Runesmith's Canadian Content

Never mind sex - what are you teaching your kid about MY kid?

2015-02-24T19:41:00.001-05:00

(I know I haven't blogged here in a long while, but this needed to be said long-form.)

I overheard a conversation between two women today about Ontario's new sex education curriculum. One had received one of those hyperbolic emails detailing the horrors that their children were going to be taught and she was wondering if she should sign a petition or go to a protest.

The other told her not to bother, that regardless of how they felt about it it was going to pass anyway. She suggested just making sure that she or her husband talk to their kids about these issues before they got it in school.

This, I think, is a reasonable response. I may not agree with what either of them might end up teaching their kids about things like homosexuality, but at least it will be discussed, and at least theirs won't be the only view their kids hear. Provided they don't choose to 'opt out'.

As usual, it's mainly the Catholic school boards and the Muslim community who are balking at this curriculum, saying it infringes on their religious rights. But even some parents with more liberal views of sexuality are uncomfortable with the idea of someone else discussing these issues with their child before they feel ready to do so themselves. The problem with that is, there are far too many other parents out there who either teach their children things about sexuality that most Canadians would find objectionable or at best inaccurate - or worse, choose to teach them nothing at all.

One could argue that it's none of my business what anybody else teaches their children. What IS my business, however, is what they are teaching their kid about MY kid.

If you are going to tell your child that "some people believe it's ok to do ________, but because we are ________ we believe that is wrong and we don't approve of it", then I can't stop you. But kids translate messages in their own way, and intentionally or not that message is likely to be interpreted as "anyone who does ________ is a bad person, or a slut, or otherwise not as good as you". And then it becomes my problem.

Tell your child only that homosexuality is a Bad Thing, and in a few years they're beating the crap out of my kid for being gay - or perceived to be gay.

Tell your son that girls who kiss boys or dress in a certain way aren't nice, and in a few years he's assaulting my daughter because she wore a short skirt to school.

Neglect to tell him about condoms and my daughter ends up sick or pregnant.

Neglect to tell him that sharing naked pictures of his girlfriend on his phone is a crime and my daughter has killed herself.

These are not imaginary scenarios. These are things that happen to young people every single day. This is Rehtaeh Parsons. And Amanda Todd. And Jamie Hubley. And that nice young man on the Oscars the other night who tried to kill himself at 16.

All of these young people were victimized by other young people who somehow got the message that it was ok to humiliate and bully and sexually victimize others for being outside what they consider the social or sexual norm - or just for being female. They may have learned that either directly or inadvertently from their parents or from their peers, but they sure as hell didn't learn it from their school curriculum.

Which form of education, then, would you say is the most damaging?

Education is like a vaccine. It immunizes us against ignorance, and just like with measles it's the 'herd immunity' that is key. One or two kids with bad information or outmoded attitudes aren't likely to cause much of a problem if the rest of their peer group knows better. But get too many kids 'opting out' of something like this sex education curriculum and you wind up with those attitudes infecting others and spreading.

Sorry, but I don't want your kid infecting mine.

EbertFest Dispatch #5: Take Shelter

2012-04-29T02:35:00.000-04:00

I first noticed Michael Shannon in the movie 'Bug', which was marketed as a horror movie but is really much scarier than that. His performance was profoundly disturbing, so much so that I find it difficult to watch him in anything without feeling uneasy.

In both that film and this one, Shannon is contending with irrational fears of things that we are fairly certain are products of his own mind. But while that earlier character surrendered to those fears, in 'Take Shelter' he plays a man fully aware of what is happening and fighting desperately to keep his sanity.

Shannon plays Curtis, a loving husband and father, with a good job that he really needs to hang onto in these uncertain economic times. He has a happy, ordinary life, until he is plagued by ominous dreams about violent storms and attacks by shadowy figures. When these dreams start to intrude on his waking life, he begins to understand that something is terribly wrong.

During the Q&A after the film, director Jeff Nichols said that he considers this to be a movie about a marriage. And so it is, although not until well into the film. Before that, Curtis does his best to deal with his unraveling mind alone. He approaches his situation clinically, taking out books on mental illness from the library, seeking help from his family doctor and later a therapist. But his wife he keeps in the dark. Is this to protect her, or does he fear the loss of her normalizing influence?

Eventually his wife does learn the truth, and when Curtis' increasingly erratic behaviour begins to damage their financial situation, she takes charge in a way that is both admirable and unexpected. In any other movie she might have fled, but instead she insists that they confront this bizarre situation together.

Nichols, who also wrote the screenplay, tries to cram a lot into one movie. He's talking about marriage, commitment, mental illness, anxiety both personal and societal, economic injustice, even throwing in a subtle comment about the environmental crisis. It mostly works, although once in a while one of those themes will poke out awkwardly like a sock out of an overstuffed suitcase.

Still, the overall effect is devastating. It's one of those movies that leaves you thinking and talking about it long after the final credits.

And for the record, Michael Shannon is just as odd in person as he appears in his films. Or so he would have us believe.

EbertFest Dispatch #4: It's Not You, It's Me

2012-04-28T12:46:00.000-04:00

I was very much looking forward to seeing 'A Separation' last night. From everything I had heard, it was a moving and emotionally complex film experience that even its competitors felt deserved the Oscar it received.

I enjoyed it very much. The story was fascinating, the performances spot on. It's portrayal of Iranian culture was insightful and specific without being dumbed down for Western audiences. By the end of it, the woman next to me was sobbing and I heard nose-blowing from the gentleman behind.

And yet... it didn't get to me. Not like that.

I can't explain why. Maybe my expectations were unrealistic. Maybe I was just not in the right frame of mind to watch it. Maybe the emotional impact was greater for those who have suffered through the divorce of their parents.

Maybe I'm not cut out to be a film critic.

I was far more deeply moved and engaged by Thursday's 'Kinyarwanda', even though many others found the interweaving plot lines too complex to follow. Does that mean I think it was a better film than 'A Separation'? Certainly not. But it does raise some interesting questions about subjective and objective approaches to film criticism.

To begin with, I am hardly a professional film critic. I have no formal education in film studies, and my only paid gig as a reviewer was for 150 words a month for the Milton Champion. I know enough about film to render what I like to think are informed opinions and the occasional insightful analysis, but nothing more than that.

That said, I can't help but wonder: can any professional film critic claim to be providing a completely rational, objective analysis? Should they even try? This isn't science - it's art, and the emotional response of the viewer is key.

And therein lies the problem.

Human beings contain unique emotional landscapes that change constantly, even from day to day, and that can't help but affect how we respond to movies. I remember the first time I saw 'A.I.' with my husband. We both started crying about the time David's mother leaves him in the woods, and by the end we were sobbing uncontrollably. We talked about it for days, and it was a full year before I could bring myself to watch it again. I haven't had quite that intense a response in subsequent viewings, but I still have to leave the room during the abandonment scene.

Why? Possibly because our son was the same apparent age as David at the time.

I was shocked, therefore, when I read Roger Ebert's review of the film. It was like we hadn't seen the same movie. And it wasn't that he didn't like it (he did give it three stars) - he completely rejected the whole premise that David was supposed to be a robot that really did feel rather than imitating emotion like other Mechas, and therefore he had no reason to care about what happened to him.

The whole thing bothered me far more than it should have, but I think I understand now what was really going on. I was in an emotional state that let that movie in to a very deep place. Roger wasn't. I still say he missed or ignored the exposition in the first five minutes of the film, but ultimately it doesn't matter. It just didn't get to him. That doesn't make either of us wrong or right.

So I won't be reviewing 'A Separation', except to say that it was an excellent film, and everyone else I've heard from who saw it last night was deeply moved. I'm sure at some point I will watch it again, and perhaps then I will be in the right space to let it in.

EbertFest Dispatch #3: The Rules

2012-04-28T01:55:00.000-04:00

I'm starting to get the hang of this whole 'Ebertfest' thing.

The first house rule I had to learn was the 'saving your seat' protocol. People will grab the best seat they can find as soon as they get into the theatre, and will mark their territory for the rest of the day by leaving a coat or bag or, most commonly, their program lying across the seat.

I made the mistake of getting up for a washroom break during a Q&A session yesterday without marking my turf. I didn't have my coat with me and I'd left my program in the motel room, but I figured I'd only be gone a minute or two.

I came back to find my seat taken.

When I politely pointed this out, the woman occupying it agreed to move, but she seemed rather put out.

The down side of this system is the 'phantom butt' who leaves a program on a seat in the morning but doesn't actually turn up until the last film of the day. I had one of these invisible friends next to me all day today. I let it slide while there were other seats open, but when they announced at 8:31 that they were letting the rush lines in for 'A Separation' I made an executive decision and removed the placeholder. Plus the two next to it. So there.

The food thing is working out better. There are a lot of great restaurants nearby, plus they actually have food tents in front of the theatre which are a great inexpensive option. And if you go to the far booth you get to be entertained by the comedy stylings of the lovely Charity. Although I think that was only a distraction while I waited twenty minutes for her to serve me my steak burger.

I'm still waiting for my Steak 'n Shake. Incredibly, there isn't one walking distance from the theatre, but I'm determined to go there for lunch tomorrow.

Being here on my own, I had been a little uncomfortable starting conversations with total strangers at first. But then I brought out my secret weapon: a Canadian flag patch which I clipped to my pass lanyard. It's a brilliant ice breaker. People see it and ask me where in Canada I'm from, what the weather's like up there (it was snowing two days before I left, in the 80s a week before that), whether I've been to TIFF. I had a fascinating conversation the other day about tuition costs (they're worse than I ever imagined here). And they're all astonished that I drove ten hours to be here. I thought Americans were big on driving?

