Canadian Politics: All Hail the Conservatives!

Last week, Canadian Heritage Minister, James Moore, nominated to that position in the hopes of mending fences with Québec's cultural scene, among others, failed a pop quiz where he was asked to identify not only Québec cultural icons, some of them internationally known, but also famous Anglo-Canadian artists.

If this is unacceptable for someone holding a cultural portfolio, his colleague, Federal Science Minister Gary Goodyear, wins with his unwillingness to aknowledge he believes in evolution.

All of this puts a new spin on a funny video done by some Québec artists during the last federal elections, which I humbly contributed to spread among Anglo-Canadian medias by adding subtitles...



I don't consider myself particularly intelligent, so it emphasize how frustrating it is to have idiots run my country.

Is Canada Becoming a Digital Ghetto?

Good question!

Here are three things that suck about being Canadian right now:

1. Last week the CRTC sided with Bell against a group of small Internet Service Providers who want to offer their customers unthrottled connections where what they download is their own business and not subject to interference.

2. In last week’s throne speech the Conservative government renewed their intention to “modernize” Canadian copyright law. Their effort to do so last session was Bill C-61, a woefully unbalanced and retrograde piece of legislation that led to the greatest citizen backlash to any proposed bill in recent memory. Yet there has been no indication from new Industry Minister Tony Clement that a much-needed public consultation will take place. The best he has offered is the possibility of a “slightly different” version of the bill.

3. Twitter has just announced that they are killing outbound SMS messaging in Canada due to exorbitant and constant rate hikes from Canadian cell providers (former Industry Minister Jim Prentice vowed to get tough on SMS price gouging, then backpeddled). Cell phone rates in Canada are among the highest in the world, and the result is that mobile penetration is pathetically low and that emerging new cultural platforms like Twitter are being hobbled.

This growing list of backwards policies is already creating a sense of digital isolation: Canadians can’t stream the videos Americans stream, download the files Americans download, remix the media Americans remix, or tweet the way Americans tweet.

With the election of Barack Obama, digital culture in the U.S. hit a tipping point, where a robust online public sphere proved itself capable of changing the world. Meanwhile, here in Canada we’re approaching our own tipping point, where a series of ignorances and capitulations threaten to turn our country into a digital ghetto.

Let's Hope They Can't Go Any Lower...

This is not only disgusting, it is plainly anti-democratic.

I am speechless.

So, bearing in mind that the Conservatives are a minority government, they might submit this project as a confidence vote. If it's accepted by the other elected parties, they, among with all the minor parties that get votes but no seats, will lose substential funding. The Conservatives would lose the most siginificant amount of money, but it represents less than 40% of their funding. Other parties are counting on this method to a bigger degree. For exeample, the Liberals accounts are funded at 63% by this methof.

If they refuse, we're going back in elections, again. And, apart from the Conservatives in power, almost no party has any money to go back to the popular vote for a fifth time since 2000. Furthermore, the Liberal party is looking for a new leader.

The federal funding to political parties is a program that was established by Jean Chrétien in 2004, copying Québec's own program, created by the late René Lévesque. It consists of $1.95 per year per vote to a political formation. Chrétien's program, opposed by the Conservatives' predecessors, the Reform party, also limited corporate and personal donations by imposing a cap. Ironically, the Conservatives adapted by establishing a strong network of small private donations, while the Liberals, counting on large donations from corporate sponsors, had a hard time adapting to their own program.

Let's just say the timing sucks big time, and the conservatives are laughing their asses off.

Not the population though...

EDIT: There's a possibility that a confidence vote defeated by the opposition could put a Liberal-NDP coalition government in power. But this is still a premature supposition.

Interesting...

Alberta is Not a Tory Stronghold Anymore.

A NDP candidate was elected in Alberta!!! Wow...just wow!

She won by just 400 voices!

For outsiders, Alberta is known as the heartland of the Conservative Party. Every electoral district in the province has been represented by Conservatives for years. This is, in my opinion, the most impressive victory of the campaign.

The Edmonton-Strathcona riding is where I lived when I was in Edmonton this summer. This place just got a bigger place in my heart!

Politicunts: Canadian Elections, Part V

In the spirit of the Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart, and by recent news that they are invited to not answer questions from national media journalists, here's a flowchart I've done to help Conservative Party candidates when they are dealing with the medias:

(click on image to enlarge)

Poll Suggests Conservative Lead Softening

As you can read here, the Conservatives are, for the first time since the beginning of the campaign, below 100% in the vote intentions...