Now found at:

http://hughmcguire.net

New RSS 2.0 feed: http://hughmcguire.net/feed

Kinda scary moving into a new neighbourhood, but I am sure that I will meet some new friends there. And I hope to keep in touch with some of you too…

Freddy is selling these posters for $12 a pop:

And here is the opening scene (you can get it in B&W or colour):

We think blocking or prioritizing content may be acceptable, we recognize it is inconsistent with the recommendations of the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel, and we don’t care because we plan to the leave the issue to the dominant telecommunications providers. This is not - as some suggest - about letting freedom reign. It is about leaving Canadian consumers and the Canadian Internet vulnerable to a two-tier Internet and providing tacit approval to those telecommunications companies that actively engage in network discrimination.

Some time ago I sent out emails asking about positions on net neutrality to the Conservatives, Liberals (federal), Bloc, NDP, Liberals (provincial), and PQ. Here are responses I got:

Conservatives:

Dear Mr. McGuire:

The Office of the Prime Minister, has forwarded your electronic correspondence of November 9, 2006, concerning net neutrality to the Honourable Maxime Bernier, Minister of Industry. I am pleased to reply on behalf of the Minister and I regret the delay in relying to you.

The Minister of Industry is responsible for the Telecommunications Act, which sets out the objectives of Canadian telecommunications policy, while the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), an independent public authority, is charged with implementing these objectives through its regulation of the telecommunications industry.

The CRTC determined that the market for retail Internet access was sufficiently competitive to forgo economic price regulation. Nonetheless, the Commission has residual authority to address some issues of discriminatory and anti-competitive behaviour with respect to such Internet services should they arise.

The issue of net neutrality is also being deliberated in other countries. Industry Canada is monitoring domestic and international developments to determine the need for future domestic policy initiatives.

I appreciate your having taken the time to bring this important matter to our attention.

Yours very truly,

Leonard St-Aubin
Director General
Telecommunications Policy Branch

Parti-Quebecois:

Monsieur McGuire,

Au nom du chef de l’opposition officielle, je confirme que nous avons bien reçu votre message. Je vous en remercie.

Je me permets de le transmettre à Monsieur Daniel Turp, porte-parole de l’opposition officielle en matière de culture et de communications, afin qu’il en prenne connaissance.

Je vous souhaite une agréable fin de journée.

Mélanie Malenfant
Conseillère politique
Cabinet du chef de l’opposition officielle
Assemblée nationale
418.643.2743
mmalenfant@assnat.qc.ca

The other parties (NDP, Liberal-fed, Bloc, Liberal-provincial) did not answer. Which tells you how high this issue is on their priority list.

(tip to patrick)

• WikiWednesday (aujourd’hui, 16h30)
• Yulblog (aujourd’hui, 20h00)
• petit déjeuner des entrepreneurs web Montrealais (le 13 fev)
• podcamp toronto (le 24-25 fev)
• democamp montreal #1 (le 27 fev)
• democamp montreal #2 (le 29 mars)
• barcamp montreal #2 (april 28)

UPDATE:
says mayor tremblay on the radio this morning: “I have learned that the opinion of citizens is important.”

glad to know such important lessons are in the process of being absorbed by our leading politicians.

Date and Location:
Tues, February 6, 2007 , 7 pm
Admission: Free
Ottawa Public Library Auditorium
120 Metcalfe St.

Moderated by:
Pippa Lawson: Executive Director, Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) at the University of Ottawa

Panelists:

* Michael Geist: Professor of Law, Research Chair of Internet and E-Commerce Law, University of Ottawa
* Ren Bucholz: Electronic Frontier Foundation Policy Coordinator, Americas
* Andrew Clement: Professor, Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto; Principal Investigator, Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking
* Bill St-Arnaud: Senior Director, Advanced Networks for CANARIE, Inc.

Cease and desist letters sent. diggdot.us is now doggdot.us. No harm done I guess, but digg are jerks.

The Human Stain

product

Book by Philip Roth

But now that, in Canada at least, it has become politically untenable to deny climate change - the Liberals, NDP and Bloc are all climate believers; the Conservatives have just converted, either for political expediency, or after finally coming to terms with the science. There is no going back, unless the science changes. So the question is no longer: Is it a problem? or Should we do anything? but: What (the hell) do we do now?

The Liberals, NDP and Bloc have all come out demanding that the Conservative inplement policy to make Canada “meet Kyoto’s targets.” This is inane political posturing, and on the part of the Liberals, a little hard to stomach. The Liberals presided over the entire Kyoto era, and agreed in 1998 to GHG emissions reductions to 6% below 1990 levels; and in 2002 ratified the Kyoto Protocol (meaning those reductions became “binding”). As the Conservatives keep telling us (rightly) the Liberals signed and ratified the Protocol without putting in (or even proposing) one shred of binding policy, or any kind of serious plan to meet those targets. Under their dismal environmental stewardship, Canada emissions grew to something like 30% higher than the targets they agreed to as ratified (and is, by the way, twice as bad as the US that signed, but never ratified Kyoto). Stephane Dion may have a dog named Kyoto; and he may be serious about the environment, but his party sure as hell has not demonstrated any leadership on climate change in the past, except for ratifying an international treaty that binds Canada to reductions without giving any thought to how those reductions would be met. Which has one positive impact: it highlights in glaring blod face how much work we have to do.

Which is why the Libs/NDP/Bloc calling for the Conservatives to meet Kyoto targets is dishonest and laughable, though it does put the pressure on to come up with concrete policies (which, to their credit, the Conservatives have started to do, for all the criticisms heaped on their Clean Air Act).

To put it in context, to meet our Kyoto targets we would have to do several things (based on 2003 numbers):
1. make all Canadian houses 30% more energy efficient
2. make all Canadian cars 30% more efficient (or, say, make every Canadian take a bike to work two days a week)
3. make every business (including industrial manufacturing, mining, and oil production) 30% more energy efficient (or close them down for 2 days of the week).
4. shut down all thermal power plants (about 30% of electricty production in Canada, the balance being hydro 60% and 12% nuclear) and replace with nukes, or some other renewables, equalling a 4x increase in nukes, or a 2000% increase in renewable contributions, going from roughly 500 MW of wind to 10,000 MW of wind, an investment on the order of 10 billion dollars).

We should be doing these things, but the scale of change to our society needed is truly massive. All areas of energy use must change: housing, transport, food production, manufacturing, urban planning, oil and gas production. To make that happen the empty posturing of the Liberals and NDP and Bloc is perhaps politically useful (if disingenuous), but it does nothing to solve the problem, which transcends party lines.

What IS needed is a massive investment in time and energy to come up with some concrete and serious ways that we can address the issue in a reasonable way without throwing the country on its ear. The sooner we start the better. It would have been nice to start in 1998 when we first signed Kyoto, but for whatever reason - political or practical - that hasn’t happened.

I’m no great fan of the Conservatives, but they are in theory the hard-nosed pragmatic doers, not the political dreamers we lefties are supposed to be. That’s encouraging (though I said the same thing when Bush won the presidency on a CO2-regulation platform in 2000, and look where that got us). So: do the Conservatives have the political will to do something about climate change? Or are they just shifting their rhetoric in response to polls? We’ll find out.

Also, just an asside. What can the world of the web do to help address this problem in a serious, significant way? Anyone have any ideas?