality for Justin Trudeau and his recently created “Minister of Middle Class Prosperity”:

    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

    “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

    “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”

It could be addressed, says Chris Selley … and really should be:

In the meantime, the Liberals have another problem. It is far less important than Iran or China, but it’s also far more embarrassing than either, because it is entirely of their own making and so easily fixed. It is as follows: Trudeau has given Ottawa MP Mona Fortier the new cabinet title of “Minister of Middle Class Prosperity,” but no one in the government has yet bothered to define “middle class.” And everyone is laughing at them.

Mona Fortier, Minister of Middle Class Prosperity and Associate Minister of Finance.
© HOC-CDC. Photo by Christian Diotte, House of Commons Photo Services, November 2019.

Fortier has tried to explain herself. “We have to make sure we represent the realities in a rural, remote or even urban setting, (and) regional differences,” she told CTV upon her appointment. “The income required to attain a middle-class lifestyle can vary greatly based on Canadians’ specific situation,” she told the same network this week.

She’s right! Pack up your middle-class lifestyle in Small Town A, and you might well not recognize it when you unpack in Big City B. The thing is, though, statisticians — including scores of them in the federal government’s employ — are across this. They know very well that a Canadian dollar does not purchase the same quantity of goods and services in every part of the country, and they have all sorts of ingenious ways to compensate.

If it were true that “middle class” can’t be defined because it connotes different things in different places, then the same would go for “poverty.” But Canada has never had any problem defining poverty on a relative basis. And in 2018, this very Liberal government adopted an absolute measure of poverty as well: the Market Basket Measure, which estimates the cost of “a modest standard of living” in any given place, and calculates how many of us can’t afford it.

So the “poverty line” in Small Town A is not the same as it is in Big City B, and … sorry, this very simple concept doesn’t need to be explained to National Post readers any further. The point is, defining poverty was a good thing. Defining the middle class obviously doesn’t matter as much, but since this government seems utterly obsessed with it — and with evidence-based policy! — there is no good reason for it not to do likewise.

January 31, 2020

“… the report envisions unprecedented government and regulatory intervention into the delivery of news services”

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

Michael Geist heaps scorn on the recommendations of a panel that would empower the CRTC to regulate the internet in Canada to a very high degree:

The Broadcast and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel released its much anticipated report yesterday with a vision of a highly regulated Internet in which an expanded CRTC (or a renamed Canadian Communications Commission) would aggressively assert its jurisdictional power over Internet sites and services worldwide with the power to levy massive penalties for failure to comply with its regulatory edicts. The recommendations should be rejected by Innovation, Science and Industry Minister Navdeep Bains and Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault as both unnecessary to support a thriving cultural sector and inconsistent with a government committed to innovation and freedom of expression.

[…]

Yet the strengths of the telecommunications and consumer rights portions of the report are overshadowed by a stunning set of recommendations related to Internet content, some of which are unlikely to survive constitutional scrutiny, likely violate Canada’s emerging trade commitments, and rest of shaky policy grounds. If enacted, the Canadian Internet would be virtually unrecognizable with the CRTC empowered to licence or require registration from a myriad of Internet services, mandate what Canadians see on those services, and intervene in commercial negotiations. The 235 page report will require several posts to address all of its aspects and implications (including notable CBC and copyright reforms), but this post seeks to set out its broad-based content regulatory vision and make the case that the panel’s plan should be firmly rejected by the government.

The foundation of the content section of the report is the decision to regulate all media content, which includes audio, audiovisual, and news content delivered by telecom. In doing so, the report envisions unprecedented government and regulatory intervention into the delivery of news services. It argues that there are three types of services that provide this content that require regulation where they access the Canadian market:

  • Curators – services that disseminate media content with editorial control (broadcasters and streaming services such as Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime)
  • Aggregators – cable companies, news aggregators such as Yahoo News
  • Platforms for Sharing – services that allow users to share amateur and professional content such as YouTube, Facebook and other platforms

The panel recommends that all of these kinds of companies be regulated (either by way of licence or registration), be required to contribute to Canadian content through spending percentages or levies, and comply with CRTC regulations on discoverability that would include regulatory rules on how prominently Canadian content is displayed within the service. The CRTC would be empowered to decide whether to exempt services from regulation with the power to levy huge penalties for failure to comply with its decisions (described as “high enough to create a deterrent foreign undertakings”).