Socialization was also made easier once I changed my seating choice. I watched my first movie on Wednesday from a back row on the main floor, but since then I've been up in the balcony. The screen is huge so the view is just fine, and it turns out this is where all the hardcore EbertFest veterans congregate. Folks are much more affable and willing to chat up here, and I even ran across a couple of VIP pass holders who have chosen to sit up top rather than in their designated section down below.

Also we have knitters.

One last bit of trivia: the washrooms here are gorgeous. Or at least the Ladies' are. Spotless, roomy, gleaming vintage black & white tile. I'd take a picture if I wasn't certain to be thrown out. You almost expect an attendant to greet you with a warm towel and a spritz of cologne as you walk in.

Surely this is what it was like during the Golden Age of Cinema.

EbertFest Dispatch #2: Kinyarwanda

2012-04-27T03:09:00.000-04:00

Kinyarwanda is different from any film you've seen about the Rwandan genocide. It starts not with bloodshed, but with a kiss.

Rwanda has pervaded our consciousness in Canada more so than elsewhere perhaps because of the role played by Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire and his subsequent humanitarian and advocacy work. But this is not his story. Nor is it the story of the other U.N. peacekeepers, or of the Hotel Rwanda.

These are the very personal stories of ordinary Rwandans, from both sides of the conflict.

That last bit is vital. As the director put it, he didn't want to make another film about heroes and villains because to truly understand and prevent such a thing in the future, you must first understand and humanize - and ultimately forgive - those who committed the atrocities.

This isn't a concept that we in the West are terribly comfortable with, but it's a lesson that needs to be learned. They have learned it well in South Africa, and are making great strides towards healing in Rwanda. The film shows that reconciliation process early on, before you see what these men actually did.

It's a neat trick of time manipulation that the writer uses deftly, together with interweaving story lines and the gradual revelation of relationships between the characters. It's a complex masterpiece of storytelling that drives home our understanding that these are all one people. They all suffered. They all have to live with the consequences. And they can only do it together.

One of the most moving scenes for me was at the mosque where the Imam has taken in anyone seeking asylum - Tutsi and Hutu, Muslim and Christian alike. A Catholic Tutsi priest, who was initially resistant to associating with either Hutus or Muslims, is leading Mass on one side of the worship space, while on the other, separated by the thinnest barrier, the Imam leads the Muslim prayer service.

The chants of Allahu Akbar and the Lord's Prayer are heard in counterpoint, like a canon, as the camera pans from one side to the other. Different, but completely harmonious.

During the Q&A, the director revealed that the film was shot in 16 days on a budget of $250,000, much of which came from film grants from Rwanda. Incredible. After that, I never want to hear the excuse that a filmmaker didn't have enough time or money to make a great film.

EbertFest Dispatch #1: On the Road Again

2012-04-27T02:14:00.000-04:00

Excuse me while I remove my political blogger hat and replace it with my film critic and movie blogger hat...

there we go...

Greetings from the beautifully restored Virginia Theatre in downtown Champaign, Illinois!

For those who aren't familiar with it, EbertFest, or more properly Roger Ebert's Film Festival, got it's start as the Overlooked Film Festival. It's Roger's way of bringing attention to smaller films, old and new, that he loves and finds worthy. Nothing more. No sales, no deals, more directors and screenwriters than actors - just great movies and people to talk about them.

"Is this heaven?"

"No, it's Illinois."

By the time I rolled into town yesterday after 10 hours of driving, checked into the motel, got a cab to the Virginia Theatre, grabbed some popcorn in lieu of dinner, found a seat, and watched my first two movies ('Joe Versus the Volcano' and 'Phunny Business'), I was too exhausted to write anything more than a couple of tweets.

So. Let's start with Day 2.

If only I'd had more American coin to fill the meter at the Illini Hall this morning, I could have stayed longer at the Far-Flung Correspondents' panel. As it was, I missed the first 5 minutes and had to leave about 45 minutes in.

The Far Flung Correspondents are Roger Ebert's network of movie critics and bloggers from around the world. I was thrilled to see that there were not one but two representatives from Canada - one from Montreal and one from Toronto. I wonder if they drove.

Olivia Collette from Montreal spoke glowingly of her province's vibrant film scene, where unbeknownst to the rest of the country they somehow manage to produce many hundreds of films every year which people there actually go to see. Unfortunately since there is clearly NO film making going on in English Canada, our Toronto rep Grace Wang was relegated to reporting on the burgeoning film scene in China which she had visited recently.

My faithful readers know how I feel about this sort of thing, but I shall reiterate.

English Canada seems to have some sort of perverse self-loathing when it comes to our own cinema - or television for that matter. As a former video store clerk and current Film Forum volunteer, I've seen this phenomenon first hand. Quirky little European or South American (or Quebecois) films of any decent quality are universally lauded by those who love film, and who pride themselves at having found this gem of a film that you simply must see.

And yet, an equally good English Canadian film, unless it's directed by David Cronenberg or Atom Egoyan or has a big name American cast (cough... Barney's Version...), is inevitably greeted by these same 'film lovers' with all the enthusiasm of a ten year old facing a plate of steamed Brussels sprouts.

I'm looking at you, 'The Trotsky'. And you, 'Edwin Boyd'.

I wish I could have stuck around for the Q&A to talk about some of this. I also wish I could have told them about the TIFF Film Circuit, although I've been doing my best to spread the word all day to anyone who will listen.

The biggest complaint from film lovers from nearly every country represented on the panel - from England to Egypt to Brazil - was the lack of access to anything other than big American blockbusters, especially in smaller centres. The Film Circuit model, which distributes film festival films to small towns and cities through groups of volunteers booking local venues with TIFF handling the messy distribution and rights stuff, is one that could - and should - be emulated around the world. Even in America. Perhaps especially in America.

After all, not every town is lucky enough to have its own Roger Ebert.

True Grit: Why a meaningless boxing match just might mean everything

2012-04-03T01:34:00.004-04:00

Voters are a fickle, shallow bunch sometimes. The least little thing can put them off. Nixon's sweaty lip during his televised debate with Kennedy. Stephane Dion's sad sack shrug. Stockwell Day's jet ski ride to political oblivion.

Political history is littered with the corpses of promising careers brought low by such seemingly trivial incidents. Oddly, they often seem to involve sports.

In 1974, Conservative candidate Robert Stanfield was photographed tossing a football around during a campaign rest stop in North Bay. While he caught the ball perfectly most of the time, it was the shot of his one awkward fumble that hit the front page of the papers the next morning. It gave Canadians an image of Stanfield as clumsy and inept, and is generally acknowledged to have cost him the election.

Far less common are the serendipitous moments that transform the public image of a candidate or a party for the better. I can think of two offhand. One was George W. Bush's brief moment of heroism-by-proxy as he stood wielding a bullhorn amid the ruins of the World Trade Centre, in solidarity with the first responders who he would later betray.

Another was when new Liberal leader Pierre Elliott Trudeau, regarded at the time as a charming but effete intellectual, attended the St Jean Baptiste Day Parade in Montreal the day before the 1968 election. Separatists started throwing rocks and bottles at the reviewing stand but Trudeau refused to budge, even after the other dignitaries fled. The footage was broadcast across the country, and Trudeau was suddenly perceived as not just charismatic but tough and fearless.

He won by a landslide.

We may have witnessed one of these rare moments on Saturday night, when Liberal heir apparent Justin Trudeau took on a trash-talking bruiser of a Conservative Senator in the boxing ring and, against all expectations, beat him soundly.

As a purely physical contest, the outcome really shouldn't have been as much of a surprise as it was. Brazeau might have looked like a beast from some UFC cage match, but by the time Trudeau had finished putting an extra 20 pounds on his lean frame, the two men were actually quite close in weight. Brazeau might have had a black belt in karate, but that clearly couldn't help him against Trudeau's 20 years of boxing experience. Add to that the taller man's longer reach, and Trudeau's victory wasn't really all that remarkable.

As a political metaphor, it's a whole other story. Because really, who expects the Liberals to win at anything anymore?

Certainly the Liberals didn't want to draw attention to the event, lest it turn into one more humiliating defeat. And it might have passed virtually unnoticed if the Conservatives themselves - and their media surrogates at SunTV - hadn't been so vocally and gleefully anticipating the beat-down of the son of their most hated political rival. They were the ones who invested the whole thing with symbolic and political importance, even to the extent of using it as a taunting non sequitor during Question Period.

If Trudeau had lost, we would never have heard the end of it. Like Dion's shrug, the image of Brazeau's glove smashing into that patrician Trudeau nose might even have inspired its own website. PunchTrudeauintheFace.ca perhaps?

Instead, we are left with a very different image. A positive image, which isn't nearly as easy to bottle and sell as a negative one. Nobody really cares enough about Senator Brazeau to gloat over his defeat, and it's a little ridiculous to try to deliberately craft a political narrative around the victory of brains over brawn, of quiet grace over braggadocio, of strength of character over mere muscle, of...

Ugh. See how easy it is to get carried away? Still, there's a reason why there are so many sports movies out there, and why so many of them are about boxing. Any good screenwriter will tell you, it's never really just a game, or just a fight.

If the Liberals are smart, they won't even try to manipulate this. They'll just let the image of Trudeau wiping the smirk off Brazeau's bleeding face sink in and work its magic. Images are insidious, and just like Dion's shrug or Stanfield's fumble, this one could slowly infect the national subconscious and, with any luck, subtly shift how Canadians perceive both the party and its young champion.

The biggest effect of all this might just be on the Liberals themselves. They've gotten used to thinking of themselves as losers, so nobody was more surprised than they to see Justin Trudeau triumph against such an adversary. Somehow this unlikely victory has given Liberals a chance to do something they haven't done in a very long time.

They've started thinking of themselves as winners again. And that might make all the difference in the world.

