Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- The blogosphere is now out in force in chasing down new angles on Robocon. Dave pointed out that the misleading calls look to be linked to a "target seat management unit" set up by the Cons' central brain trust; Saskboy connected that same unit to familiar Harper apparatchik Ryan Sparrow; Sixth Estate both highlighted how the Cons' desperation has pushed them into several easily-disproved lines of spin and caught a Con donor trying to change the subject and sully the good name of Elections Canada all at once; and Alison neatly tied all the news together.

Meanwhile, one of Richard Nixon's co-conspirators declared the vote suppression scam to be worse than Watergate, with Susan Delacourt concurring; Scott Tracey noted the direct pressure the Cons' national campaign exerted in Guelph; Chantal Hebert tied Robocon into the Cons' greater disconnection from anything resembling what Canadians want out of our government; Nycole Turmel cited Robocon as just another example of a broken Ottawa which needs to be fixed by a progressive government which has respect rather than contempt for its citizens; and Gerald Caplan nicely summarized the real danger posed to Canadian democracy by the Cons' war-against-all-dissenters mindset.

- EKOS' latest poll shows the NDP holding in the high 20s - meaning that even without a permanent leader, the party is within the margin of error against a collapsing Con vote.

- SOS Crowns points out the latest example of how the Sask Party can't pretend to show interest in, say, renewable energy without setting up a nine-figure corporate giveaway which undermines the ability of the province's public sector to provides services.

- Jesse Brown notes the failure of Canada's ISPs to impose usage-based billing has only led to another attempt to use the CRTC's regulatory scheme as a means to ensure government-endorsed price-fixing at consumer expense.

- Finally, Rob Anders made news. No further comment necessary, though followup invariably only makes the story even better.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading...

- While I agree with Murray Dobbin's latest to a point, I'd think it's worth clarifying exactly what kind of fight we can and should expect from the NDP over the next four years.

To the extent one considers a "culture war" to mostly involve the U.S. issues normally linked to the term (abortion, gay rights, separation of church and state, etc.), I'd think the deciding factor in the NDP's strategy will be the Cons' actions. And while any attempt at backsliding in those areas needs to be met with a furious response, I wouldn't see the NDP getting any further than the Libs if it tries to focus on them at the expense of what's being discussed by the Cons and the media.

Which means that for the sake of clarity, I'd think the better term for the NDP's ideal plan is a "values war" - consisting of a clear clash of ideas including, but not limited to, what's normally considered to be cultural conflict. And I'll certainly agree with Dobbin that the measure of the NDP's success will be its ability to build a movement to overcome the one the Cons have developed on their side of the spectrum.

- Will Verboven highlights some of the extra costs of tearing down the Canadian Wheat Board:

The privatization of the Australian Wheat Board has set a bad precedent of what might happen once monopoly powers are removed. That marketing entity couldn't compete, was subsequently sold to private companies and has disappeared. Most anticipate a similar fate will face the CWB once its monopoly powers are removed.

Time will tell if eliminating the CWB monopoly will put an extra dollar in a grain grower's pocket. Those located far from the U.S. border and seaports will find their grain shipping costs dramatically increased. And as with so many surplus farm commodities, producers may well find themselves competing for the lowest price. At least the CWB was able to mitigate and average out that all too usual practice.

The surefire loser in this change will be the taxpayer. When the U.S. launches its inevitable trade actions against an anticipated flood of Canadian grain into American border grain elevators, it will be the Canadian government that will have to pay the bill to fight those actions, not the diminished CWB.

The CWB also carries liabilities of millions on past sales that went bad, and of course, it carries employee pension and severance liabilities that could exceed $100 million. The government may try to prop up a new CWB to avoid facing those realities, but somehow you just know the taxpayer will be on the hook. I guess for a few, it's a small price to pay for one of the founding ideological goals of the Reform and Conservative parties.

- Michael Geist continues his coverage of the CRTC's net neutrality/UBB hearings with this observation:

While the arguments about network congestion from dominant providers such as Bell remained much the same, as the week wore on it appeared the commission was beginning to realize that congestion claims may be overstated and being used to mask fears of competition from the independent ISPs.
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The CRTC commissioners appear to have recognized that proposals based on limiting the volume of Internet use are not only bad policy — discouraging Internet use benefits no one — but are ineffective in dealing with network congestion. The reason is that the amount of data consumed has very little to do with whether the network is congested.

Consider a four-lane highway that can comfortably accommodate 24,000 vehicles per day. If the vehicles are spread evenly at 1,000 per hour throughout the day, there is no traffic congestion. But if 20,000 of the vehicles attempt to use the highway over a four-hour period, the highway becomes very congested during that time frame. The aggregate volume of traffic may be the same, yet the congestion implications are very different.

The same is true of networks, which can be used to capacity without congestion concerns.

It is only when there is simultaneous demand — called peak periods — that there is the prospect of congestion and the need to augment the network. Pricing to peak periods is precisely what the independent ISPs have proposed, noting that volume pricing hurts their competitive flexibility and does little to address congestion.