January 30, 2020

Upgrading NORAD’s capabilities with AN/SPY-7(V)1 radar (aka “Aegis Ashore”)

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

Ted Campbell on the need to upgrade NORAD radar installations as part of a general refurbishment of the alliance’s capabilities:

Lockheed Martin’s Solid State Radar has been designated as AN/SPY-7(V)1 by the US government.
Image from Lockheed Martin/PRNewsfoto.

One of the elements which might be considered in modernizing and enhancing the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) surveillance, warning and control system is a new radar and some people have suggested that the AN/SPY-7(V)1 radar, sometimes called Aegis Ashore, might be a useful (and proven, it is in use, on land, in Japan, and will be fitted on Canada’s new Type 26 (destroyer-frigate) combat ships) solution. This radar is eminently suitable to be part of an enhanced (conventional) NORAD and of a CANUS continental ballistic missile defence system.

There are many technical (and logistical) advantages to using that radar on both our, Canadian, warships and in a land-based role, too.

The AN/SPY-7(V)1 radar produces a lot more information than do the current AN/FPS-117 and AN/FPS-124 radars which are used in the NORAD role, today, and were built in the 1980s using 1960s and ’70s technology.

(Please don’t worry about the AN/*** designations. They are part of a very sensible American system which was designed to make it simpler to identify both Army and Navy systems (hence the AN/ at the beginning). The three letters following the AN/ describe the system:

  • The first letter describes the installation. F means Fixed, on the ground (land) and S means on a ship;
  • The second letter means the type of equipment, and P means radar; and
  • The third letter means purpose. S means search (detection and locating) and Y surveillance and control.

Thus the SPY-7 is a shipborne surveillance radar and the FPS-117 is fixed (land-based) search radar. The numbers just differentiate one system from another.)

If Canada chooses an advanced radar, like the SPY-7, two engineering problems will need to be addressed:

  • First, these things use a lot more power than do the existing radars; and
  • Second, they produce much, much more information which needs to be “transported” instantly, to control centres in places like Canadian Forces Base North Bay, where all the data from all the radars is analyzed and used to effect NORAD’s mission. If the radar sites are located below (about) 72°N, as would be the case for coastal radars in BC, NS and NL, this is not a huge problem because the station is within the “footprint” of the big, high bandwidth satellites in geostationary orbit. But if the radar site is too far North then a terrestrial (possibly microwave, maybe tropospheric scatter) network (in which each station needs electrical power, too) will have to be installed to move the data to a satellite ground station. (Or a non-geostationary, high bandwidth, satellite system will have to be deployed.)

French immersion is still like private school for the middle class

Filed under: Cancon, Education — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley talks about the differences between Canadian official bilingual opinion and reality for Canadian students:

Inevitably in these discussions, however, someone dares mention the unspeakable truth: that when it comes to bilingualism, not all Canadians are born equal. Conservative MP and possible leadership candidate Michelle Rempel Garner suggested bilingualism was a matter of “privilege” — “either financially, access to education, or time required.” And the National Post‘s Alberta correspondent, Tyler Dawson, ventured that in most of the country, “it’s nearly impossible to finish high school fluent in French and English.”

These perfectly axiomatic observations produced the standard anecdote-laden blowback. Author and journalist Chris Turner boasted of his “fully bilingual” 14-year-old daughter, the beneficiary of “a public immersion program in Calgary, which is maybe Canada’s least French city.” Former Parliament Hill reporter Rosemary Thompson claimed “there are many options in the public school system for French” in “rural Alberta.” Shannon Phillips, the Alberta NDP’s finance critic, claimed “there is French-language education of high quality almost everywhere in this country.”

It’s frankly bizarre that Canadians who think bilingualism is important could be this misinformed. The internet is full of studies, papers and op-eds from the Official Languages Commissioner, the Senate’s Standing Committee on Official Languages and the various chapters of Canadian Parents for French bemoaning widespread lack of access to French-as-a-second-language education.

