missed call: the influence of cell phone culture on political polls

Politics and prophecy have ancient mutual origins in military tradition. It is obvious why knowledge of the future confers strategic advantage. Once a tradition of mysticism and ritual, prophecy now involves the application of algorithmic calculation to large data sets for the production of useful extrapolations. This is how finance capitalism evaluates companies, how Target uses sales data to know about a woman’s pregnancy before she does, and how campaigning politicians know which doors to knock on or avoid. In the era of big data, we should not be surprised that big money remains the dominant influence.

If it seems as though new, contradictory polls are produced daily, then we can thank the news media for increasingly relying on polling data to provide inexpensive programming. Commercial news is an entertainment product, a consequence of media conglomeration by large multinationals. In this context, polls quantify the drama of the electoral road and turn the relative boredom of electioneering into an adult videogame formatted for inexpensive mass consumption. Of course, without editorial discretion on the part of media agencies, this process often results in the publication of polls bearing dubious statistical legitimacy.

Gauging public opinion requires time to properly accomplish. Survey length and complexity dictates cost, and media organizations need to produce other content while waiting for the survey to be completed. As a result, new survey techniques which greatly simplify survey questions while reducing the time and budget required for data collection have come to the fore in the prediction industry, with the resultant products ready for media consumption. Some polling companies such as Angus Reid and Abacus Data have transitioned to online polls of dubious legitimacy. Most companies, such as MainstreetTechnologies and Forum Research – often cited in Toronto media – use interactive voice response (IVR) technology, a self-aggrandizing term for computerised phone surveys.

So what exactly is the problem with telephone polling in the 21^st century? Telephone collection of public opinion data from a random selection of Canadians has long been the gold standard for the polling industry, as landlines existed in virtually every residence in the country and data could be collected in a cost-effective manner. However, academic and industry studies have noted that the recent decline in the response rate to telephone surveys has greatly impacted the validity of data produced. Reasons for declining response rates are numerous, but often involve technological developments such as line screening and the adoption of mobile phones. Unlike the phone books which graced every home when landlines were common, wireless carriers have not coordinated their databases to produce a national cellphone directory. Furthermore, due to built-in caller ID and pay-by-the-minute billing, cell phone users are more prone to ignore calls from unknown numbers. As a result of these issues, many telephone surveys omit cellphones from their sample sets, as it is difficult and expensive to correlate demographic information with individual numbers.

Youth, urban professionals under the age of 40, renters, and low-income voters in particular are not being captured by polls relying on landline survey data. Governmental research suggests that mobile-exclusive residences currently represent nearly 19% of Canadian households, a number that is sure to rise as nearly 65% of people under 35 report using mobile phones exclusively. As a result, poll data is skewed toward older, wealthier voters in rural and suburban communities, reflecting a bias for conservative candidates. This bias evidences in polls as reported by the news media, but often vanishes once votes are actually counted on election day: witness the last Ontario election, in which poll data almost universally predicted a Conservative victory, while the actual election granted a majority win for the Liberal party. In a similar manner, Olivia Chow’s popularity lies with demographic groups not captured by landline surveys and so may not be reflected in poll results indicating a race between John Tory and Doug Ford.

According to polling companies, the use of IVR along with advanced statistical analysis results in a rate of predictive accuracy comparable to landline telephone surveys and other established methods for gauging public opinion. However, more often than not, polling companies simply do not perform the requisite statistical calibration to legitimate their results, suggesting that their data acquisition methodologies emphasize turnaround time and affordability rather than statistical viability. My own calculations indicate that IVR is only accurate when the results of numerous polls are averaged over a much longer term than the daily surveys being reported in the news media. Importantly, the long term trend is not reflected by individual studies, which vary wildly from the long-term median.

As a result of focusing on short-term results skewed by unrepresentative population samples, the news media often misrepresents public opinion to the voting public. With an increasing number of miscalled elections, hopefully the public learns the sense of editorial mistrust and critical evaluation which the news media, in thrall to the temporal acceleration of market forces, have relinquished. 

Published for rabble.ca 

The Hunger Games, or wither poverty not sports

i'm going to invent a new sports team, but instead of running around a field chasing a ball, we're going to run around capitalism chasing poverty and hunger. locally, you're going to give us $150 million for a new building so we can do our work. you're going to give us 100% of the revenues generated by the building, even when other people are working there and we're not. and no, we won't let you use the building for free for any reason. and even though you paid for the building, we get to name it as we see fit by selling naming rights to a corporate partner. and year after year, our tax subsidies will let us keep doing what we do in that expensive building you paid for

every two years, you're going to give me tens of billions of dollars for my summer and winter games projects to end hunger and poverty internationally, and you're going to watch. you're going to interrupt work at your job to watch organized debates in which the important issues of today's economy are solved, focusing on the twilight of labour. televised anti-poverty campaigns are integrated into the 'normal' shows on television, and everybody talks about how good it is to end poverty and hunger. you're going to convince your governments to spend billions to improve the effectiveness of their anti-poverty activists and encourage more children to eat, and so that we can all do better next time

then i woke up and realised that we aren't doing a thing for poverty or hunger because there isn't enough money for that, but we'll do whatever it takes to make damn sure that some dudes (and sometimes a lady) get to chase a ball around a field and we get to watch

letter to Jason Kenny, re: changes to foreign worker permits for touring artists/musicians