After years of debate, that message may finally have resonated. In her questioning of Bell, CRTC Commissioner Candice Molnar said, “We all, I think, can hopefully agree that there is no marginal cost to using the network when you are not causing augmentation.”

- Finally, Erin picks up on the fact that the TILMA which the Wall government promised not to sign is has been entirely rolled into Wall's WEPA.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Christopher Michael points out the real problem underlying the News of the World's scandalous demise:

The Sun is either clairvoyant at predicting the results of British elections, or instrumental in determining them. It has supported the winning side ever since Margaret Thatcher's victory in 1979. Politicians quickly internalized the idea that you needed Mr. Murdoch on side to win, and lived in fear that The Sun would unleash its worst. Tony Blair quietly flew to Australia in 1995 to court him. The morning after Mr. Cameron became Prime Minster, Mr. Murdoch was seen leaving 10 Downing St. by the back door; former NOTW editor Andy Coulson (arrested Friday) was already on board as Mr. Cameron’s head of PR. Mrs. Thatcher spent Christmases with Mr. Murdoch, yet failed to mention him in her autobiography. As Marina Hyde wrote in the Guardian, “Like Voldemort, he must not be named.”

After The Sun helped sweep Mr. Blair to power in 1997, the Labour PM loosened the UK’s restrictions on foreign media ownership. Indeed, Mr. Murdoch’s shuttering of NOTW was likely calculated to smooth the way for his purchase of a majority stake in the huge British satellite broadcaster BSkyB, which would centralize even more media power in his hands.

Thanks to the scandal, the BSkyB deal may no longer happen. If so, we should all be grateful. Mr. Murdoch’s suffocating influence in Britain has been grossly undemocratic, and deserves to be punctured. From this strange and lurid story of a great democracy brought temporarily low, Canadians can learn a powerful lesson: Keep media ownership as diffusely concentrated as possible, and never be afraid to speak anyone’s name.

- Meanwhile, the current public debate over the ownership and regulation of vital communication tools looks to be getting more interesting by the day, as the CP and Michael Geist summarize the day's CRTC Internet regulation proceedings.

- Murray Mandryk is the latest to point out that the track Saskatchewan is on seems to be leaving mere workers behind while having no particular direction for the future:

If we are "on track", then we also are spinning our wheels in a bit of a rut. And it comes at a time when higher oil prices suggest we should be less vulnerable to such economic problems. After all, Alberta is recovering as well. It's also important to note that some of the biggest losses in June were in construction (3,000 jobs), where Premier Brad Wall's government changed labour legislation last year under the notion we needed more flexibility to meet the boom.

If Saskatchewan is "on track" shouldn't we be seeing signs our economy is less vulnerable to the whims of the resource sector? Shouldn't we be seeing more signs of economic transformation? And with a looming debt default crisis in the U.S. threatening to send the world economy into another recession, how stable is our resource-based economy?

- Finally, Angus Reid provides the latest edition of "Stephen Harper has turned Canada into a more Conservative country!!!" by pointing out that public attitudes toward the Senate are moving toward both abolition over election, and holding a referendum rather than having Harper alone dictate the future of the Senate. [Update: Apparently the Globe and Mail's snark detector is broken.]

New column day

Here, on how Saskatchewan has avoided the usage-based billing dispute that's caused so many problems elsewhere in Canada - and how strong and creative Crowns are an essential part of that advantage.

See Christopher Walsh for a rough summary of the changes which have seen Shaw become the first major national provider to offer what we've enjoyed for ages. And for more on usage-based billing, see among others David Beers, Tim Wu, and of course Michael Geist, passim.

Monday Evening Links

Content goes here.

- Andrew Jackson notes that there's more than one way to eliminate a budget deficit - and that the NDP is on the right track in its choice of ways to get there:

As Mike McCracken says in a short note included in the NDP platform, major changes in the mix of spending compared to the current fiscal plan would likely give a boost to job creation. The big items in terms of job creation are significant tax credits to business for job creation and real investment in place of no strings attached tax breaks; the major green jobs package; and modest funds allocated to child care and other services which would create new jobs while meeting caring needs.

While it is fiscally cautious, the New Democrat platform does point to a better way to bring down the deficit, through job creation rather than through spending cuts.

- Robert Silver nicely sums up the reality surrounding the Cons' attempts to pretend that some undisclosed and inaccessible auditor general's report will rebut the thoroughly damning draft released today:

Stephen Harper’s spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, among other Conservatives, alleges that the final report tells a very different story.

In the midst of an election campaign, this is what we call all-in poker. If Mr. Soudas et al.’s version of events is accurate and the report exonerates entirely the Conservative government, there is zero chance that the report will not be leaked by the Harper camp today. What, is Stephen Harper suddenly paralyzed by Parliament and its rules? Really? “Oh, I would really, really like to release a report that I have a copy of that exonerates me and saves my now-floundering election campaign; but damn, those rules of procedure won’t let me.” Yes, this sounds like the Stephen Harper that we all know and love.