The numbers back that up. Never mind graduating high school bilingual; the vast majority of Canadian students aren’t even studying it after elementary. In the 2017-18 school year, excepting Quebec and New Brunswick, just under 50 per cent of Canadian Grade 9 students were in either core French or French immersion programs. In Grade 10 that was down to 22 per cent; in Grade 11, 15 per cent; in Grade 12, eight per cent.

Where French classes are available, moreover, they are too often shoddy. A 2017 report from the Senate committee noted a study finding 78 per cent of teachers teaching core French in British Columbia “felt uncomfortable speaking French.” Why would parents waste their kids’ time with that, if competent instruction in Mandarin, Punjabi or Japanese were available down the hall? (French isn’t mandatory at any grade level in British Columbia.)

As for French immersion, demand vastly outstrips supply. Lotteries and waiting lists are de rigueur. The Senate report told of cases where parents “camp(ed) outside schools to enrol their child in French immersion programs (for) up to four days.” Most parents have to go to work.

Back in 2015, Aaron Hutchins covered this for Maclean’s:

French-English bilingualism rates may be on the decline in Canada, but when it comes to getting kids into French immersion programs — which have come to be seen by many as a free private school within the public school system — there is nothing, it seems, that a Canadian parent won’t do.

Alyvia is now in Grade 2 and loving French classes. But for every student who graduates from French immersion, there’s at least one other who has been bumped out of the program and put into an English-only stream that many deem inferior. Well-meaning parents may feel that French immersion is the answer for every child. In reality, it has become an elitist, overly restrictive system, geared to benefit a certain type of student.

[…]

“What a program like French immersion does is it siphons off those kids who have engaged families who make sure the kids do all their homework,” says Andrew Campbell, a Grade 5 teacher in Brantford, Ont. “Because of that, the opportunities in the rest of the system are affected because the modelling and interaction those kids would provide for the other kids in the system aren’t there anymore.”

The immersion program creates division along lines of gender, social class and special needs students, wrote a 2008 study from the Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy looking at French immersion in New Brunswick. Girls are more likely to be enrolled than boys and the French stream has fewer kids in need of extra help. All things being equal in New Brunswick, every class — French or English — should have 3.4 students with special needs. But when a school offered French immersion, the average number of special needs students ending up in the English stream was 5.7. This kind of segregation is not unique to that province.

The richer the family, the more likely their kids will be immersed in French, according to figures from a Toronto District School Board study. In 2009-10, 23 per cent of all French immersion students came from families in the top 10 per cent of income. Meanwhile, only four per cent of French immersion students came from the bottom 10 per cent of family income.

“The program is open to lots of people, but it gets whittled down,” says Nancy Wise, a French immersion educational consultant and former special education teacher in the York region, just outside Toronto. “If you can’t cut it, you probably fall into one of these categories: [you’re a] new Canadian, this is your third language, you’ve got some learning challenges, or there’s a socio-economic factor. They jump on it in the schools and show them the door — and it’s just not right.”

January 29, 2020

“CanCon” rules for internet streaming services will be “inevitable”

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

Yes, the federal government is serious about extending the moronic “Canadian content” regime to internet streaming companies (like Netflix). Canadians are too blind to be allowed to select all of their own viewing without the paternal hand of government jiggling those choices in a politically desired direction, as Michael Geist explains:

Later this week, a government appointed panel tasked with reviewing Canada’s broadcast and telecommunications laws is likely to recommend new regulations for internet streaming companies such as Netflix, Disney, and Amazon that will include mandated contributions to support Canadian film and television production. In fact, even if the panel stops short of that approach, Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault and Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission chair Ian Scott have both signalled their support for new rules with Mr. Guilbeault recently promising legislation by year-end and Mr. Scott calling it inevitable.

My Globe and Mail op-ed notes that the new internet regulations are popular among cultural lobby groups, but their need rests on a shaky policy foundation as many concerns with the fast-evolving sector have proved unfounded.

[…]

Third, the not-so-secret reality of the Canadian system is that foreign location and service production and Canadian content are frequently indistinguishable. Qualifying as Canadian requires having a Canadian producer along with meeting a strict point system that rewards granting roles such as the director, screenwriter, lead actors, and music composer to Canadians.

