How one techie is thinking thus far about the 2008 Canadian General Election
(First published on IT World Canada blog)
While I have had party membership in the past, I am currently not a member of any party. I’m a person with a technical background and have spent a lot of volunteer time in the last decade working on public policy in areas of technology law. If you are a fellow technical person looking for some ideas during this election, I’ll offer what I’m thinking.
First, a gripe. Every election I hear people say something like “I don’t know which leader I am voting for this time”. I’ve checked, and with the exception of some oddball by-elections in the past, there haven’t been riding featuring more than one leader in that riding. While people may be watching the USA where they have the presidential candidate on the ballot, this doesn’t exist in Canada. You are voting for a local person in your riding — while it is true that the Prime Minister is the leader of the party with the most seats in the house, you really need to focus on learning about the local candidates.
For issues around technology law, it really comes down to the individual people who are elected. As one example, I wrote previously how a change of one key person in the NDP party switched them from a party that supported DMCA-style legislation to the strongest opponent. Their Digital Culture spokesperson Charlie Angus (Timmins - James Bay) may be a musician and not a technical person, but he really “gets it” on the benefits of modern communications technology. He also recognizes the need to speak to actual practitioners and technology policy wonks, rather than incumbent industry executives, to form policy around technology.
A second gripe — people need to get past their fears and start voting for what they want. Our current horse-and-buggy electoral system is First Past the Post which is a system that only works correctly when there are only two candidates. In a world with cell phones and computers it is well past the time to modernize our system. While the political parties tend to favor some form of party-based proportional representation, an easy first step is to transition to a ranked ballot (see: Preferential voting) and otherwise keep our voting system the same. The two parties that most oppose this modernization are the Liberals and the Conservatives, which are also the two parties most likely to claim you need to vote for them to keep some other scary person out. I believe that any candidate that is not personally a strong proponent of electoral system modernization waives their right to speak about vote splitting. People who claim that this would be too complicated have to be called on that, as they are essentially suggesting that Canadian voters are too stupid to count. There is referendum already underway in the province of British Columbia to use a mildly more complex system based on a ranked ballot called the British Columbia Single Transferable Vote.
Evaluating the options in the Ontario riding of Ottawa South
With those gripes out of the way, I will write about what I’m doing in my own riding of Ottawa South. Thus far only three candidates have been nominated. The incumbent David McGuinty (Liberal), Elie Salibi (Conservative), and Qais Ghanem (Green Party).
While I have met and like Qais, he has not demonstrated an interest in technology law. He also doesn’t seem to have a background in the economic issues that concern me the most. Like the Green Party itself I don’t consider “the environment” to be an issue separate from other issues, but a key component of every other policy. I believe in the triple bottom-line of fiscal, social and environmental and believe that while we have lowered our fiscal debt in recent years that we did so by borrowing from the environment and social bottom lines. The Greens are a centre-right party that grew in strength partly as a result of previous Progressive Conservatives joining in, in a riding whose history suggests it is full of centre-right voters. That said, I don’t believe this is one of the ridings where the Greens are a strong contender this election.
This is the same problem that the NDP have. They likely haven’t been quick to nominate a candidate as it isn’t going to be one of the possible ridings for them. There are ridings where the NDP and Green Party candidates will be much stronger, and you should take a close look at these individuals to determine their views. There is also the fact that the larger the NDP caucus, the more powerful Charlie Angus’ voice will be.
I have met and spoke with David McGuinty many times in the past, starting from before he was nominated as the candidate for the June 2004 election and as recently as yesterday. Yesterday I was walking past 1818 Bank Street (which is between my house and my bank branch), saw the McGuinty campaign signs, and wondered in. Mr McGuinty was there and after the regular social pleasantries he started to ask me what I thought of the Jim Prentice’s views on letting “the market” decide on telecommunications policy (IE: incoming SMS messages on cell phones being the latest issue, but also his previously articulated views on Network Neutrality). Mr. McGuinty tabled Bill C-555 in the previous parliament, and is hosting a petition in support of it. While the bill speaks of cell phone access fees, it also directs the CRTC “to gather information, seek input and make a report on competition, consumer-protection, and consumer-choice issues” on a range of issues including network neutrality.
After a quick chat on network neutrality and Bill C-61, he brought us into bio=patenting and I then brought up how gene patents are considered “program sequences” and that it was through the non-logic of software patents that patent law was radically extended to the significant uses of gene discoveries.