Or – and it is kind of binary with these Conservatives – the final report is bad news for Mr. Harper just like the draft report is. It doesn’t exonerate the Tory Leader at all. If that’s the case, then not only does Mr. Harper have the substance of the report to deal with but the subsequent spin that will make it so much worse for him.

- It never hurts to give voters a low-effort way to participate in the election campaign. And the NDP's Spot a Senator project should nicely serve to harness the power of public interest to call attention to unelected nonrepresentatives using our money to boost their parties.

- Jesse Brown asks whether any Canadian political party is appealing to the tech-savvy voter. Cory Doctorow provides the answer.

- And finally, Murray Dobbin discusses how the Harper Cons' brand of consumer-based and cynical politics builds on decades of efforts to distance citizens from the governments who are supposed to respond to their interests.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your mid-week reading.

- Today's wild guess: the word from Tony Clement's birthday party is in fact a shrewd bit of reputation management, with the hoped result of ensuring that future searches for "'Tony Clement' + 'census' + 'bad joke'" don't turn up the likes of this. We'll find out soon what scenario the Cons' spin-meisters come up with to take the sting out of "wet-lipped halfwit".

- Meanwhile, the war on accurate data continues, as the Macdonald-Laurier Institute echoes another of the Cons' rightly-derided positions in complaining that StatsCan bases its numbers on crimes actually reported rather than making up higher and scarier figures.

[Update: pogge has more.]

- Yes, it's possible for a political party to stand up to the latest in dumb-on-crime policymaking. And for its MPs to offer up useful proposals on the issues Canadians care about most. You just won't tend to hear much about it.

- Finally, Tim Wu nicely sums up why we shouldn't buy the big telecoms' argument about wanting to limit bandwidth use through usage-based billing:

The knowledge that penalties await heavy Internet usage does something quite terrible: discourage desirable behaviour. Most of Bell’s arguments for treating consumers as wrongdoers rely on the villainization of “bandwidth hogs” who use up everyone else’s bandwidth and generally bring misery to the land. But there are better words for big users of the Internet: “pioneers” and “innovators.” A nation that spends its time worrying about bandwidth caps is not a nation that leads.

What’s worse, it’s all quite unnecessary. Different people do use the Internet in different amounts. And there are, in fact, perfectly reasonable ways to deal with variable demand. Operators can offer faster connections for those who want more and offer discount plans for light users. An ongoing bandwidth limit is much preferable to a monthly cap. But Bell has shown interest in none of the reasonable solutions to its so-called congestion problem. Rather, it wants a system of penalties, and wants its wholesalers to be forced to go along with the scheme. Like credit-card companies, it actually wants customers to make mistakes.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Pogge rightly calls out the "supportive stakeholders" who are eagerly giving up any credibility in order to serve as spokesflacks for the Harper Cons:

At least three major business organizations -- the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Canadian Trucking Alliance -- quickly issued statements praising the framework agreement Friday.

So these three groups aren't just self-interested lobby groups. They're quite happy to collude with the Conservatives to keep secrets from us. That pretty much confirms their willingness to be dishonest in their dealings with the Canadian public and eliminates any credibility they may have left. Don't be surprised to see me link back to this post any time that John Manley of the CCCE or Perrin Beatty of the Chamber of Commerce open their mouths in public. I'll assume from now on that any public statements they make are part of another conspiracy to deceive us.

- For all the justified criticisms of the Cons' plan to axe per-vote party funding, I don't see much reason to think Nik Nanos is right in theorizing that the result would be a two-party system. Instead, based on the historical information which Alice has already assembled, the main effect would look to be a very slight expansion of all of the current gaps between the national federal parties - which is much of the reason why I don't see it making sense for any of the opposition parties to go along with the plan unless it's more focused on fighting off the parties in the rear-view mirror than trying to advance its standing.

- Shorter Sun editorial: we must prove our independence from the U.S. by taking its orders to buy F-35s!

- Though in fairness, the Cons' stubbornness is at least resulting in some winners in Canada.

- Finally, David Beers points out one of the largest problems with the current usage-based billing debate:

This week, we heard small Internet service providers say that what the big telecoms want to charge for “extra” gigabytes used is 10, even 100 times more than the actual cost. Big telecoms also have other motivations to discourage you from downloading Netflix – by charging a lot, they can then offer a discount on their own movie download products. Or nudge you back to their broadcast television properties.

So how much is too much to charge? Sadly, as we’ve learned, the CRTC itself can only base its decisions on cost estimates provided by the big telecoms, because there is so little independent auditing in this area. We won’t know until what a Globe and Mail editorial called the “black box” of Internet infrastructure costs is opened to public view. Then maybe we’ll know why South Koreans pay a fraction of the cost for 10 times the bandwidth we get here.
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The very way in which we address these issues needs profound reform, to be opened to the light of debate and scrutiny. Until then, the regulators of Canada’s digital future have lost the public trust.