Mr. Kenny,

Recent changes to the fee structure for visa/work permits allowing touring artists and entertainers will not allow small- or medium-scale musicians to legally tour and perform in Canada. It is clear to those of us with experience with the music industry that the government’s changes did not intend to directly affect the bars and music venues which rely on touring musicians for the effective operation of their business. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the Conservative Party intended for its policies surrounding work permits for foreign labourers to have the consequence that Canadian bars and entertainment venues which have capacities of less than 1,000 people would be affected in the negative manner which will result from these policies. It seems to me that given the nature of the music business as inherently multinational in nature, Canadian venues with capacities less than 1,000 people will suffer catastrophically from the lack of touring musicians able to perform in Canada. There won’t suddenly exist an expanded stable of internationally-recognised Canadian musicians from which promoters and venues can choose; rather there will be fewer live music performances, and venue revenues, with their contingent tax revenues, will fall considerably. Quite simply, many venues will not be able to remain in business.

Again, it is clear that such was not the intention of the policy changes enacted by the federal Conservatives. Rather, the problems with which the live music industry is now facing are the result of a total lack of consultation on the part of the governing Conservative Party of Canada. As this situation is simply not acceptable to anyone in the music industry in Canada, what measures will the government take to immediately address this issue? The policy as currently extant does not work for the music industry, or for the arts more broadly. Let me be blunt about the situation, Mr. Kenny. There is nobody currently serving as MP within the Conservative caucus who understands or has any experience with the issue of the performing arts in Canada. In fact, understood within the context of other policy and procedural changes and the abusive, omnibus-bill methods of public governance which marks the history of the federal Conservatives since 2006, neither I nor other members of the art industry communities in Canada have any confidence in the ‘expertise’ displayed by the Conservative government in this regard.

Will government officials, in consultation with members of the Canadian live music industry, work on excepting touring entertainers for the reason that they inhabit an obviously different employment situation relative to a one-night performance than does a foreign worker coming to Canada to fill a six-month full-time position? What steps, in the timeframe of the next eighteen months, will be taken to restore the business viability of live music venues in Canada, now that recent policy changes enacted by the Conservative government have seriously undermined the business potential of the industry in Canada?

Regards,

UPDATE:

The political use of copyright law by the Bank of Canada

I am curious about the politicised deployment of the Bank of Canada’s copyright interests. In response to a satirical image circulated by cartoonist Dan Murphy on or around May 29, 2013, the Bank of Canada issued a cease-and-desist order to Artizans, the distribution agency for the cartoon. Since Mr. Murphy intended the cartoon as political satire and is self-employed as a political satirist, it stands to reason that the Bank of Canada is grounding its complaints in the commercial activities of the ostensibly offending cartoonist. Surely such is within the legal jurisdiction of present copyright law in Canada. However, the question then becomes why the image of Canadian money is itself copyrightable material.

Copyright law is intended to protect the rights of content producers to the profitable sale of the material their create. Obviously, in the age of mechanical reproduction the ability to economically produce facsimiles of literature, fine  and commercial art, music, “IP”, and product design necessitates that the rights of creators be protected to ensure the continuing economic viability of such innovations.

To this end, I cannot help but wonder about the desire of the Bank of Canada to restrict the use of images referencing Canadian money. Certainly, measures to control the production and circulation of counterfit bills are necessary to protect the integrity of the monetary system. However, the deployment of copyright law against a political cartoon (or any other creative recontextualisation of such images as dollar bills) does not serve to protect either the integrity of the country’s monetary system, nor the commercial interests of the Bank of Canada, the producer of the images in question as protected under copyright. The Bank of Canada will not have its creation undervalued and will not face competition in the marketplace as a result of the breach of copyright law as reflected by Dan Murphy’s editorial cartoon. In fact, I would argue that the operations of the Bank of Canada, commercial or otherwise, are entirely unaffected by the creative recontextualisation of images of Canadian money. Moreover, the creative recontextualisation of the images of Canadian money is entirely within the public’s interest and right to live as informed and active citizens as protected by the freedom of expression clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, namely Section 2b of the Constitution Act.

Furthermore, in this particular instance the nature of the creative asset being protected needs to be examined. Unlike commercial products which require copyright provisions to maintain their economic and social value, money as instantiated in dollar bills and their likeness as representations (please note that the ontology of representation is beyond the scope of this letter; refer to your local university media studies/literature/philosophy department for details) is not the end product of commerce but rather the infrastructure by (and in) which commerce is enacted. This fact is the first indicator that the Bank of Canada is improperly applying copyright law to protect the creative recontextualisation of the images of Canadian money. Unlike the reproduction of an artist’s graphic design work, a musician’s song, or a company’s retail packaging, the reproduction of Canadian money does not devalue money in terms of either its economic or symbolic operations. Unlike a creative person or business which loses a sale to counterfeit goods, or has the price of sale affected by the availability of counterfeit reproductions, the marketplace in which the Bank of Canada operates is not affected by the reproduction of images of dollar bills. In no way is the Bank of Canada compromised in its function or intention. In its institutional capacity, the Bank of Canada is not a producer of goods, but rather a regulator of the infrastructure of commerce. As such, the end results of its operations, namely the dollar bills themselves, can be afforded no protections under current Canadian copyright law except to the extent that the counterfeit production of money is restricted. The Bank of Canada should indeed deploy copyright law to ensure that the majority of (if not all) bills in circulation have been manufactured by and remain under the supervision of the mint. Any other use of copyright law by the Bank of Canada oversteps the intentions of copyright provisions as well as the mandate foundational to the Bank.