While Mr. McGuinty is not a Digital Culture Spokesperson for the Liberals like Charlie Angus (I don’t get the impression Mr. McGuinty’s private members bill had full caucus support), I have been very happy with him as my MP. Beyond technology law which he has shown a keen interest, his background before politics was as President and CEO of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. You don’t get much more credible than that on understanding the interconnectedness between the environment and the economy.
I’ll be honest and say that I would love to finally get my large Green Tax Cut, given I’m one of those Canadians that has a lower carbon footprint than the national average. I strongly believe in using economic policy to provide incentives to become more efficient. While a cap-and-trade is an appropriate tool for larger corporations, we also need a tax shift to engage average Canadians and also to reward those who have made better choices. Then again, maybe this belief in having individuals both rewarded and economically accountable for their carbon footprint makes me to much of a fiscal conservative. Then again, the fact that the Conservative party has thus far opposed this fiscal conservative policy is informative about them as well.
Which brings me to the Conservatives. I would need to have a candidate denounce Bill C-61 and the “let the non-existent competitive market decide” views of Jim Prentice on telecom policy (both wired and wireless, where the government grants monopolies on rights-of-way and spectrum) before I would take a Conservative candidate very seriously. It is quite possible to have such a candidate as it is not like C-61 or what Jim Prentice says are party policy, or even all that consistent with fiscal conservative, or pro-free-market values. Like the NDP in the past it is quite possible for them to elect some forward-thinking people and turn the party around.
I am a political junkie, and I watch the elections Canada nomination database and try to contact candidates as soon as they are nominated. I’ve been writing letters to Elie Salibi since he was nominated by the Conservative riding association in February 2007. His political website indicated that “prior to entering politics, Elie spent seven years at Corel, where he served as Director of International Sales”. I don’t know if this will mean that he has a technical background, or possibly even an economics background. I do find it more than a bit frustrating that I have been writing e-Mails for over a year and a half now and have heard nothing back. I guess I’ve gotten used to politicians carrying around portable email devices like Blackberries, iPhones and others — not someone who doesn’t reply.
I decided to see if I could get in touch with Mr. Salibi this afternoon. I went to the corner of Bank and Hunt Club to see where 2446 Bank Street, Suite 301 was. It turns out that this is a mall I’m familiar with, and that suite 301 is actually a tiny P.O. box in the UPS store in that mall. So, the candidate doesn’t reply to email, is using a P.O box and not a real address, and hasn’t bother publishing any other contact information (A phone number maybe? Heck, even a fax machine to indicate to us what era they are in :-). They have election signs all over the riding which suggests they have a lot of cash, but it will take some one-on-one convincing for me to think this is a credible local candidate.
Then again, maybe I’ll get in touch with a human being before the election is over and he’ll turn out to be great. I’m obviously not going to hold my breath given what I’ve seen thus far.
If you are a Conservative party supporter (or better yet, have connections with a technology friendly candidate) and would like to “correct” anything that I’ve said, please do so in the comments. It has surprised me how poor this new Conservative party is on issues like anti-circumvention which infringe on tangible property rights and stomp on provincial jurisdiction. These are not traditional Conservative party values. Gun registration is bad, but information technology remote-control is good — amazingly inconsistent.
What you should do?
I’m hoping my little run-through my riding will encourage people to do something similar in their riding. If you do so, please let me know (please hit reply and add to the comments). If we representatives in every riding do this we would have a great picture of what is possible across Canada. I will want to link to anything people write so people can go to the Digital Copyright Canada website, find their riding, and know what other people have said.
If you want to get together with other people, there are a growing number of Fair Copyright for Canada chapters being formed. Many of these groups are getting active in the election, creating pamphlets for public education and communicating with candidates. There is a meeting of the Ottawa chapter that I will be attending tonight.
Updates:
Less than an hour after posting this I received a phone call from Elie Salibi’s campaign team. They are actually launching their campaign at their office at 2525 Bank (near Albion), close to were that post office box is. They are looking into where my emails went, and I will post updates as I receive them.
Also after I posted this some friends of mine joined a Facebook Event tomorrow evening for the launch of the NDP candidate, Hijal De Sarkar.
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Russell McOrmond is a self employed consultant, policy coordinator for CLUE: Canada’s Association for Free/Libre and Open Source Software, co-coordinator for Getting Open Source Logic INto Governments (GOSLING), and host for Digital Copyright Canada.