Confessions of a RoboCaller

2012-03-13T18:53:00.001-04:00

My name is Jennifer Smith, and I'm a robocaller.

No, not that robocaller. Compared to Mr. Poutine I'm small potatoes, really. I just called a few hundred of my supporters in Ward 2 in Milton on the eve of the 2010 municipal election to remind them to get out and vote for me as town councillor the next day. Most of them did, I'm happy to say, although in the end it wasn't quite enough for a win. Next time.

I know that robocalling and supporter databases are a bit of a mystery to most people, so allow me to shed some light on the process as both a candidate and a campaign worker.

During my municipal campaign, I spent almost nine months canvassing my ward, knocking on thousands of doors, talking to people, gauging their level of support, and entering their name (if they gave it) and their address into a spreadsheet on my Blackberry. If they were negative or specifically said they were voting for someone else, I made note and never bothered them again. If they were very positively inclined, I would mark them down for a potential sign location. If they were on the fence, I'd be sure to go back and talk to them again.

By the time the Town Clerk released the official voters list about a month before the election, I was ready to match it up with my own list of supporters. Neither list included phone numbers, so I spent a couple of days with Canada 411 adding numbers where I could. Not everyone is listed of course - maybe 80% - but it was enough to provide a fairly substantial and targeted list to the company I hired to provide the auto-dialing service. Then I sent them the spreadsheet with the names and numbers, called a special number with my special code, recorded my message, and at the appointed time out it went.

Happily, my ward only has about 8,000 electors so it was possible (and affordable) to do all this myself. For a federal or provincial riding of 100,000 electors, it's a whole other story.

All federal parties have some form of computer database that works more or less the same way as my little spreadsheet, only on a massive scale. Armies of volunteers make calls and knock on doors, and make note of the reactions of the people they speak to - many still with clipboards and pencils, which makes me rather proud of my Blackberry system.

That information is brought back to the campaign office where another army of volunteers adds the data to the list of electors left over from the last election (as with the municipal, they don't get the current list until much closer to the election). Unfortunately, it isn't feasible for them to look up phone numbers individually like I did, so they will generally purchase phone number lists from companies that do that sort of thing and then automatically merge the files. Sometimes the central party does this, sometimes the individual riding.

For a campaign, such databases are invaluable. After all, as my campaign manager is always telling me, it's not about how many supporters you have - it's about identifying your support and getting them out to vote. The Conservatives perfected this system quite some time ago with their CIMS database ('Constituency Information Management System'), but the Liberals now have a similar system called Liberalist which was adapted from the one developed for the Obama campaign. Presumably the NDP have something similar.

The privacy concerns with these systems are enormous, of course. After all, you can enter just about anything in there. Not just phone numbers and party affiliations, but anything the canvasser might think worthy of note. Age. Ethnic origin. Religion. How many cars you have. How many kids you have. In my case, I made note of issues that interested the person, and usually age and gender just to remind myself of who I was talking to. Other things, too. I made a note once when I noticed someone had a Star Trek license plate; another who had a DarwinFish on their car, who turned out to be one of my strongest supporters. You never know what might help you make a connection.

It makes a lot of people uncomfortable knowing how much candidates or parties know about them, and rightly so. We all like to think we use this information for good, but it can also be used for evil. Which is why, in all parties, access to the voter database is VERY tightly controlled.

In Liberalist, for example, there are multiple security levels. The most basic is for volunteers working the phone bank. Each person is given a script to read, and are plunked down in front of a computer where they see a single entry for a single voter, including their phone number. They call the number, talk to the person (or leave a message), note the response, then hit a button that moves them on to the next voter entry. They never see more than one entry at a time, and they never see more than the most rudimentary information about that person.

At the next level, a volunteer can do a search and look up the entry for a specific individual and modify or add to it. Again, they can only see one entry at a time, and they certainly can't download the whole database or even part of it.

In order to generate and download a phone list suitable for use by a robo-calling company like First Contact or RackNine, you would require the second highest level of security access. In any individual riding, you could count the number of people with such access on the fingers of one hand - and then only if you'd already lost one or two fingers in a bandsaw accident.

The candidate. The campaign manager. Possibly the communications director, if they had one. And that's about it.

(In Guelph, Michael Sona was the Conservative's communications director. Andrew Prescott, who was the deputy campaign manager, might also have had access.)

Even if you do have that level of access, at least on Liberalist, you still require authorization from the system administrators in Ottawa before you can download any portion of the database. I always thought that was an unnecessary pain in the ass, but now it seems it's a justified precaution. In order to get that authorization, you need to provide the exact parameters for the database extract (all current or expired members, for example, or all people requesting signs, etc.), and you have to explain exactly what you intend to use the information for.

Think about that for a moment.

What this means is, one of the top 3 or 4 people in the Guelph campaign not only extracted and downloaded a list specifically of Liberals and other non-Conservatives, but they had to come up with a plausible reason for wanting those specific names and numbers in order to get someone in Ottawa to sign off on it.

What reason could they possibly have given?

One other thing about these databases: everything is logged. Every search, every login, every change, every data download. It's all in there. And one of the jobs of (usually) the campaign manager is to monitor access and make sure nothing funny is going on. Like, say, an unauthorized download.

As I said, this is how it works in the Liberal camp. I've been told that the Conservative CIMS security protocols are nearly identical, but whether they would specifically require authorization for a database download I do not know. Perhaps someone who has worked with CIMS can enlighten us.

Now, who wants to take bets on whether I get an angry phone call from the Liberal Party or my campaign manager first, for giving away state secrets? ;)

UPDATE: Wow! Thanks to this piece (and some Twitter love from Susan Delacourt and Cory Doctorow), I am now a contributing blogger for Huffington Post Canada. Behold my awesomeness!

Occupy: Why Voting Isn't Enough

2011-11-21T18:41:00.003-05:00

Overhead view of the Occupy Toronto encampment, St. James Park (from Torontoist)

Al Gore's book, "The Assault on Reason" is one of the best treatises on American democracy I've ever read. Written almost five years ago, the book goes into great detail about the many ways in which that democracy has been undermined in recent decades, and gives this warning:

"The derivation of just power from the consent of the governed depends upon the integrity of the reasoning process through which that consent is given. If the reasoning process is corrupted by money and deception, then the consent of the governed is based on false premises, and any power thus derived is inherently counterfeit and unjust. If the consent of the governed is extorted through the manipulation of mass fears, or embezzled with claims of divine guidance, democracy is impoverished. If the suspension of reason causes a significant portion of the citizenry to lose confidence in the integrity of the process, democracy can be bankrupted."

This is precisely the situation we find ourselves in today - more so in the States, but also starting here in Canada.

We are brought up to believe that democracy is a pure and noble process, and that government can be a perfect reflection of the will of the people so long as the people exercise their franchise by voting. Unfortunately, the process itself has become so thoroughly corrupted and manipulated that many have come to believe this is no longer the case.

Nothing has demonstrated the impotence of democracy in the face of a corrupt system than the first term of President Barack Obama, which has proven once and for all that, in America at least, money trumps votes. Over the past four years it has become depressingly clear that a representative's first allegiance is not to the voters who elected him, but to the donors who paid for the election campaign that convinced those voters to elect him.

Things are only moderately better here in Canada. Unlike the States, we have stringent limits on campaign spending and corporate donations, but it is still a sad fact that the one who spends the most money is the one most likely to win an election. And now that the Conservatives have eliminated the per-vote subsidy, that money is now coming almost exclusively from those who can afford to or are actively motivated to donate to a political party, with the still sizable taxpayer subsidy now reflecting their preferences rather than those of the average voter.

But how is it that money can so profoundly influence our democracy? Aren't we all intelligent, free-thinking individuals whose votes are based purely on the merits of the candidate and their position on the issues?

Ok, you can stop laughing now.

As we all know, public opinion is disturbingly easy to sway. Gore talks at length about the differences between television and earlier forms of mass media and their effects on political discourse. Back in the days when American was first forming its democracy, the primary mode of mass communication was print. Newspapers - although hardly unbiased - were nevertheless lively forums for public debate, where anyone with a pen could write a letter and contribute to the discussion. For those with more to say, it was relatively cheap and easy for an ordinary person like Thomas Paine, for instance, to commit their ideas to paper, have them printed and distribute them to a wide audience.

The age of television ended all that. As more and more people began using television as their primary source of news and information, that sort of lively discussion became all but impossible. Not only is TV a one-way medium, but it is also very expensive - so expensive that only the very wealthy or those with wealthy (usually corporate) sponsors can afford access. Those sponsors found themselves with a power they never had before, and slowly began to manipulate the messages being transmitted to serve their own interests.

It used to be that governments controlled the media so they could control the people. Now, corporations control the media and the government, and nobody gives a rat's ass about the people.

Consider this: a candidate running for the U.S. Congress must spend over $1 million if they are to have any hope of winning, largely because of the costs associated with television advertising. This means that, instead of spending their time reviewing legislation and participating in debates, they must spend nearly all their time fundraising, year round. So if a major corporate donor says "Jump!", one can hardly blame them for asking, "How high?" They may want him to do something his constituents wouldn't like, but since those donors essentially control access to the media, chances are the voters will never find out about it. Or if they do, they will be convinced that it doesn't matter.

These days, of course, corporate interests aren't satisfied with merely paying for campaign ads on television. They now use their ownership of the television and radio networks themselves to directly manipulate public opinion through news and news-like programming.

Once again, things are better in Canada, but only by degree. The current spending limit for a candidate running in a Canadian federal election is around $100,000, depending on the size of the riding and other factors. That still sounds like a lot of money, and it is - although thankfully it's not enough for individual candidates to purchase television campaigns. The parties themselves can spend considerably more, but even they are subject to limits. Still, the trend towards year-round campaigning and the growth of third party advertising have shown just what a powerful effect money can have even on a Canadian election.