Satire has a long history of constitutional protection as free speech. For satire to function, it must redeploy and recontextualise the contemporary images of politics, culture, art, science, technology, and economic practice. To focus on the present situation, political cartoons have a long history of using nationally-accurate depictions of dollar bills as important symbols and referents for the syntax and meaning in which the cartoon can be understood to operate. They also serve as visual shorthand frequently deployed in political cartoons for a variety of concepts such as greed and corruption. To be specific in this instance, Dan Murphy’s cartoon, which recontextualises a Canadian $50 polymer bill to make statements (again, which themselves have a long history of being protected by freedom of expression laws) about contemporary politics, namely the activities of one particular public figure and the (rather scandalous and illegal) activities responsible for the instance of their public notoriety presently. Despite the commercial nature of Mr. Murphy’s enterprise, his actions were protected under Section 29.1 of the Copyright Act as the syntax and content of the message relayed by the cartoon is one of political commentary and not one whereby the function or intentions of the Bank of Canada as manifest in the image of a dollar bill is in any way undermined or absconded by the cartoonist. Again, in no way does the cartoon challenge the “market” wherein the processes and institutions of money as regulated by the Bank of Canada operate. As copyright provisions are grounded in the idea that unauthorised reproduction devalues the market for the good or service in question, in no way can it be applied to the Bank of Canada’s “ownership” of dollar bills as images, as such cannot be understood to be a goods or services produced and sold in a competitive marketplace.

Here, I turn to what I interpret as the politicised deployed of copyright law by the Bank of Canada. The image of Canadian money has been reproduced on flyers disseminated for advertising purposes by supermarkets and dollar stores, and is routinely used on flyers produced and distributed by local businesses. Usually, the reproduced image signals to the reader of a sale or reduction in price, or of how the use of this product or service will save the reader money. Perhaps such is done outside of media reportage, but I have not heard of other instances where the Bank of Canada produces and delivers a cease-and-desist order to the ostensible copyright violator. In the case of Dan Murphy’s political cartoon, it appears to outside observers that the Bank of Canada is taking an interest in this particular “violation” of their copyright to silence a criticism against a scandal which extends throughout the ranks of the current government. As the Bank of Canada is a government institution, it is not much of a stretch for these same outside observers to question the political (and politicised) intentions of this particular intervention by the Bank of Canada.

letter to Guelph City Council, re: anti-music noise bylaw

Hello,

Having read about Guelph’s new noise bylaw in the Guelph Mercury, I cannot remain silent on this issue of community silence. As a past member of the music industry who currently studies art and culture professionally, I must say that I was quite thoroughly appalled when I read about the bylaw clause forbidding “the operation of a radio, television, stereo or other electronic device including any amplification device, or any musical or other sound-producing instrument” in residential and mixed-use areas. Surely it is not the wish of Guelph city council to censor all musical activities within city limits, for such a desire would not only prove itself illogical and untenable, but would be a serious impediment to the quality of life in Guelph, as throughout recorded history music has served as one of the principal means for the joyous expression of the spirit of humanity. Furthermore, banning human noise production in residential areas will disallow children from a musical education. If people cannot teach themselves how to play an instrument in the home, where do you expect musical crafts to be honed and perfected? While it is true that studio rental spaces may be available to aspiring musicians, renting space to learn musical performance and composition is exceptionally expensive and will result in the consequence that only affluent children will learn music. The educational benefits of participation in musical appreciation and performance [see article from Scientific American, linked below] will be restricted to wealthy families in Guelph. To learn how to play any instrument at the “concert” level requires thousands of hours of daily practice; obviously if such practice cannot occur in the home, then such practice will not occur. Given the implacable nature of the human spirit relative to its own expression through art, however, it’s much more likely that the noise bylaw will simply be ignored by most residents. Policing costs along with property taxes will increase as more and more people are harassed in their own homes by police seeking to shut down five friends with a stereo or teenagers making hiphop in a garage. Many residents will purposefully break compliance with the bylaw, and if I lived in Guelph I would certainly and happily be one of them.

More importantly, however, what is the actually purpose of the new bylaw? To what end are the lives of Guelph residents improved by the imposition of silence? Silence has not been enshrined as one of the driving forces of civilization (in fact noise is the marker for civilization), and has not been codified as a fundamental human right in any modern legal jurisdiction. But of course, Guelph residents won’t suddenly be without noises: traffic, people talking, construction, industry, daily commercial activities – all of these noises will continue unabated. What privileges the noise these activities produce over the concerted (and if they are talented, poetic) expression of a person with a trumpet or a guitar? As an aside, I noticed that the real noisemakers which pollute residential neighbourhoods are all exempt from the noise bylaw: lawnmowers, leaf blowers, power saws, power washers, compressed air machines, generators, etc. Surely the noises these machines produce, often very early in the morning, are far more obnoxious than is a car stereo or a child singing into a microphone. I cannot help but consider that the current Guelph city council members think it more important that the rights of residents to watch their evening reality shows and pretend through silence that the rest of the world doesn’t exist is superior to the rights of individuals to pursue and explore the fascinating potential of their own existence as reflected in musical expression. While in The Republic, Plato did in fact ban music from his political utopia, such censorship should not reasonably be expected as a component of an enlightened 21st century democratic jurisprudence.