Yet this is a poor proxy for “telling our stories”. The rules mean foreign companies can never produce Canadian content leading to the absurd outcome that revivals of Canadian programs such as Trailer Park Boys and Degrassi will not meet the qualification requirements if Netflix is the sole funder and producer. Moreover, programs such as The Handmaid’s Tale may be based on a Margaret Atwood novel, but using one of Canada’s best known novelists as the source doesn’t count in the Canadian points system.

So what is Canadian? A quick scan of Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office data turns up Blood and Fury: America’s Civil War, The Kennedys, Murder in Paradise, Natural Born Outlaws, Who Killed Ghandi?, and dozens of other programs that are Canadian in regulation-only. Further, there are also “co-productions”, in which treaty agreements deem predominantly foreign productions such as The Borgias or Vikings as Canadian.

January 28, 2020

QotD: Drinking and driving

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

I have another brochure on my desk. Actually, I’ve got a lot of stuff on my desk, including possibly a cat or two, but it’s the brochure that’s at the top of the pile. It comes from the Ontario government and it’s called Break The Law Pay The Price. Personally, I’d have put a comma in there somewhere, but the Ontario government laid off the punctuation guy in a cost-cutting drive. (I gather he lasted longer than the water inspection guy.)

According to BTLPTP, “Drinking drivers are responsible for one-quarter of all people killed on Ontario roads.” In other words, only 75 percent of Ontario traffic fatalities are the work of sober people. Either we have more drunks in Ontario or our sober drivers are better drivers than Britain’s. [Where “one in seven of all deaths on the road involve drivers who are over the legal limit.”]

Now, despite the damning evidence in these brochures that sober people are causing carnage on our roads, the people who know what’s good for us are busy trying to lower the legal blood alcohol limit. Early in 2001 the Quebec government announced that it was lowering the limit from eighty milligrams to fifty, throwing in a complete drinking ban for professional drivers — cabbies, bus drivers, and the like. This last measure was a reaction to — well, nothing at all. Were drunk ambulance drivers creating havoc on the roads of Quebec? No. But it gave the government of Quebec the appearance of having taken a strong stand on something. Predictably, the Ontario government immediately made noises about following suit.

Nicholas Pashley, Notes on a Beermat: Drinking and Why It’s Necessary, 2001.

January 26, 2020

Trudeau’s illogical gun ban will do nothing to reduce violent crime

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

It will, on the other hand, infringe the rights of law-abiding Canadians and encourage otherwise law-abiding people to disobey the law. It won’t take a single lethal weapon out of the hands of criminals — because they’re already violating the laws that are in force today and won’t be deterred by yet another token rule they won’t obey. At the Post Millennial, D.J. Sumanik explains why the proposed ban is wrong:

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.

I chose the AR-15 for that video because it is the singular most demonized firearm on the planet. The rifle is used to scare uninformed citizens daily. Yet the same rifle has never been used for murder by a legal gun owner in Canada.

In fact, it’s only been used for murder one time in our country over the last 50 years by a gang. A far cry from the narrative that “assault weapons” are lurking in every corner of Canadian society waiting to murder our children.

Justin Trudeau is claiming this firearm and others like it are so deadly, so dangerous, and so extreme that they must be confiscated from every licensed Canadian gun owner across the country. But with only one murder in 50 years, and the gun almost certainly still being the murderer’s hand regardless if there was a ban, the numbers simply don’t add up. In fact they barely register. Semi-auto rifles are extremely rare for use in Canadian gun homicide […] handguns are the firearm of choice for most shootings. Semi-autos only make up a small percentage of rifles and shotguns in our country. So how does this add up to a federal ban costing $600 million in taxpayer money?

Short answer: It doesn’t.

Canada has roughly 2.2 million licensed gun owners who are monitored DAILY by RCMP for red flags. Most people don’t know that. It’s called continuous eligibility screening. If you step out of the line with the law, the cops show up and take your guns.

Some further thoughts.

If only 5 percent of Canadian gun owners were out there shooting up the streets, we’d have 110,000 deaths on our hands annually. According to StatsCan, 2018 left Canada with 249 tragic gun murders. The vast majority were by gangs fighting over drugs in urban centers. Even if you were to incorrectly assume every one of those shootings was a legal gun owner and not a gang member (yeah right) it means 99.9998868% of us pose no threat to society. Can you think of another demographic with that kind of track record? I certainly can’t.