The result is that fundraising is given priority over all other party activities, even policy making, and that smaller parties representing minority voices will remain forever marginalized. Even those MPs who truly wish to represent their constituents are prevented from doing so because they are forced to vote along with their party in most matters, in order to maintain their good standing and benefit from the party's national advertising campaign.

This is why those who say, "Why don't you just get out and vote?" are being hopelessly naive.

Happily, all this is slowly beginning to change. As the internet gradually replaces television and other traditional media as our primary source of news and information, money will begin to lose its grip on politics. After all, the internet is by and large free and unrestricted, with infinite capacity for public access and participation.

This has actually been happening for some time now, but has only recently reached the tipping point where television may have begun to have less influence on public opinion than other means. And really - why would you wait for the 6 o'clock news to come on or for some network camera person to make their way down to where an event happened earlier, when you can watch it happening right now, live, unfiltered, through a dozen different camera lenses, and then draw your own conclusions about what it all means.

No wonder the corporate interests are so desperate to find some way to control it.

I would submit that the Occupy movement is perhaps the first large scale manifestation of this shift, and the first major victory in what will be a long battle to wrest control of our democracies back from the monied interests. For the first time in a generation, WE are setting the agenda. WE have changed the channel.

Ordinary people everywhere are suddenly talking about issues like the income gap and money in politics, not because the government or the television is telling them to, but because their friends are talking about it on Facebook, or at the pub, or they saw some video on YouTube. They might agree or disagree with the points being made or the tactics being used, but the important thing is they're engaged in a dialogue instead of just regurgitating talking points.

It's going to take a while for all this to filter through and make systemic changes. Just because television is having less of an influence on public opinion doesn't mean that influence is gone, or that politicians and parties are going to stop spending billions of dollars on TV advertising. And we must remain vigilant that those same interests that control traditional media don't succeed in controlling the internet as well.

There is also the persistant problem of the protests themselves overshadowing the message they are trying to get across. For instance, everyone now knows about Lt. John Pike and his can of orange pepper spray. Not many people know that the kids he attacked were there to protest a massive increase in their tuition fees.

Keep your eyes on the prize, people. Stay engaged. Stay focused. Turn off the TV. And what the hell - get out and vote anyway. You never know.

From the files of Rob Ford's psychiatrist

2011-10-26T16:54:00.000-04:00

Most people are unaware of the incident that traumatized Rob Ford as a child:

The CFUW Debate

2011-10-04T11:26:00.001-04:00

Four of Halton's provincial candidates came together at Milton District High School last Thursday to debate the issues and make another pitch for your vote.

Unlike some previous debates, this one had a sizable crowd attending, possibly because this would be the last candidates meeting with no admittance fee and the last one held in town. Or perhaps people just wanted to see if Progressive Conservative candidate Ted Chudleigh would appear.

Mr. Chudleigh, after saying that he would not be able to attend at all, later announced that he would be arriving around 8:00. In the end, he walked in the door at 8:13, which happened to be during the midway break. His elections signs preceded him, however, with dozens of them arranged chock-a-block, lining both sides of the road leading up to the school.

The event was organized by the Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW) and moderated by Milton District Principal Ian Jones, who got plenty of practice last year when he played the same role at the Heritage debate during the municipal election. In fact, the exact same format was used: candidates gave their opening remarks, then answered questions set by the organizers, and then were given questions submitted by the audience.

JOBS

The first question which all four had the opportunity to answer came from a student who was returning to Halton after graduating from university. They wanted to know what each candidate's party would do to create jobs in Halton suitable for those with a university education that did not involve retail or general labour. An excellent question given that, in Milton in particular, a common complaint is that those who work here can't afford to live here, and those who live here can't afford to work here.

Tony Rodrigues of the Family Coalition Party answered first, lambasting the Liberals' green energy investments and claiming that wind and solar power have been a dismal failure in Europe. He suggested that lower taxes and reduced red tape were the solution to creating jobs.

Indira Naidoo-Harris of the Liberals responded with her party's record of adding 200,000 new post-secondary spots and more jobs than the rest of the country combined, as well as the 50,000 clean energy sector jobs they are working on bringing to the province. She emphasized that the Liberals are looking to create jobs, not just for the next few years but "for generations to come".

Nik Spohr got a laugh when he quipped that his post-secondary job choice was "NDP Candidate", and made it clear that he understood the questioner's difficulties from first hand experience. He insisted that the best approach to job creation is to create an educated workforce that isn't crippled with debt, and outlined his party's plan to freeze tuition rates and take the interest off OSAP.

Ted Chudleigh of the Progressive Conservatives had a different approach, promising that his party would allow small to medium-sized businesses "do what they do best" by removing red tape, reducing business taxes, and allowing them to bid on government contracts along side large businesses.

He also made a curious comment regarding job creation in Milton. He claimed that the town was actually doing very well in that regard, with the 3M distribution headquarters opening last year and the national Target store warehouse coming soon, creating a total of 1,300 new jobs. "And those are good jobs!" he said.

A quick check of local warehouse job listings reveals that they pay on average $12.00 - $14.50 an hour and require an ability to "lift heavy items repeatedly". Good jobs, no doubt, but probably not what a university graduate is looking for.

EDUCATION

One question came from a grade 7 student wanting to know why there were 'split' classes with students from different grades. She complained that she found the grade 8 students in her class "distracting".

Interestingly, the increase in the number of split classes is a symptom of smaller class sizes. Different grades are given a hard 'cap', so if they end up with, say, ten extra students from one grade they are put in a class with the overflow from another. None of the candidates could come up with a better solution or even felt that it was much of a problem, although Mr. Spohr used the opportunity to talk about inequities in funding between school boards, and Mr. Rodrigues suggested doing away with trustees and school boards altogether to save money. Apparently he is unaware of how little a school trustee is paid.

ECONOMY

The candidates were then asked how they would pay for their parties platform promises without increasing the deficit or the debt. Mr. Spohr mentioned several places where the NDP planned to find more money, including increasing corporate tax rates while making tax breaks contingent on job creation, capping the salaries of crown corporation CEOs at $300,000, and eliminating the Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs).

Mr. Chudleigh repeated his party's claim that government revenues have increased 80% over the last 8 years, while the economy has only grown 10%. He didn't cite his sources on this or realy clarify what he was saying, but a little digging reveals that in fact, the percentage of tax revenue to GDP has remained at a consistent 10% throughout both the Liberal and Progressive Conservative regimes of the past 16 years. He also claimed that the Liberals had doubled the debt from $120 billion to $240 billion.

Ms. Naidoo-Harris countered that the net debt to GDP has actually only increased by 25%, and pointed out that the Liberals had managed to bring the government out of the $5.5 billion dollar deficit they inherited from the PCs into a surplus situation by the end of their first term before the recent recession hit.

MISCELLANY

Mr. Rodrigues continued to provide his own unique perspective on many issues. He started by claiming that all the kids who ride his bus who were once in day care were rude, while those who were cared for exclusively at home were polite. He also suggested that if a sixteen year-old is old enough to have a "killing machine" placed in their control (i.e. a car), they should be old enough to vote. And a bit later, he asked, "What's the difference between pioneers and immigrants?", then, answering his own question, "The pioneers built this country, and the immigrants, they just took advantage of it. I am one of them too!"

OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE DEAF

There was a sizable contingent from Milton's large deaf community present at the debate, and the entire proceeding was interpreted by a volunteer sign interpreter. One of the more interesting questions came from this group, asking what the various parties had to offer Milton's large deaf community in terms of employment and opportunity. Mr. Spohr lead off by talking about increasing accessibility for all persons with disabilities, and increasing ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) payments and reducing clawbacks. He also had the good grace to admit that he didn't know everything about the issue as it pertains to the deaf community and asked them to come to him with suggestions.

Mr. Chudleigh also promised to reduce the clawbacks on ODSP, and Rodrigues and Naidoo-Harris found something they could agree on: the desirability of teaching sign in schools and their personal regret that they never learned sign themselves.

GROWTH AND AGRICULTURE

When a question about growth and its effect on agriculture was raised, Mr. Chudleigh got his dates a little mixed up when he claimed that the extremely rapid growth in Milton was "caused by" the Province's 'Places to Grow' legislation. In fact, Milton started growing rapidly as soon as the 'Big Pipe' was put in in in 2001, whereas 'Places to Grow' wasn't brought in until 2005.

He also spoke about the Milton Hospital expansion which he said was "eight years too late", pointing out that it had been in the beginning stages back in 2003 when the incoming Liberals put it on hold, and would have been finished by now had they not done so.

Ms. Naidoo-Harris spun that around, saying "I agree that we should have had this hospital a long time ago... I think that we should have had our Member get this hospital for us a long time ago", and once again credited her own efforts with the Minister for the recent expansion approval.

Mr. Spohr hit closer to the issue of agriculture when he spoke about a young man he met recently who was lamenting the demise of the Halton Young Farmers Club, which is apparently down to its last four or five members. He also spoke about 'Ontario First' government procurement, more Ontario wines at the LCBO, and encouraging farm processing on site.

RECREATION AND UPLOADING

The last question had to do with recreation, and Ms. Naidoo-Harris used the opportunity to talk about the Government of Ontario uploading costs from municipalities - something I have discussed on this blog - to free up property tax money for things like recreation. Nik Spohr went further, raising the spectre of Toronto's threatened service cuts and suggesting that recreational facilities are public and should therefore be free.

Mr. Chudleigh concluded by saying that "there is only one taxpayer", and that "uploading or downloading shouldn't be a political decision", it should be an economic one based on "which level of government can provide the best service at the best price".