Music is ornamentation for time in the same way that painting and architecture serve as ornaments for space. Indeed, music is a celebration of life against the inevitable closure of death, the silent end-of-time in which we must all ultimately find our peace. People who regularly practice musical composition and performance enrich their intellectual abilities and their capacity for learning. Due to the newly-passed noise bylaw, Guelph will be a city with less capacity to placate and enlighten the distempered soul as it passes through life. I am certain that the residents of Guelph will not abide such inhuman and illogical attacks on artistic expression within residential areas. It heartens me to see the increasing prominence of the art community in Guelph, as it is they who will surely lead the protest against the insanely unhuman, unnecessary, and illogical noise bylaw which City Council has just passed. Hopefully, council members will see the folly of this bylaw and reverse or remove the new amendments, lest their careers be defined in terms of the inhuman silence they illogically imposed on a community.

Regards,

--

qzh

PS: an article in the popular journal Scientific American about the pedagogical benefits of musical participation: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2012/08/21/even-a-few-years-of-music-training-benefits-the-brain/  . A full bibliography outlining such benefits as listed in numerous peer-reviewed academic studies can be made available to Council upon request.

The provincial Tory education White Papers

[note: this conversation is a response to provincial Conservative policy as published on their website:  http://ontariopc.uberflip.com/i/108917 ]

Hi Mr. Leone and Mr. Hudak,

I’m curious about the position on student loans represented by your party’s most recent “white paper”, as well as the comments which you made during today’s press release. While I do not presently wish to address the idiocy of tying provincial education dollars directly to employment statistics, even though this proposal is as unfeasible logistically and it is intellectually abhorrent (how does one judge what a student’s “field” is relative to their later employment; I don’t know of too many professional philosophers or literary critics outside of academia, for example, but I have noticed that many of the corporate executives in the Fortune 500 list have graduate and undergraduate degrees in such fields), the purpose of this present letter is to discuss with you the most obvious problem with your party’s proposal.

Indexing student loans to academic achievement has a superficial logic to it, granted. However, such a system of funding does not allow a student who does poorly in one area to transfer into another more suited to their aptitude. I can give as example in this regard British politician whom I once met who described failing out of the science program in his university. He transferred to history and political science at another university, and proceeded to finish a doctorate several years later before entering into federal politics in Britain. Under the Tory proposal to index student finances to academic performance, this individual would not have graduated from university and would not currently be a sitting MP in the British Parliament.

What about a student who has issues with mental or physical health affecting their grades? What about people with developmental difficulties? Or, to take a personal example, what if a student endures trauma or grief due to the death of a loved one? What if they endure physical and/or emotional abuse at home during the course of their studies? What if they’re just irresponsible for a moment during their youth (kids start post-secondary school at 17 now) and learn the lessons of responsibility as they mature and learn from their more ambitious peers? In short, there is a very long list of reasons why a student’s performance at school may be negatively affected at any given moment. It is my view, shared by many experts in the field of post-secondary education, that a functional educational system is flexible enough to cope with the individualities presented by all students, not simply those who do not struggle with paying for or performing in school during their studies. How dare your party be so callous as to assume that a student’s academic performance be exemplary and if it is not they are lazy and should be cut off from funding. What you are saying, Mr. Leone, is that students from affluent families are able to make mistakes, and students from poor families do not get to enjoy such privileges. There is no empirical evidence to suggest that your proposal will result in “better” students, and neither of you, Mr. Hudak and Mr. Leone, have the expertise or credibility to suggest otherwise. More importantly, since student loans are a for-profit system of student financing greatly beneficial to the profitability of several Canadian banks, the idea that student loans are a great expense on the taxpayers of this province is a hyperbolic inaccuracy. The majority of student loans are paid back to the banks, and the government benefits from increased tax revenue from a more advanced and productive workforce. All empirical data points to education being a good investment for the state.

“Market discipline”, as you call it, is neither practical nor desirable, and should not be expected of our students. Education and knowledge are more important for the advancement of the human condition than is the pursuit of money for the sake of itself. Perhaps now is the time to discuss market discipline in relation to the marketplace, and here we can talk about why the world economy went into the toilet in 2008...   

As a student from a relatively poor end of the middle class who has struggled very hard to enjoy the privilege of working on a doctorate in a “good” program at a “good” school, I cannot emphasize this point (and pun) enough: Tory educational policy is an act of class warfare.

Regards,

>>> 

Thank you for your e-mail. 

Nothing in the white paper precludes this British MP from doing what he did.  It's actually encouraged.  Put it this way, the major issue that you have raised in this white paper is a paragraph which follows another paragraph that talks about minimizing debt.  I think we need to talk about the 1 in 5 students who do not finish university.  They may have really struggled in first year, probably failed a couple courses, and came back for year 2 or 3, only then to drop out.  This student may then go to college to finish a 2 or 3 year university diploma, meaning he or she spent an extra 1 or 2 or 3 years getting an education than needed.  That's 1 or 2 or 3 more years of student debt. That's 1 or 2 or 3 years of government investment in this student's education.  So, what we're suggesting is that we encourage the student to do what the MP has done and find a different program sooner.  That pretty well falls in line with our thinking.  Look at our colleges strategy as providing this kind of direction.

We propose that institutions have greater control in managing financial aid.  In every one of the cases you outline, such exemptions are already provided by institutions, so you're really grasping at straws.  We never gave a minimum grade/mark, and we never said we want to be punitive (i.e. taking loans away from people).   You assume, incorrectly, what our intent is on this issue by posing every hypothetical that comes to mind.  We are a compassionate party.  Inside the framework we have set, we could encourage the use of incentives to encourage student improvement.  For example, for those we may want to incent students to achieve higher by forgiving a portion of their loans for student success. These options are on the table, and we don't specify because we want to encourage a discussion.