Now, the lives lost in those incidents are valuable. 249 Canadian families are feeling daily pain. Something needs to change. Gang warfare can’t go unchecked. But to punish millions of innocent Canadians who hold such an excellent track record will not help. There’s a very simple truth in all of this: Taking my firearms away in the Yukon will not prevent gang homicide in Toronto.

Furthermore, we as Canadians don’t discriminate against entire groups of people based on the actions of a few bad eggs. For instance, we don’t blame all Muslims in Canada for the actions of 9/11. How is it acceptable for Justin Trudeau to punish gun owners across Canada for gang violence?

January 25, 2020

Petition against the Trudeau government’s proposed “military-style assault rifle” ban goes over 100,000 signatures

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

There may be little point in protesting, as the Trudeau government has a track record of ignoring what Canadians want to do what it intends regardless, but you can still sign the petition here (if you do sign, remember to click the confirmation link in the email you’ll receive after signing the petition). In the Post Millennial, Sam McGriskin reports that the petition has enough confirmed signatures to be the second-largest in Canadian history:

E-petitions can be open for 30, 60, 90 or 120 days for signature based on what the petitioner prefers. The petitions get a government response within 45 days of their opening. Public Safety Minister Bill Blair is overseeing the “buyback program” which Blair estimates could cost anywhere from $400 to $600 million.

Blair’s office did not respond to request for comment from The Post Millennial. His office was asked what the minister’s response is to over 100,000 Canadians calling on the government to drop what many experts see as a completely ineffectual action to curb gun violence. Blair was also asked about fellow Liberal MP Marcus Powlowsk’s letter addressed to him that opposed the gun ban (Powlowsk has since retracted the letter) and Winnipeg Police constable calling the ban “nonsense”.

“When we seize handguns, the handguns are always almost 100% in the possession of people who have no legal right to possess them. They’re almost always stolen or illegally obtained,” said Const. Rob Carver. “I simply don’t see how as a 27-year-old veteran, how adding another layer of law will make any difference, anywhere in this country.”

In Powlowski’s letter to Blair he wrote, “Over the course of the past three months, I have heard a wide variety of views on this proposed ban. I believe it is my role to ensure that these views are brought to your attention for consideration.”

“Given that there is currently no legal definition for a ‘military-style assault rifle’ in Canada, some community members I have spoken with are skeptical that a ban based on this term would make sense as a coherent firearm policy,” the letter continued.

In a CBC interview in the summer of 2018, Blair said that most of the gun crime is committed by illegal handguns smuggled in from the U.S. and he was skeptical of a gun ban being effective in combating gun crime. His position changed drastically once he was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the public safety minister.

Variants of the AK-47

The Liberal voters in downtown Toronto and other major cities want the government to “do something” about gun crimes, but nothing the government can do is going to make much of a difference for people who are already violating multiple laws, so all they can do is make things worse for those who are already obeying the laws as they stand. In the real world, this makes no sense, but in the fantasy world of electoral politics, the government needs to be seen to be “doing something” … and this, stupid as it may be, counts as “something”.

January 24, 2020

From a Canadian perspective, “NORAD … is more important than NATO”

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

The American government has once again expressed a strong desire to update the 1957 North American Air Defence Commmand arrangement between the US and Canada for defence of the North American continent. It’s a Cold War relic to some (particularly some in the Prime Minister’s Office and cabinet), but it has a very real value to Canada, as Ted Campbell explains:

In 1957 Canada and the USA agreed to create the North American Air Defense Command. It is a “combined” command, American and Canadian people, civilian and military, work together, in combined headquarters, to conduct an active aerospace defence effort over the continent we share. Americans and Canadians work side-by-side managing the airspace, detecting intruders and identifying and intercepting them and so on.

NORAD, I would argue, is more important than NATO.

First, it is about defending our own homeland.

Second, it is about defending the US strategic deterrent, which has, arguably, done more to keep global peace than all the efforts of the United Nations, combined.