Of course there's a bit more to it than that, as Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion and many other municipal leaders have repeatedly explained. I suspect even Ted's friend Gord Krantz would have a thing or two to tell him about the inflexibility of municipal finances, and what he thinks about Mr. Hudak's reluctance to continue the uploading process.

Progressive Conservative candidate Ted Chudleigh

Liberal candidate Indira Naidoo-Harris (right) with
former Milton councillor Jan Mowbray

NDP candidate Nik Spohr

Family Coalition candidate Tony Rodrigues

__________________________

As we head into the home stretch of this election, I would like to say one more thing:

VOTE.

Vote with your head and your heart, not just your gut. Vote for which party shares your values, not who promises the most goodies. Vote for a leader's vision for the future, not their slogans. Vote for hope, not fear. Vote for your children and the kind of future you want for them. Vote for your neighbours and their needs, not just your own.

Just vote. And I'll see you on the other side.

Taking Attendance

2011-09-29T12:09:00.003-04:00

An interesting pattern began emerging during the Federal Election this past spring. At forums, debates, and all-candidates meetings across the country, Conservative Party candidates were simply not showing up.

There was always some excuse, of course - although the over-use of the "prior commitment" was making some wonder if there was perhaps a new species of virus called "Prior Commitment" that had everyone sick in bed. And to be sure, some candidates may well have had a legitimate reason for not being able to attend.

It was the high percentage of Conservative candidates who were finding somewhere they would rather be that began to raise eyebrows, to the point where campaign spokesman Ryan Sparrow had to step in and quash rumours that Head Office was ordering them not to attend. He even issued a statement:

We provide support for candidates to participate in candidates debates, but we don't instruct them not to attend debates. Most candidates would prefer to meet with voters one on one though instead of debating their opponents in crowds of committed supporters of the different parties.

Fast forward five months, and the same pattern is beginning to emerge among Ontario Progressive Conservative candidates.

The trend became particularly apparent last week when ridings across the province marked Education Day by conducting education-themed debates. Word got out that the PCs were going to give the whole thing a pass, but nobody quite believed it until reports started coming in of empty chairs behind PC placecards.

There was even an eerily familiar statement from a party spokesperson:

Alan Sakach, director of communications for the Ontario PC party, said “Our candidates make their own decisions on debate attendance based on time availability and other commitments. Candidates get a tremendous number of invitations for debates, meetings and town halls, and balance those requests with the need to door knock and canvass in their riding. Obviously they can’t make it to every event — there’s just not enough time.”

In the end it was confirmed: of the 20 education debates held in Toronto, not a single Progressive Conservative candidate turned up. Outside of Toronto, attendance was also abysmal. After a half hour search I could only find one - in Whitby-Oshawa - where the PC candidate took part.

Halton was no exception. As documented by reporter Stuart Service, PC incumbent Ted Chudleigh was absent from the education debate on the 22nd. He also failed to show at the four-riding debate sponsored by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association on the 27th. So did the PC candidates from Oakville and Burlington (nobody from Wellington-Halton Hills turned up). Apparently they all had a "prior commitment".

Chudleigh hasn't only been avoiding education-themed debates. He also took a pass on the Halton/Oakville 'Policy Not Polls' debate, along with his Oakville counterpart, claiming that he did not attend "because it was taking place outside of Halton riding. I had a number of other things on my schedule that evening and I believe my attendance at those events was more important than this particular event, which was located in a different riding."

Admittedly, yes - the venue was about two blocks into Oakville territory. It's not like they have moat, though, and it is a pretty handy spot for a shared Oakville and Halton event. Besides which, he didn't seem to have any trouble making it to the Oakville Chamber of Commerce debate which took place much further south of the Oakville/Halton boundary.

(Liberal candidate Indira Naidoo-Harris also did not attend the 'Policy Not Polls' event. As far as I am aware, it's the only debate she has skipped.)

Tonight, the Canadian Federation of University Women is hosting a debate at Milton District High School. Mr. Chudleigh initially said that he would be unable to attend due to (you guessed it) a "prior commitment". However, the day before the event his campaign office let it be known that he would be able to attend after all - but only after 8:30, when the debate will be half over.*

A lot of people volunteer a lot of hours organizing these events, and even though they are sometimes sparsely attended, they do get widely reported in the local media and many voters use those reports to help them make their decision. So if the Ontario Progressive Conservatives have decided as a party strategy that debates and candidates meetings are not worth their time, then they should say so publicly and save everyone the time and trouble.

But this nonsense of every single PC candidate having a "prior commitment" on Education Day, or claiming that it's too far to travel two blocks south of the riding boundary for a debate? Sorry, but I'm calling bullshit.

Show a little respect.

*UPDATE: A few hours before the CFUW debate, Mr. Chudleigh's office sent out a memo stating that he would arrive at 8:00 and not 8:30. In the end, he split the difference and walked in the door at 8:13 during the midway break.

_____________________________________________________________

The Wall of Shame
(feel free to send me corrections or additions)

Ottawa Centre: PC candidate did not attend Education debate

Brampton-Springdale: PC candidate did not attend Education debate

Brampton-Gore-Malton: PC and Liberal candidates did not attend Education debate

Elgin-Middlesex-London: PC candidate did not attend Student Issues debate or Health Care debate

Toronto Centre: PC candidate has stated they will only attend one debate

Parkdale-High Park: PC candidate did not attend Sept. 13 debate

London West: PC candidate did not attend Health Care debate or Engineering debate

London West: NDP candidate did not attend Sept. 24th debate

London-Fanshawe: PC candidate did not attend Health Care debate or Engineering debate

York-South Weston: PC candidate did not attend Sept. 14th debate

Nickel Belt: PC candidate did not attend Social Planning Council debate

London-North Centre: NDP candidate did not attend debate at the University of Western Ontario (did not want to cross picket line)

London-North Centre: PC candidate did not attend Health Care debate or Engineering debate

Perth-Wellington: Liberal candidate did not attend Wind Concerns Ontario sponsored debate

Lambton-Kent-Middlesex: PC candidate did not attend Education or Agriculture debates

Peterborough: PC candidate did not attend three debates

Pickering-Scarborough East: PC candidate did not attend Education debate

Flamborough: PC candidate did not attend 'Free Flamborough' debate

Cambridge: PC candidate did not attend Cambridge Federation of University Women’s debate

Etobicoke: PC candidate did not attend Education debate

Scarborough-Rouge River: PC candidate did not attend Sept. 22nd debate

Scarborough-Agincourt: PC candidate did not attend Sept. 19th debate

Willowdale: PC candidate will not be attending any debates

Diary of a Film Festival Virgin, Part 1

2011-09-21T02:20:00.002-04:00

I have a confession to make. I was born and raised in Toronto, lived half my life there, I am a huge movie fan... and yet, up until this year I had never attended a single Toronto International Film Festival screening.

Every year there was some excuse: I had no time, I had no money, I was out of town, I forgot. Mostly I was intimidated by the whole process. So this year I just dove in head first and bought a stack of single tickets to anything that caught my eye. After all, what better way to celebrate losing your job at a video store than to spend your new-found free time and rapidly depleting final paycheck at a film festival?

I was fortunate that in addition to the five movies I bought tickets to, I also got to see even more as a volunteer for the TIFF Film Circuit program. Of course this meant some pretty tight scheduling, especially as I was traveling primarily by GO bus and TTC.

My shining logistical moment was squeezing in three movies at three different theatres in six and a half hours.

It was a wonderful experience. I got to see some incredible movies - some of which I hope to bring to the Milton Film Forum - I got to meet some terrific people, and on top of everything else it gave me a chance to fall in love with Toronto all over again.

Here, then, are my TIFF films for 2011:

Anonymous

What if Shakespeare's plays weren't written by William Shakespeare? It's an intriguing premise, and 'Anonymous' does a reasonably convincing job of advancing this elaborate proposition, as long as you don't look to closely at... well, the history.

The film is largely held together by the performance of Rhys Ifans, who is positively mesmerizing as Edward De Vere, the proposed ghost writer. Here is a character truly worthy of Shakespeare: noble by birth, yet orphaned and raised by the ambitious William Cecil who desperately tries to stifle his young ward's passion for writing and the theatre. But De Vere has his own plans, and crafts himself into a man of wit, wisdom, and surpassing talent. His is one of the most original, fully-realized characters I've seen in a movie of this scale in quite a while.

Ifans shines so brightly as the protagonist that the other characters seem almost dim. An exception was Vanessa Redgrave, riveting as usual as the elder Queen Elizabeth I, and the effect of casting her daughter Joely Richardson as the younger Elizabeth was downright spooky. Rafe Spall also held his own, playing William Shakespeare as an ignorant yet dangerous fool.

Unfortunately, the other principal characters - notably Ben Jonson and Cecil's son Robert - were written more as roles to be filled than as complete individuals, and were therefore less effective.

The twisted plot of Anonymous slowly progresses from intriguing to implausible, and ends in such a muddle that it requires an excess of exposition to untangle. Still, it's an entertaining ride for all its flaws, and fans of costume drama will not be disappointed. Historians will hate it, but just like Shakespeare, the creators of Anonymous are more than happy to sacrifice accuracy in the service of a great story.

Edwin Boyd

In any other country, the name of Edwin Alonzo Boyd would be as well known as Jesse James or John Dillinger. And for a brief time, it was. Perhaps we were only waiting for his story to be told on the big screen for us to fully incorporate it into our national mythology.

I'm not usually a fan of gangster movies, but of course this is a Canadian gangster movie so it doesn't exactly fit the mold. Scott Speedman's Edwin Boyd is so clearly just an ordinary guy who fell on hard times that you can't help but sympathize as he discovers just how easy it is to rob a bank - and then discovers how much fun it is. The same is true with every member of the 'Boyd Gang'. You can see exactly how they got from A to B, and while you can't condone their actions, you understand how they came to commit their crimes.