You are actually making assumptions about my assumptions, and they are incorrect. My focus is to improve student success not to focus on who can make "mistakes".  This is entirely your hyperbole.  I actually believe I do have "expertise" and "credibility."  I have a PhD in Comparative Public Policy.  I hope that when you get your PhD, you begin to appreciate the enormity of your achievement.  You may not agree with what I have said in this white paper, and you're free to do that.  However, to suggest that I have no expertise or credibility is an ad hominem fallacy in argument.

Finally, you conclude with your position on how this is class warfare.  I'm offended by this, because my parents were immigrants who came to this country with just the shirts on their backs.  My father worked hard to provide for my family in a blue collar job.  He and my mom are proud to have a son who ended up with a PhD. I know your parents will take as much pride in your success as mine did for what I was able to accomplish.  I wish you the best of luck.

All the best,

Rob

>>>

Mr. Leone,

It is clear that we have different interpretations of Tory policy as published on the Conservative website. My bias against the line of thinking which this white paper presents centres upon the idea of higher education being solely for the benefit of particular fields of education most easily indexed to employability records, while other fields are deemed “wasteful” by government bureaucrats who do not understand the correlation between education and employment. To restate a point from my last email to you, in what manner is Philosophy or Ethics directly quantifiable in terms of monetary gain or employability? Surely, you do not wish to challenge the value of philosophy to the human condition or the experience of humanity, for you would undoubtedly be wrong. When examining student employment post graduation, the Tory white paper cites the 2012 Auditor General’s report which indicates that student employment outcomes are not always tied to their field of study in university or college. My worry is that you interpret such data as being a negative outcome of the educational system. Many contemporary studies on pedagogy and labour indicate that a breadth of experience and education is required for the lateral strategic and logistical thought processes which define successful business strategies in the 21st century. In fact, as I mentioned in my previous email to you, if you examine the education backgrounds of many corporate leaders, it is evident that many of them were trained in university or college programs which are ostensively of little use to their executive careers. And yet there they are: corporate managers with English or geography degrees. I myself was employed in the music industry for several years after having received an MA in English. Surely, my employment would have fallen outside of my field of study, despite my continual utilisation of “English degree” skills at a “Music degree or MBA” job. Please note in contradiction to your email response that Paths 1, 5, and 10 in the Tory white paper explicitly details the need to tailor fields of study to fields of employment.

University professors are expected to perform more duties than simply teach classes in their field, and the typical 40-40-20 split mentioned in the Tory white paper reflects this fact. However, the paper also suggests that universities should employ full-time, teaching only professors. While such a suggestion makes sense in a superficial manner, it ignores the fundamental reality of university education: the continual expansion and refinement of human intellectual activity. The knowledge being taught by a full-time teaching professor would likely be obsolete after a few years, and they would then need to retrain themselves, likely at the expense of the province. Please note this important fact: the process of research is precisely the manner by which university professors update and refine the information they are teaching. In effect, it is research which keeps the education system “up-to-date”. Furthermore, it is a school’s research profile which determines its standing in the global academic community, with the consequence of a higher research profile attracting a greater number and “quality” of students. Like you, I too am concerned that universities are increasingly relying on low-paid, part-time, contract teaching from newly-minted doctoral students. Not only is the education of students compromised by poorly-paid and overstressed part-time faculty, but arguably this situation is poor for the economy as a whole, as good wage, full-time jobs are replaced by temporary and expendable contract labourers. You know what would improve this situation however? Releasing more provincial and federal funds to universities to hire more full-time professors. In terms of their employment practices, universities are acting like fast food chains in terms of hiring low-paid, disposable employees because of the same “market diligence” championed by conservative thinkers for decades. The end result of such thinking is that student education is increasingly compromised by the myopic constraints of free market capitalism, with the outcome of students treated more like consumers with desires than as students with needs. Look at the American University of Phoenix as the logical conclusion of this process: an online university which tailors its programs to the “needs” of students (which, unsurprisingly, are defined as contingent with profitability for the school’s stakeholders) and which produce students with worthless, made-up degrees that are not recognised as being useful by most employers; the unskilled and untrained students of the University of Phoenix are for all intents and purposes the unqualified remnants of education dictated by free market principles. Such is the consequence of a university which employs teachers who do not research anything and whose outcomes are “employability”. Please note in contradiction to your email response that Paths 6, 9, and 10 in the Tory white papers explicitly discuss the need for online, free market, non-research focus for university education.

Here’s a proposal. The corporate and business communities in Canada benefit greatly from having access to a large pool of highly-educated and healthy workers, and yet the corporate and business communities have seen their taxes decline significantly since the mid-1990s. Corporations hire employees who have skills with computers and technology, language, and mathematics, and these skills are deployed by the corporation for profitable gain. However, the business and corporate communities are increasingly paying a lower share of the costs of educating their employees. Presently, corporations, which are granted the rights of “personhood” under Canadian and international jurisprudence, do not pay taxes at anywhere near the same percentage of their income as do individual Canadians. Such corporate taxation policies have been championed by Conservatives as well as the Liberals as encouraging job growth. However, according to recent findings by the Bank of Canada, corporations and large businesses in Canada have not invested the money saved from lower taxation and no jobs have been produced as a result, and this accumulation of “dead money” (in the words of the Financial Post’s Gordon Isfeld) is in fact harming the Canadian economy. Since it is not likely that major corporations will cease operations if their taxation levels are restored to the rates extant in the mid 1990s, when they were also profitable entities, I propose that significant investments be made in higher education be financed by increasing the corporate tax rate back to previous levels. Again, all of this increased revenue from corporate taxation would be earmarked for investment in education, which is of direct benefit to corporate and business employers. The trend of public subsidies for private profits has to end; using the same “free market”, fiscally-conservative logic behind most other Tory policies, it’s time to end the socialisation of expense and the privatisation of profit and “charge” employers for the education received by their employees.