NORAD modernization and expansion should be at the top of Canada’s defence policy agenda. Specifically:

  • First, billions of dollars, likely tens of billions of dollars are going to be needed to upgrade the surveillance and warning system. We need new radars, terrestrial and space-based, and upgraded control systems to do the job properly;
  • Second, Canada needs to buy enough (85+ is just the very barest of bare minimums) of the right new fighter jet; and
  • Third, Canada needs to join the American ballistic missile defence system.

I believe that this issue: the shared defence of our, shared, continent and, therefore, the defence of the American heartland and of America’s strategic deterrent is a key, perhaps even the key element in our most important foreign relationship. […] The knowledge that Canada is doing a full and fair share of defending our shared continent, of defending America, is not lost on admirals and generals, diplomats and senior civil servants, representatives and senators in the US Congress, pundits and political leaders in waiting in the think-tanks and senior staff in the White House, even if Donald J Trump is not impressed … IF we are doing a full and fair share.

Right now, we are not.

An orbital analyst tracks the Kosmos 1402 spy satellite in orbit in the Space Defense Operations Computation Center, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) on 18 February, 1983.
NORAD photo by Master Sergeant Hiyashi via Wikimedia Commons.

January 19, 2020

“… if the Constitution is a threat to killer whales, why, then, to hell with the Constitution”

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

Colby Cosh reviews the sad tale of the British Columbian government’s defeat before the Supreme Court of Canada over pipelines:

So … yeah, that didn’t go real well. On Thursday the province of British Columbia sent its chosen representative, lawyer Joseph Arvay, to the Supreme Court to plead the oral case for B.C.’s law regulating bitumen in pipelines. John Horgan’s government had attempted to establish its own permit regime for pipeline contents, which are, under accepted constitutional doctrine, a federal responsibility. The B.C. Court of Appeal had wiped out the provincial law unanimously last summer.

Arvay’s task was widely recognized as a Hail Mary pass. But things got even more awkward as the hearing commenced and the justices of the Supreme Court interrogated him on his province’s logical, environmental, and even economic premises. An appellate court’s disposition is sometimes hard to ferret out in its hearings, but this one was so rough that Arvay was reduced to grumbling “If I’m not going to win the appeal, then I don’t want to lose badly.” Alas, the judges did not even see the need to deliberate over their reasons: they at once, and as one, ruled against B.C.

Which is not to suggest that Mr. Arvay didn’t do the best possible job. If we’re sticking with the football metaphor, the problem all along was the game plan. Given the clear federal responsibility for interprovincial pipelines, as “Works and Undertakings connecting … Provinces,” the B.C. government had no choice but to downplay the conflict between the purpose of its proposed environmental permits and the purpose of the ones the federal government hands out. Arvay had to try to convince the ermine gang that a law applying exclusively to the contents of a pipeline wasn’t a regulation of the pipeline.

“The only concern the premier, the attorney general and the members of the government have had is the harm of bitumen,” Arvay protested. “It’s not about pipelines. They’re not anti-pipelines, they’re not anti-Alberta, they’re not anti-oilsands, they’re not anti-oil.”

It’s enough to almost make one sympathetic to the more radical strategy of argument pursued at the hearing by Harry Wruck, a lawyer for Ecojustice Canada who appeared as an intervener supporting B.C. Wruck put before the Supreme Court the same idea he had presented to the BCCA: if the Constitution is a threat to killer whales, why, then, to hell with the Constitution.

January 18, 2020

Tank Chats #59 Sherman Grizzly | The Tank Museum

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

The Tank Museum
Published 16 Nov 2018

David Willey, Tank Museum Curator, presents a Tank Chat on the Sherman Grizzly.

This version of the Sherman was built in Canada from October 1943. After the fall of France, the Canadians began making their own vehicles, beginning with the Ram tank based on the M3 Lee chassis before moving on to a modified M4 Sherman. Only about 180 were produced.

This vehicle is currently on loan to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum Wien.

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January 17, 2020

The crying need for “regime change” … in Canadian newsrooms

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

Chris Selley discusses the amazingly tone-deaf “corrections” issued by CBC and CTV over their malicious misquoting of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s comments on the Iranian government:

Harper did not advocate military intervention in Iran, or indeed any particular intervention whatsoever. Despite describing Iran (accurately) as an “anti-Semitic state” premised on “religious fanaticism and regional imperialism” that is standing resolutely in the way of cooperation between other Middle Eastern nations, Harper didn’t even advocate “a complete change of government.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaking at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 26, 2012.
World Economic Forum photo via Wikimedia Commons.