The film is explicitly Canadian, but in a good way. Americans will still get it, but Canadians will find everything warmly familiar, from the TTC buses to the snow to the layout and decor of the 50s and then 60s houses. Hard to believe, I know, but this is actually a Canadian story told by a Canadian writer and director, shot in Canada with a Canadian cast. It's nice to see, especially when so many other films are being fobbed off as "Canadian" when their only connection to this country consists of a government grant and a half dozen technical crew shipped off to film someone else's story on another continent.

[cough... 'Winnie'... cough]

(I wanted to post a trailer for Edwin Boyd, but from what I can tell there isn't one. And this is why Canadian films fail.)

The Mayors of Jane Jacobs' Toronto

2011-09-18T09:16:00.001-04:00

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs, a book which influenced generations of urban planners and municipal leaders and forever changed the way we think of cities. So what better way to celebrate than in the company of four former mayors of Toronto, the city Jacobs called home for nearly half her life.

David Crombie, John Sewell, Art Eggleton, and Barbara Hall were all on hand for "Jane Jacobs' Toronto", a panel discussion moderated by TVO's Steve Paikin and presented by the Centre for City Ecology. Tickets were free, and were snapped up so quickly that organizers moved the event to a larger venue at OISE - and even then they were left with a waiting list of over 150.

Given the overwhelming interest in recent goings on at Toronto City Hall, it's not hard to guess why.

All four mayors had known and worked with Jacobs after she moved to Toronto from the U.S. in the late '60s (she passed away in 2006). They shared memories of her as not only a great thinker but a consummate organizer and strategist who spent her years in Toronto in vigorous battle against what she saw as city-destroying projects such as the Spadina Expressway (which she helped to stop) and amalgamation (which she couldn't).

Sewell and Jacobs had a shared background as activists and community organizers, and they worked closely together even before Sewell was elected Mayor. He told a memorable story of the two trying to stop a developer from demolishing a group of houses near Dundas and Sherbourne to make way for two thirty story towers.

"A hoarding went up around the site, and I decide, my goodness, we've got to do some organizing! So we got a whole bunch of people out there on a Monday and a Tuesday and a Wednesday and a Thursday - we actually had about a hundred people out there on the street at about six-thirty in the morning so we confronted those workmen when they came, and in fact every day they went away.

"And then on Friday we again were out there, strong as ever - Jane was there, every day. And all of a sudden we look over the fence on that Friday, and we saw that in fact the workmen were beginning to tear down the porch on a house... And I turned to Jane and I said, "Jane, what do we do now, they're starting to tear down that house!"

"Well", she said, "if you're going to tear down a property in Toronto, you have to have a hoarding around it. So if we want to stop the demolition, we've got to tear down the hoarding." And I said, "Aw, Jane, now wait... now that's starting to break laws."

"Look, John" she says, "you want to stop the demolition? Tear down the hoarding."

"So I got everybody together and said, "Ok folks, were going to tear down the hoarding." We tore down the hoarding, the workmen went away, I called David in the Mayor's office who at that point was negotiating with the province to see if we could buy the site. We bought the site from the province, and that became CityCorp's very first non-profit housing project."

David Crombie also worked closely with Jacobs in the early days of Toronto's urban reform movement, but more as a city-builder than an activist. His most successful effort to turn her concepts into reality was the St. Lawrence neighbourhood, which has been lauded as a model of pedestrian and community-friendly planning.

Paikin asked the panelists what they thought Jacobs would like best about what Toronto has become, and what she would hate about it. The latter question generated the longest responses of course, and provided an excellent opportunity for the former mayors to comment on the performance of the current mayor. Interestingly, it was Eggleton - arguably the most conservative of the group - who was the most pointed in his criticism of the Ford administration. He believes that Jacobs would be "horrified" by Ford's plan for the Port Lands.

But Sewell made the best Ford joke. After the fifth or sixth subway train rumbled loudly beneath the hall, Sewell grabbed the mic and said that there was one good thing that might come out of Ford's tenure: the subways would run far less often.

As for what Jacobs would have liked, the panelists cited Toronto's cultural diversity, the local food movement, and the large numbers of people walking and cycling to work. John Sewell was unconvinced, however, maintaining that much of Toronto's development has ignored the basic principles which Jacobs espoused, especially since amalgamation.

One issue that kept coming up was the increasing hostility between downtown and suburban Toronto residents. Crombie in particular was greatly concerned that things were developing into a full blown "culture war". All four mentioned a need for public spaces and forums where people from all areas of the city can engage in dialogue beyond their local neighbourhoods. To illustrate, Barbara Hall asked how many members of the audience lived outside of the old City of Toronto - it was about 25% - and pointed out that having a more equal representation of all regions of the city at public meetings and deputations would lend them greater legitimacy.

When the time came for questions from the audience, I asked the panel if they thought that Jane Jacobs' ideas could be scaled to fit smaller exurban communities Like Milton or Oshawa, or whether (as she wrote at one point) they can only really apply to large cities. They all felt that her ideas of diversity, mixed-use, walkability, etc. would work perfectly in a mid-to-large town context - and in most cases already do.

While I had the mic, I also had to thank John Sewell for inspiring me to get involved with municipal politics, telling him about how I had been on 'Team Sewell' in our grade 9 mock election. Steve Paikin and the panelists seemed particularly interested when I told them that I had run for Milton Town Council last year, which is probably why I was approached by the organizers after the session to speak on camera for some follow-up video. I was happy to do it, although I was really wishing I'd brought a hairbrush.

While I was waiting for my close-up, I had the opportunity to speak to both Sewell and Crombie. Sewell seemed a bit standoffish - perhaps because of my earlier fan-girlish ebullience - but David Crombie was absolutely delightful, especially after I told him that my mother had attended Earl Haig at about the same time he did. We had a lovely chat about growing up in North York, municipal politics, and what was going on in Milton, and he encouraged me to run again.

Given what Toronto's current mayor has been up to, I would encourage Crombie to do the same.

NOTE: Full video of the event is available on the YouTube page of HiMY SYeD. SYeD was a Toronto mayoral candidate in last years election, and actually cornered Steve Paikin after the panel discussion to ask him why his producers refused to cover any but the top five or six candidates.

"When did we become for immigrants?"

2011-09-10T12:38:00.000-04:00

HT to Oakville Mayor Rob Burton (or as we like to call him, @OakvilleMayor) for pointing out the quote of the day from Burlington PC candidate Jane McKenna:

“We have 550,000 Ontarians who are unemployed and yet the government wants to pay $10,000 to hire immigrants for jobs. When did we become for immigrants? You should have one law that fits everyone.”

Wow. I got nuthin'.

Dalton McGuinty at Burlington Rally (with video)

2011-09-10T11:25:00.001-04:00

About 300 local Liberals was on hand to greet a special surprise guest at the offices of Burlington candidate Karmel Sakran on Thursday. The group included just about every candidate in the western GTA, as well as the now ubiquitous "Fire Fighters for McGuinty" in their yellow shirts and their big yellow bus.

The group is representing the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association, which has grave concerns over Tim Hudak's plan to alter the contract arbitration process for essential service employees who cannot go on strike.

Hudak claims that arbitration ends up costing municipalities too much and that he will insist that arbitrators take the ability of towns and cities to pay into account in their decisions. In fact, considering ability to pay is already part of the legislation, so it's unclear exactly what Hudak plans to do to enforce that and rein in arbitrated wage increases - especially since his former boss Mike Harris tried to do just that back in the 90s and failed to find a solution.

Regardless of whether or not the arbitration system actually needs fixing or not, Hudak's musings have clearly lost him the support of not only the firefighters but just about every other public sector union in Ontario. And having already lost the support of most municipalities because of his refusal to commit to continuing the uploading process, he's left with nothing to show for this politically.

Meanwhile, Dalton McGuinty has the support of the most beloved heroes of the public sector and a lovely yellow backdrop for all his campaign rallies.

(my apologies to Walt Elliot for misspelling his name in the captions)

The Orange and the Green

2011-09-06T16:36:00.001-04:00

When provincial NDP leader Andrea Horwath announced this summer that her party wanted to reduce the HST on gasoline, I must say I raised an eyebrow. After all, the NDP is supposed to be (among many other things) an environmentally friendly party, and conventional environmental wisdom states that high gas taxes are an effective way to reduce consumption.

Now, it's one thing to argue against that premise, and certainly many have done just that. But to completely ignore the environmental implications of cutting an energy consumption tax and just drop it straight into the 'saving taxpayers money' file seems a little... well, un-NDPlike.

Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so.

NDP losing its green allies

In a stinging letter to Horwath, circulated to members of a green coalition, Environmental Defence executive director Rick Smith complained that her party had lost its way:

“Some of your existing policy positions are not in the best interest of environmental or human health protection,” Smith wrote last month.

“How can any party that claims to be concerned about global warming advocate de facto subsidies for buying oil and gas. This is absolutely the wrong direction.”

Significantly, Smith is a former chief of staff to the late federal NDP leader, Jack Layton, who made environmentalism a cornerstone of his campaigns in a way that Ontario New Democrats have not. The party’s former research director, Hugh Mackenzie, has also condemned its recent positions.

Ouch!

The article also calls into question Horwath's delicate dance around the issue of wind turbines, in which she seeks to simultaneously avoid offending either her green allies or her sizeable rural constituency without tying herself in a knot and falling off the stage.

I'm sure some political operative is telling them that this is the best way to capitalize on the perceived momentum from their federal cousins. And maybe they're right. But if the provincial NDP really wants to bask in the orange afterglow from Jack Layton's passage, they might want to try adopting his principles and his strength of resolve instead of emulating his opponents' political flexibility.