I know full well that your party follows its own ideological vectors regardless of the empirical data which may contradict such positions. As such, it is not likely that Conservative policy will lead the charge, as it were, to a better system of higher education in Ontario. There is one thing on which we can agree, however: like you, I believe that perhaps 15-20 percent of the students enrolled in university programs would be better served by study at a college. Having taught at Mohawk and Sheridan, as well as Columbia International College, I can state that the commonly-held mantra of “go to university, unless you are dumb then try college” is both incorrect and elitist nonsense. Indeed, many students are avoiding the trades because of unfounded class prejudices against such employment. However, I must point out that the reason that universities have lowered their standards and are significantly increasing undergraduate enrollment numbers has to do with cuts to provincial and federal funding which force schools to rely increasingly on tuition dollars from students to pay for their operation. To restate my position above, academic standards would be improved by funding schools directly by increasing the rate for corporate taxation.

PS: Path 11, in which you call for student unions to be made accountable, is a red herring, as student union expenses are less than 1% of a student’s tuition. Even if that 1% truly reflects waste which could be recovered through policies of oversight and accountability, which it does not, the amount of money saved by students (note: not the government; no tax dollars are spent on student union activities) would be negligible.

Regards,

>>>

Dear Quintin,

Thanks for the time you took to respond to my e-mail and the discussion paper.  The purpose of doing these discussion papers is to encourage debate.  While we don't' agree on many issues, it's nice to know there are a couple things in which we can agree.  Thank you for participating!

All the best,

Rob

a letter (once closed and now open) about the corporate branding of public spaces

Mr Merulla and others at Council,

Your stated interest in renaming all public spaces after corporate donors is troubling for several reasons. The most obvious is that such a move signals a dangerous encroachment of corporate advertising into the space in which the identity and politics of both the city and its residents operate. The politics of branding are not benign, and do not simply invovolve changing names. Corporate branding involves the theft of the histories and identities which constitute a given area, as local stories and historical figures are painted over in favour of the corporate image. Corporate branding signals the erasure of history and local specificity in favour of a universal and timeless corporate-sponsored immediacy or “now-ness” which serves to remind people who use that public space that the corporation in question has the solutions they need for the problems of the “now”: if thirsty, Coke is available in every store; if hungry, McDonald’s is always open; WalMart provides the important experience of “playing in the park with one’s children” just as it provides low prices for the consumer goods necessary for participation in modern disposable consumer society. Presently, we name public spaces after important political, historical, or cultural figures, or we use the long-standing tradition of placenames mirroring natural elements of that place: Churchill Park in Westdale, Confederation Park in the north east, Gage Park in the city’s centre. The people and events chosen as namesakes have contributed to building the community, and the history of a place is folded neatly within its name. In other words, we use the naming of public spaces to mark our history but more importantly to mark the values and dreams we have for our communities: peace, freedom, the rule of law and the granting of rights to all people, and the intellectual tradition of cultural development.

Corporate branding is a quick infusion of cash, and for municipalities increasingly under fiscal pressure from provincial downloading of social services, that cash infusion may indeed represent the importance of corporate money for the process of community building. However, that reality of desperation and dependency does not account for the history of North American economic development or the new trend in corporate branding of public spaces, which began during the last major recession of the early 1990s. Why is corporate branding happening now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and not at the beginning of the twentieth, when most of the public spaces with which we presently live were mandated and named?  When the economic development of the twentieth century brought middle-class wealth to tens of millions of people and the economic output of nearly all North American communities flourished, we named public spaces in the public interest. Now that such economic activity within communities is in decline (due to globalisation, multinational corporations and investors not tied to specific regions or communities, resource decline, etc.) and has been threatened with recession and depression, municipalities struggling to find funding for public spaces are increasingly turning to corporate naming rights of public spaces. Instead of allowing corporations to insert their will into every aspect of human life, we should be asking questions such as why does the corporate world have the money to pay for “community”, while the community , whose members were ostensibly the recipients of that economic activity, does not, and furthermore, what is the point of using corporations to build community wealth if that wealth is to be used for corporate gain?

While the distribution of wealth in a just socisety is somewhat of a large and complicated topic for municipal councillors to handle, the smaller issue of naming rights is one which should not be entered into lightly by the City. In allowing corporations to name (and in fact to own, in real terms) public spaces, the city hands over political and civic authority to corporate interests. One example: let’s say that a park in the north east of the city is renamed “Home Depot Park”. Now, if that park were mostly used by individuals whom the corporation deems to be undesirable to its corporate image (vagrants and the mentally ill, poor people, etc.), it seems reasonable to assume that the Home Depot Corporation would pressure the city to remove those individuals from the public space which bears its name. Similarly, if a politically controversial organization (such as those which promote religious and sexual equality) were to schedule an activity for a corporate-branded area, it seems naive to assume that such events would not face resistance from the corporate entities whose name adorns the space in which the event is to occur. Corporations do not pay for community spaces out of the goodness of their hearts or out of any sense of compassion or commitment to a community or cause. They pay for naming rights in public spaces because they have calculated economic benefits which serve their own interests, and it seems obvious to most people that when faced with threats of withholding future money, city councillors will do whatever it takes to keep happy the corporations who have paid to name public spaces.