“I do believe we need to see a change in Iran if we are going to see peace in the Middle East,” he said.

“Without a change in the nature of the government of Tehran,” he said, “the Middle East will continue to be in turmoil.”

He said he hoped the furious protests in Iran might nudge the country toward “a better trajectory.”

These are perfectly anodyne statements. Who doesn’t want the Iranian regime to alter its behaviour?

Clarification or correction? I would say this calls for something more like “colossal embarrassment necessitating deep introspection.”

The root problem, I think, is that so much of Canadian politics is purely for show. We are a sparsely populated, not very powerful nation where the differences between the two major federal parties are remarkably small — and thus so are the stakes. It requires special measures to keep people interested, as much for the media as for politicians.

[…]

That’s how the big outlets like CBC and CTV make the sausage of the day, and it’s understandable. They do great investigative work, but the beast needs feeding not just every day, but all day every day. During the campaign I would watch colleagues set up for live hits in various parking lots and back yards and sometimes even on the campaign bus, and imagine them speaking the truth: “I’m here in Delta, B.C. and there’s f–k-all to report. Back to you, Kent.” But the viewers must never know. They need drama, as weak as it might be. I can easily imagine how that principle transformed “a changed regime” into “regime change.”

The real problem with this reporting regime is when it’s applied to things that actually do matter. There are serious potential consequences to telling the world that Stephen Harper thinks, in essence, that we should declare war on Iran with an eye to bouncing the ayatollahs. Harper’s successor and his government are in the midst of an extremely delicate and frankly improbable operation to find out precisely what happened the morning of Jan. 8 in the skies above Tehran and seek justice for the victims and their families. Those families don’t deserve fake news about a warmongering former PM, and I’m sure our diplomats would prefer members of the unchanged Iranian regime didn’t come across it either.

This isn’t a Canadian federal election. It’s real life, and needs to be covered as such.

January 15, 2020

“Subdivisions”

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

Colby Cosh on the way Rush responded to the “New Wave” on their 1982 album Signals:

Every Rush fan is presenting his own list of essential tracks this week: unexpectedly I found myself returning over and over again to “Subdivisions,” the opener from Signals (1982). No Rush song ever had a more portentous dividing effect: there are still fans who haven’t forgiven. Moving Pictures had come out in February of 1981, and its sales set up the band for life and beyond. But it was a consciously backward-looking record — the cover is a big clue — and a culmination of Rush’s original identity. Moving Pictures is an affectionate farewell to 11-minute track lengths and science-fiction song lyrics (mostly).

After just a few months came the first 51 seconds of “Subdivisions” — Rush’s own astonishing riposte to the New Wave. A lone synthesizer pulses (in 7/8) for a few seconds and then Neil comes in: no further description is possible or necessary. The passage would make a career calling card for any drummer, but what was novel was the upside-down structure of the song, with Alex Lifeson’s guitar showing up late and then carrying the rhythm (beautifully, if you take the trouble to pick him out) while the drums truly lead the way. This is rare, outside of a drum-solo setting, for any rock drummer not named Moon or Bonham.

It was as if Rush, until then a very loud group fuelled by metaphors of battle, had made a conscious decision to cool down and give the spotlight to its ultimate weapon. Very well, the start of Signals announced, this is the age of the synthesizer and we’re going along with it — but let’s see you S.O.B.s synthesize Neil Peart.

Not coincidentally, Peart’s lyrics for “Subdivisions” also took an artistic step: they shake free of the SF/fantasy tropes and the 1930s poetic conceits he had mostly hidden behind until then. Heard in 2020, the song drags the mind of the listener helplessly back to the moment when “Subdivisions” was on the radio, yet seems to have been written for us to hear now. “Some will sell their dreams for small desires,” Peart warned in a mood of cranky prophecy, “or lose the race to rats …”.

Rush in concert, Milan 2004.
Photo by Enrico Frangi, via Wikimedia Commons

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