Halton Liberals Off to the Races

2011-09-04T01:22:00.002-04:00

Indira Naidoo-Harris and the Halton Liberals kicked off their campaign today with a good old fashioned open house and barbeque at their new campaign office on Main Street in Milton. They timed it nicely to coincide with both the end of the Farmers' Market and the beginning of the Steam Era Parade, so there were plenty of people on hand.

I must say, the office is much nicer than the last one I spent a campaign in. Housed in the former Joleens storefront on the south side of Main Street, it's got a ton of space and even has cubicles. Cubicles! Why, when I was working the phone banks for the '08 election we were all crammed cheek by jowl into a tiny windowless office with nothing but a headset and a breath mint between us.

But I digress.

All the usual suspects turned out, of course. Former Halton MP Julian Reed was there, along with former Halton MPP Walt Elliott. Naidoo-Harris was introduced first by Walt, then by current Oakville MP Kevin Flynn, and was followed up by Linda Jeffrey, Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources.

I must say, I was impressed by Naidoo-Harris' speech. Her polished communication skills are not surprising for a former broadcaster, but in this case it sounds like she was also aided by some fairly tight messaging from party HQ. The theme of "Moving Forward Together" was effectively hammered home, as was the litany of impressive sounding statistics on education, jobs, and hospital wait times we've heard on the TV ads.

Smart.

Local Liberals have also been giving Naidoo-Harris credit for the recent Milton hospital expansion approval, which might be stretching things a bit. She may well have had some influence - something along the lines of, "Get this done now or we don't have a hope in hell in Halton" - but I'm sure Ted Chudleigh feels he deserves some of the credit, and every member of Milton's municipal government who has fought for this over the past decade or so certainly does. Still, it was a huge victory, and if local Liberals want to benefit from the fact that it came under their government's watch... well, who can blame them?

It's not like every sitting government in the history of democracy hasn't done exactly the same thing.

Uproar over Uploading

2011-09-02T18:34:00.001-04:00

The recent Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) Conference presented a golden opportunity for Provincial candidates to make their pitch to just about every municipal government leader in the province. This hugely influential alliance of mayors, councillors and regional chairs was anxious to hear exactly what the party leaders had to offer Ontario's cities and towns, and they certainly got an earful.

Unfortunately, some candidates weren't telling them what they wanted to hear.

The biggest shock came when PC leader Tim Hudak was asked if his government would continue the 'uploading' of services from municipal and regional jurisdiction to the provincial level. This is a process that was started by the McGuinty Liberals almost as soon as they took office, designed to reverse the 'downloading' of costs for everything from transit to social services to court security onto municipalities by the previous Progressive Conservative government - a government that Mr. Hudak played a significant role in.

Downloading was essentially a shell game designed to make the new Provincial government look like economic wizards, when all it really accomplished was to transfer those costs from the income tax base onto the considerably less flexible property tax base. Municipal budgets have been buckling ever since.

The current Provincial government has been slowly (some say too slowly) reassuming those costs, as well as gradually eliminating the GTA pooling that saw Halton property tax dollars funding services in downtown Toronto. In Halton's case, those savings have been parlayed into much needed infrastructure investments, as well as easing the tax burden on homeowners.

The process is only about two-thirds of the way complete, which is why AMO delegates were shocked to hear that a Tim Hudak government would put the brakes on it until they can see exactly what the province's financial situation is. That has been taken as a nice way of saying that the uploading will stop, and may even be reversed again.

For Halton, and especially for Milton, this is of particular concern since one of the current items being 'uploaded' is court security - a very big deal in this prison town. Now Regional staff are estimating that halting the uploading of that and other remaining services will cost Halton an estimated $15.9 million per year in projected savings.

Reaction from AMO delegates and editorialists alike has been universally negative. One particular mayor was seriously pissed, especially when it was suggested that Hudak's comments were at all ambiguous:

Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion said she wasn’t confused at all by Hudak’s position on uploading.

“He was very clear. He is going to stop it,” she said. “He supports it where it is at.”

Social costs must be taken completely off property taxes, she said. “Health is next then education,” she said. “The uploading has to continue in a major way and this is only the beginning. Property taxes were designed to take care of property, not humans.”

Note to candidates: irritating Hazel McCallion is NOT how you get elected in Ontario.

For the record, both the NDP and Green party leaders have firmly committed to honouring and even improving on the current government's uploading commitments. As for Hudak, it remains to be seen whether his handlers' attempts to downplay his remarks will appease voters.

They certainly haven't fooled anyone who was at the AMO Conference.

Top 10 Movies You Might Not Have Heard Of *

2011-02-27T11:25:00.001-05:00

*(but should definitely see)

As some of you may have heard, I recently had the honour of being appointed as the Assistant Returning Officer for Halton with Elections Canada. It's a tremendous opportunity for me, but unfortunately it also means that, in the interest of non-partisanship, my career as a political blogger is on hiatus for the interim.

Happily, this blog is also my film and television review forum, so I thought this would be a good time to resurrect my pre-Oscar round-up of film gems you may have overlooked this past year.

Chloe
You might actually have heard of this one, if only because it was the film Liam Neeson was in Toronto shooting when his wife Natasha Richardson died so tragically. The main focus, however, is on the relationship between Julianne Moore and the mesmerizing Amanda Seyfried, as a jealous wife and the escort she hires to tempt her husband into straying. Like most of director Atom Egoyan's films, it travels a long and winding road that doesn't end up anywhere near where you'd guess.

Cooking With Stella
I'm a big fan of both Don McKeller and Deepa Mehta, so seeing them both involved in the same project filled me with glee. It's a frothy little tale about the husband of a Canadian diplomat in India who asks their larcenous housekeeper for cooking lessons. The style borrows liberally from Bollywood, with plenty of humour, romance, and twists of fate. Just a whole lot of fun.

Don't Look Back
This is a strange and fascinating French film about a woman who finds herself transforming into... someone else. Flashes of memory that aren't hers. Clothes and furniture - and eventually, her family - that are suddenly not the way she remembers. Even her own face begins to transform, even though no one around her seems to notice. The whole thing leads in some unexpected directions, and is fascinating to watch beginning to end.

Exit Through the Gift Shop
A surreal and hilarious profile of one grafitti artist by another. How much is real, how much is performance art, and exactly who is making a movie about who, are all still matters of debate. But in the end it really doesn't matter. This one has been nominated for Best Documentary this year, which raises at least two interesting questions: 1) Is it really a documentary?, and 2) Will the elusive Banksy make an appearance at the Oscars on Sunday?

Get Low
A lovely, wise 'tall tale' starring Robert Duvall as an ornery old hermit in 1930s Kentucky who decides to throw himself a funeral party - while he's still alive to participate. In the process he manages to resurrect some ghosts from the past, and throw the life of the local undertaker and his assistant (Bill Murray and Lucas Black) into complete chaos.

Never Let Me Go
A haunting parable about three young people growing up in a world where they and their kind are raised for the sole purpose of being organ donors. It's a familiar premise in the realm of science fiction, but this is not a science fiction movie. It all takes place in a perfectly ordinary-looking world, and presents us with three perfectly ordinary people just coping with their own fate. It's a beautiful movie to look at, and the three leads are extraordinary.

Trucker
This was one of my big favourites this year (although it was apparently released in 2008), about an independent and heart-hardened trucker suddenly forced to be a mother to the 11 year-old son she deserted years ago. The film handles the situation in a completely unsentimental and unconventional fashion, and the performances will just take your breath away. And yes, you Browncoats can get your full dose of Nathan Fillion, too.

The Trotsky
This is one of those wonderful, quirky movies that can really only be made in this country. Jay Baruchel plays an earnest young man convinced that he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky, who attempts to live out that destiny by trying to unionize his fellow high school students. It's a refreshing take on the usual 'teen empowerment' fare, pulled off mainly by Baruchel's utterly deadpan performance. Colm Feore is deliciously villainous as the principal, and my beloved Saul Rubinek plays Leon's frazzled father.

The Wave
When I was a teenager back in the 80s, I remember being profoundly effected by a TV movie about a high school teacher who runs a bit of an experiment with his students who are having a hard time understanding how Nazi Germany could have happened. The story - loosely based on a real incident - stuck with me over the years, so I was very pleased to hear that it had been re-told in this German film. It's a brilliant thesis on fascism and how easy it is for ordinary people - especially youth - to be seduced by it.

Welcome to the Rileys
'The Sopranos' has made a lot of people forget what a talented and diverse actor James Gandolfini really is. This film should remind them. He plays an unhappy businessman in a lifeless marriage who finds a new reason for living in a surprisingly platonic relationship with a teen-aged stripper he meets on a business trip to New Orleans. The man, the girl, and the wife who comes to fetch him, are all deeply broken people who somehow manage to heal each other. It's a lovely movie that manages to be uplifting despite the often dark subject matter.

Winter's Bone
This is the only film on my list this year that has actually been nominated for Best Picture, and the recognition is well deserved. The story doesn't sound like much - a teen-aged girl raising her younger siblings in utter poverty in the Ozarks is forced to confront her drug-dealing, violent relatives in order to keep her home - but the effect is so much more. I can't explain it. A big part is the performance of newcomer Jennifer Lawrence, who in a perfect world would win for Best Actress. But it's more than that, even. Just watch it - you'll see.

So there you go. Get thee to a video store!

Harper, Energy and the Environment: It's the Politics, Stupid!

2011-01-05T15:27:00.000-05:00

This is getting embarrassing.

Up until recently, the best the Harper government could say about our dismal record on climate change, energy and the environment was that we were doing better than the Americans. But now that even the beleaguered Obama administration is making progress on this front, Canada's intransigence is starting to make us look like we're actually moving backwards.