Please consider your decision in this matter wisely. If Merulla’s intentions are taken up by council, it is likely that grassroots organizations in this city will work incessantly to un-name the public corporate spaces, legally or otherwise.

a letter to Vic Toews about Bill C-30

Hello Mr. Toews,

I just listened to your interview with Evan Solomon of the CBC, in which you stated that you have neither read nor do you understand the content of Bill C-30. Putting aside for a moment the question of why you slandered critics of the bill by stating that they "support child pornographers" when you yourself have not read the bill and cannot demonstrate an understanding of its contents, I am presently writing to you in search of an answer to the question below. In seeking an answer to this question, I will also put aside for a moment my doubts as to the wisdom of conjoining a large variety of important legislation into one Omnibus Crime Bill, thus limiting the possibilities for debate or scrutiny over the individual parts of tabled as "Omnibus". I will also ignore the recent events surrounding Vikileaks's illumination of the public records related to your personal life, Mr. Toews, except to state that now you may better understand why Canadians will not tolerate the governmental unconstitutionally spying into their affairs (although Vikileaks itself does not represent criminal or unconstitutional activity).

My question to you is the following: is it not normal parliamentary procedure for a minister (and indeed other MPs) to read and understand the legislation that is under the mandate and jurisdiction of their department, which they will be championing in public forums (in this regard, you rather childishly and boorishly denigrated critics as "supporters of child pornography"), and upon which they will be voting in the House of Commons?

Surely, such activity is in fact at the heart of the function of an MP, and most especially one who is also a senior minister, for otherwise Canadians would have elected to Parliament an incompetent and irresponsible Member. Given that in this case you, Mr. Toews, are ostensibly the Minster responsible for Public Safety, it is paramount that you competently perform this charge lest the public be endangered due to irresponsible governance.

It is now clear to all Canadians who look into the matter, in either a systemic or a cursory way, that Bill C-30 is either ill-considered and poorly-formulated, or it represents a wilful disregard for the constitutional rights granted to all Canadians. It is here that I will return to your insulting comments about child pornography. I know several victims of childhood sexual abuse, and furthermore my mother The Reverend Dorothy Hewlett (Anglican) has spent a great deal of her professional life counselling victims of childhood sexual abuse. Your casual and irresponsible invocation (use) of the horrors which abused children suffered and continue to suffer is a callous and opportunistic ploy to silence critics of what is an unconstitutional or ill-considered legislative mistake. How dare you, Mr. Toewes? You are in effect condoning the suffering of individuals as the rhetorical justification for the ignorance which Bill C-30 represents. If you are a religious person, Mr. Toews, you need to look at yourself in a mirror and then speak with your god. If you aren't religious, then please just look at yourself in a mirror for a while.

Mr. Toews, due to the fact that you do not appear to be properly performing your duties as minister, due to the fact that in the process of performing your responsibilities you insulted not those Canadians who are critical of Bill C-30 but also the victims of childhood sexual abuse whom you purport to be defending, I cannot in good conscious allow the epithet "Right Honourable" in the same sentence as your name.  

VIC TOEWS'S OFFICE RESPONDS IN FORM STYLE:

Thank you for contacting my office regarding Bill C-30, the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.

Canada's laws currently do not adequately protect Canadians from online exploitation and we think there is widespread agreement that this is a problem. 

We want to update our laws while striking the right balance between combating crime and protecting privacy. 

Let me be very clear: the police will not be able to read emails or view web activity unless they obtain a warrant issued by a judge and we have constructed safeguards to protect the privacy of Canadians, including audits by privacy commissioners.

What's needed most is an open discussion about how to better protect Canadians from online crime. We will therefore send this legislation directly to Parliamentary Committee for a full examination of the best ways to protect Canadians while respecting their privacy.

For your information, I have included some myths and facts below regarding Bill C-30 in its current state.

Sincerely,

Vic Toews

Member of Parliament for Provencher

Myth: Lawful Access legislation infringes on the privacy of Canadians.

Fact: Our Government puts a high priority on protecting the privacy of law-abiding Canadians. Current practices of accessing the actual content of communications with a legal authorization will not change. 

Myth: Having access to basic subscriber information means that authorities can monitor personal communications and activities.

Fact: This has nothing to do with monitoring emails or web browsing.  Basic subscriber information would be limited to a customer’s name, address, telephone number, email address, Internet Protocol (IP) address, and the name of the telecommunications service provider. It absolutely does not include the content of emails, phones calls or online activities.

Myth: This legislation does not benefit average Canadians and only gives authorities more power.

Fact:  As a result of technological innovations, criminals and terrorists have found ways to hide their illegal activities. This legislation will keep Canadians safer by putting police on the same footing as those who seek to harm us.

Myth: Basic subscriber information is way beyond “phone book information”.

Fact: The basic subscriber information described in the proposed legislation is the modern day equivalent of information that is in the phone book. Individuals frequently freely share this information online and in many cases it is searchable and quite public.

Myth: Police and telecommunications service providers will now be required to maintain databases with information collected on Canadians.

Fact: This proposed legislation will not require either police or telecommunications service providers to create databases with information collected on Canadians.

Myth: “Warrantless access” to customer information will give police and government unregulated access to our personal information.

Fact: Federal legislation already allows telecommunications service providers to voluntarily release basic subscriber information to authorities without a warrant. This Bill acts as a counterbalance by adding a number of checks and balances which do not exist today, and clearly lists which basic subscriber identifiers authorities can access.

BOB RAE'S OFFICE RESPONDS IN SLIGHTLY LESS FORM

-LETTER STYLE

Dear Quintin Hewlett:

On behalf of Liberal Leader Bob Rae, I would like thank you for your email regarding Bill C-30, the Conservative legislation that will allow Vic Toews and Stephen Harper to creep your Facebook and read your emails.

It’s unacceptable for the Conservatives to paint this as strictly an issue of pedophilia and child pornography; Canadians deserve an honest debate on something this serious.  This is a complex bill that contains numerous provisions requiring scrutiny and careful examination at Committee.  A proper balance must be struck between the privacy rights of Canadians and public safety.

Privacy is a fundamental freedom enshrined in our Charter and Canadians have every right to be worried about heightened surveillance of their online activities.  Liberals are seriously concerned about the lack of judicial oversight in this bill relating to subscriber data, and that forcing ISP and telecomm providers to have the capacity to trace all communications in their system could create a very slippery slope.  After all, this is a governing party that has proven itself willing to violate online privacy before – like with its Facebook creeping activities during the last election.

The Liberal Party will be proposing several amendments to Bill C-30, including adding the requirement that there is judicial oversight before law enforcement can access personal subscriber information.  In addition, we are calling for open and transparent hearings on this legislation.  If you would like to support these proposals you can sign our petition.

Thank you for taking the time to write to the Leader of the Liberal Party.

Yours sincerely,

Colin McKoneOffice of the Liberal Leader 

RESPONSE TO TOEWS

Mr. Toews,

Since you did not address my complaints about your invocation of child abuse, I will address your interpretation of Bill C-30. I have taken into consideration the "myth/fact" sheet forwarded to me by your office. 

VIC TOEWS OFFICIAL RESPONSE MYTH: "Our Government puts a high priority on protecting the privacy of law-abiding Canadians. Current practices of accessing the actual content of communications with a legal authorization will not change."

FACT: Several Provincial Privacy Commissioners have outlined the precise manner in which Bill C-30 will undermine the privacy of law-abiding Canadians. Furthermore, since Canadian law protects the privacy of non-law-abiding persons in an equal manner as it law-abiding persons (the key word upon which the law rests being "person", not "law-abiding"), the government has no right to breach this privacy during the course of an investigation **without judicial oversight**. In other words, law enforcement agencies are required to obtain a search warrant in order to breach the privacy of *any* person. 

VIC TOEWS OFFICIAL RESPONSE MYTH: 1: "This has nothing to do with monitoring emails or web browsing.  Basic subscriber information would be limited to a customer’s name, address, telephone number, email address, Internet Protocol (IP) address, and the name of the telecommunications service provider. It absolutely does not include the content of emails, phones calls or online activities."2: "The basic subscriber information described in the proposed legislation is the modern day equivalent of information that is in the phone book. Individuals frequently freely share this information online and in many cases it is searchable and quite public."

FACT: Not only does the "modern phone book" allow real-time monitoring of the location data associated with ISP and wireless connections, but the Vic Toewes Myth is being entirely disingenuous to its own intentions. Law enforcement agencies would seek subscriber information in order to read the contents of that person's communications in order to determine evidence supporting the guilt of that person relative to the criminal intentions presumed by the law enforcement officials who initiated the investigation. Otherwise why would law enforcement bother to engage in breaching a person's privacy?

VIC TOEWS OFFICIAL RESPONSE MYTH: "Fact: Federal legislation already allows telecommunications service providers to voluntarily release basic subscriber information to authorities without a warrant. This Bill acts as a counterbalance by adding a number of checks and balances which do not exist today, and clearly lists which basic subscriber identifiers authorities can access."

FACT: The checks and balances you indicate are entirely at the discretion of the investigating officer(s). Under the proposed bill, investigators would have to log and report the activities of their online investigation. However, there is no mechanism in the bill by which a party exterior to the investigating officer(s) has supervisory jurisdiction over the investigation except in the retrospective manner. Thus, the bill assumes an element of "faith" and "due diligence" on the part of investigating officer(s) as to the intentions behind their capacity to breach the a citizen's privacy. A hypothetical example: an officer pulls over a female driver for speeding. A few days later, that officer accesses the woman's personal information without a warrant. Under Bill C-30, there is no mechanism by which the officer will be impeded in his illegal activities; the woman's privacy will be breached. 

Mr. Toews, at this point I wish to address the fact that the Bill itself, as well as your childishly irresponsible description of opponents of the bill as "supporting child pornography", casually and wilfully invokes the suffering of children for political gain. There are absolutely no provision in the bill which will specifically address the needs of victims of childhood sexual assault (as a minor example, there exists a great number of sex abuse victims who cannot afford to pay for the counselling or psychological treatment; they are left to fend for themselves), so naming the bill itself "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act" is a unconscionable travesty, and you and your government should be absolutely ashamed for your disgusting rhetoric in relation to this issue. 

Mr. Toews, It is clear to me that your government operates with a myopic and opportunistic arrogance which demonstrates the morally-bankrupt nature of your politics.