U.S. to impose new emission rules on power plants, refineries

The Obama administration has announced plans to impose new greenhouse-gas emission rules on power plants and refineries, a move that will increase pressure on the Harper government to introduce its own national emissions regulations in 2011.

The U.S. Environment Protection Agency said over the holidays that it will propose emission performance standards for new and existing fossil-fuel facilities this year, despite opposition from Republicans and some Democrats in Congress.

The sad thing is, the Harper government's blinkered approach to the environment has translated into a bizarre, visceral aversion to anything remotely resembling a national energy policy. Which, for a party that continues to insist they are the best bet for the Canadian economy, may be their most insanely retrograde policy position yet.

Seriously - when even the oil companies are figuring out that renewables are the way of the future, you'd think their buddies in government would be willing to help them out with some sort of coherent policy that would bring us in line with their international competitors and customers.

Of course, now we have a brand new Environment Minister who might finally... oh, never mind.

With serious action ruled out in advance, the Harper government’s environment minister must be a smooth talker. He must be prepared to repeat things that are demonstrably false – as in Canada will reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 17 per cent by 2020 from 2005 levels – with a straight face while all those around you are cracking up in derision. When necessary, the minister must bluster.

Peter Kent, a former television presenter, should therefore fit the definition splendidly of what is required of a Harper government environment minister. Since all important decisions are taken by the Prime Minister anyway, it shouldn’t matter that Mr. Kent has no background in the file nor has ever shown any interest in the issues. He is there to rag the puck, so to speak.

To understand the reasoning behind this economically unreasonable position, one need look no further than the poll numbers for Ontario's Liberal government.

Dalton McGuinty has implemented one of the most ambitious and progressive energy policies in North America, and although it's not without its flaws (cough... nuclear... cough), lo and behold it seems that it's actually working. He's implemented a feed-in tariff, similar to systems in Europe, that has resulted in a boom in renewable energy projects and the creation of thousands of much needed manufacturing jobs in the green energy sector. He's well on his way (better late than never) to fulfilling a promise to shut down every coal-fired power plant in the province. He's investing millions in upgrading our energy grid to make it more efficient and less vulnerable to surges and blackouts, and allow for decentralized, greener power generation.

These are exactly the sorts of large scale, long-term projects that save economies but kill governments. Why? Because they cost money and/or raise prices in the short term, and that's all people see. Who cares if we're going to be world leaders in energy and green technology ten years from now when gas is $5.00 a litre and we're all charging our electric cars for pennies a ride? Dammit, my Hydro bill went up two and a half bucks!

Which is why the Ontario Liberals may well find themselves out of power come the next election, and by the time we start reaping the real rewards of their policies, the PCs will be there to gleefully take the credit.

(Of course the converse works as well: the inevitable results of the Harris/Eaves government's popular but short-sighted tax and program cuts have also taken years to take their full effect - just in time for the Liberals to wear that, too.)

These are the political equations which guide Stephen Harper's every move - not economics, and certainly not public benefit. Which is why he will continue to do absolutely nothing on the environment or energy files that won't immediately benefit him politically. In other words, nothing.

Short-term gain, long-term pain. That's how you stay in power.

Campaign Lessons Learned: What Would Don Draper Do?

2010-10-31T15:02:00.012-04:00

A municipal campaign is perhaps the purest form of politics there is. There is no Party, no political machine at your back - just you and the voters.

I didn't get the whole 'campaign' thing before. Not really. Not even after having been fairly deeply involved in one during the last Federal election. It all seemed so superficial - the phone calls, the literature, the tracking, the 'Getting Out the Vote', whatever that was. Surely the whole purpose of the exercise was to convince as many voters as possible that our candidate and our party had the best ideas and were therefore the best ones for the job. Right?

I get it now. I get that voters vote for all sorts of reasons, very few of which have anything to do with ideas or policies. I get that only a tiny percentage of people spend more than a couple of hours a year thinking about politics, mostly in the last days before they have to cast their ballot. I get that most people vote from their gut and not their head.

And you know what? That's ok. Because really, are any of us any different? Oh, sure, I read up as much as I can on what the various candidates and parties represent. But in the end, I have to confess - I often vote based on whether or not I 'like' someone. And so do you. It doesn't mean we're wrong, or that we're basing our decisions on incorrect information. It means that the people we are voting for have successfully distilled their message into a form that we can absorb on an intuitive level.

Understanding this brings the political campaign squarely into the realm of marketing - of using words and images to instantly convey a message on multiple levels and to associate your 'product' with ideas and feelings your 'customer' is already positively disposed to.

Want a master class on campaigning? Watch a few seasons of 'Mad Men'.

The genius of Don Draper is his understanding that advertising isn't about convincing people to buy your product. It's about making people feel good about buying your product. Whether it's cigarettes or a brassiere or a new car, Draper and his crew always manage to identify that one thing that people are looking for and then make sure they connect that thing - that feeling - with their product.

Of course, any political or advertising campaign can be constructed to give a false impression, although in most cases the deception is discovered soon after the product is sampled. In most cases, however, the 'impression' conveyed in a campaign is accurate even if specific promises end up in the dust.

Take Rob Ford (please!). Anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together knows that he cannot possibly deliver on anything he has promised, aside from maybe getting councillors to water their own plants. But that's not why all those people voted for him. They voted for him because he justifies their suburban values and, unlike those judgmental 'downtown elites', he actually makes them feel good about their SUVs and strip malls and cul de sacs.

None of this is actually going to lower anyone's property taxes or make anyone's commute any shorter, of course - any more than Stephen Harper has managed to make the federal government any smaller or more transparent. But the impression we have been given of the character of these men is still essentially accurate. Stephen Harper really is the kind of guy who believes that no taxes are good taxes. Rob Ford really does believe that we all have a God-given right to mow down careless cyclists with our SUVs. And their fundamental appeal is ultimately to those who share those beliefs, even if only on a subconscious level.

The challenge for those of us who are more progressively inclined is to harness these same tools for good and not for evil. And to stop looking down our noses at those who vote with their gut.

I'm Baaaack....

2010-10-27T13:13:00.001-04:00

Well. That was fun.

After slogging through nine months of municipal campaigning, it's a little weird waking up now with no doors to knock on, no meetings to attend, no literature to distribute, and no lawn signs to plant. I wish I'd won of course, but we knew it was a hell of a long shot going up against two (two!) incumbents, and some last minute candidates kinda threw a wrench into the works as well. Given all that, I did very well and have built up a solid base for next time.

I've also learned a lot about running a successful campaign, mostly from my extraordinary campaign manager Esther Shaye. Esther has run campaigns for both the Liberals and the Conservatives, so her help and advise were absolutely invaluable. I wouldn't have had a hope in hell if it weren't for her, and I'm looking forward to bringing some of that experience back to the Halton Liberals.

As I said on my campaign blog, this is only the beginning. I'm going to keep at it, and in four years I think we will see a very different result. In the meantime, I will be back blogging about political shenanigans on a more federal level on this blog, just as soon as I pull my head a little farther out of the local issues that have been obsessing me for nearly a year.

Hmm... this mining thing looks interesting...

This is not the campaign blog you seek

2010-09-12T10:28:00.001-04:00

If you are looking for Jennifer Smith, Candidate for Milton Town Council Ward 2, you've got the right person, wrong blog.

My campaign website can be found at www.jensmith.ca . What you see here is my all-purpose personal blog in which I discuss federal politics, world events, film and television, and whatever else strikes my fancy. Feel free to look around, but you will notice that a) there isn't a lot here on local Milton issues, and b) I haven't posted much here lately because, well... I'm not paying much attention to anything but local Milton issues right now.

I'm sure I'll start posting here again after October 25th but in the meantime, please go to my real campaign blog at www.jensmith.ca.

Fun Facts About the Census

2010-07-17T18:31:00.001-04:00

I must confess, one of the reasons why I am so engrossed in the issue of the long-form census is that I am a genealogist. And not just as a hobby - I've actually gotten paid to do research for others and even compiled a 1,300 page, 5 volume genealogy of the Truax family.

In other words, I know my census records.

So when people react with shock and dismay over the personal, intrusive questions in the census long form and moan over how this is the evil work of our modern bloated bureaucracy run amok, I have a hard time buying it. After all, these types of questions are hardly new.

Here are a few fun census facts:

~ The earliest census records include only the name of the head of the household - the remaining family members are listed only by gender and age range. Starting in 1841 in Great Britain, 1850 in the U.S. and 1851 in Canada, names of all family members were recorded - although not the names of slaves in the U.S.

~ The U.S. Census has always asked for 'race' (white, black, mulatto, later other races). The Canadian Census has always asked for 'origin', as in ethnic origin (English, German, Chinese, etc.), and didn't start asking for 'colour' until 1901.

~ The Canadian Census has always asked for 'religion' (this, along with 'origin', is a very useful marker for genealogists tracing a single family - especially one named 'Smith'). The U.S. Census has never asked for religion. Neither had the UK census until 2001.

~ As early as 1850, the U.S. census asked for things like 'value of real estate', literacy, and 'Whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper or convict'.

~ The U.S. and Canadian census records list people where they normally reside, whereas the U.K. census lists people wherever they spent the night before. They always have.

- By 1901, the census for Canada included 36 columns of detailed questions about education level, employment and language. The 1900 U.S. census had 28 columns and asked for things like birth place of mother and father, number of children and number of children still living, and whether the property was rented, owned free or mortgaged.

~ Almost all census years have included a farm schedule / agricultural census that asks for details on acreage, crops, livestock, etc. Apparently Tony Clement still believes that this information is so important that it will continue to be a mandatory part of the census.

~ As of this year, the U.S. has replaced their long form census with a rolling "Community Survey" that goes out continually to 250,000 household per month. It is still mandatory, and asks for more information at a greater frequency of polling than the long form.

Just thought you should know.