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No joke, and the story has legs internationally regrettably.
This isn’t 10 or 15 years ago when global stock video clips were just taking off standard resource in ad company toolboxes.
This is also raising questions of foreign interference/influence in democratic process.
In Canada, the federal Elections Commissioner has been called on to investigate the source of bot campaigns for the leading opposition party: Online bot campaign backing Pierre Pollievre prompts call for probe.
Some context on the Saskatchewan aspect that puts helps to understand the concerns being raised:
“Weekes also said Harrison once sought permission to bring a gun into the legislature. Harrison initially denied the allegation but resigned last week after admitting he had forgotten about the incident, which happened more than a decade ago.”
The CP photo caption says the incident happened in 2016.
I’m still seeing this as an active posting, linked on other UN pages e.g.,
https://dppa.un.org/en/gazas-new-terror-booby-trapped-cans-of-food-unwary
However, a similar claim in January was found to be false by fact checking news orgs.
They’ve been happily living in British Columbia all along.
If I’m recalling correctly, there was one statistic in the 1970s along the lines that there were more bald eagles living in Vancouver’s Stanley Park than in the lower 48 US states.
No effort at all to see their nests from the outdoor theatre at Malkin Bowl.
https://stanleyparkecology.ca/2018/02/28/eagles-nesting-stanley-park/
I’ve recently become aware of mulesing, an appalling practice used on Merino sheep in Australia and NZ due to a specific fly problem. The problem is that most merino wool is from those countries.
Also, most fabric generically labeled ‘wool’ is mostly merino from mulesinged sheep.
Ethics conscious knitters, crocheters and weavers are aware, and merino yarns certified as mulesing-free are on the market now.
Knowing country of origin and wool type is another reliable way to avoid endorsing this practice, but again most manufactured clothing or even fabrics will not give the necessary information.
In addition to restrictions on sharing intelligence from Five Eyes allies beyond the group, let alone publicly, there are also issues with the admissibility of evidence in courts that is gathered under intelligence legal exceptions.
Ensuring that the judicial court process isn’t marred by inappropriate release of intelligence would seem to be a significant challenge in this case.
Here’s the key issue and principle buried deep at the bottom of the article.
She said a main area of discussion at the confab is how globally-minded digital companies had “really revolutionized our industries for a lot of good reasons” and added: “No one is saying to get Facebook or Google out of Canada — Canadians love and appreciate these services.”
Tait said Canadian broadcasters and services were required to pay taxes and services and invest in Canadian content, meaning companies as powerful as Alphabet and Meta would simply be paying into a existing system. “We all have requirements regarding local news so that there is a provision in a country of only 40 million to support our own domestic industry,” she said. “We would ask Facebook to be held responsible in the way we treat our own companies.”
Actually, the independence of central banks, or in other words the isolation of monetary policy from fiscal and interventions to counteract market failures, is not a settled or proven essential for developed economies.
A basic knowledge of dynamic macroeconomic theory and evidence shows that some level of coordination of monetary and fiscal policy is essential to avoid bad corner outcomes. That means coordination between the finance/treasury minister and the central bank.
Most of the time, independent monetary policy is fine to contain inflationary pressures, especially when most of them are externally driven in an open economy like Canada’s. But not always. In those cases, when fiscal and monetary policy move in opposite directions, the trajectory will be poor.
One of the biggest questions is whether she’s willing, as finance minister, to take on the Bank of Canada.
Monetary policy isn’t the only macroeconomic tool, and it’s one that should be coordinated with fiscal and other measures.
In this case, the inflation fighting interest hikes can be argued to be having a ‘perverse effect’ of keeping the housing stock tight without cooling demand while at the same time being completely ineffectual for the other major inflationary drivers of food and fuel.
Food inflation needs antitrust action, while fuel is a long term necessary adjustment to move the market away from fossil fuels. Interest rate hikes have nothing positive to contribute to those concerns.
The Bank of Canada isn’t constitutionally independent no matter how much certain previous governors have tried to make that case. It only has responsibility for one macroeconomic tool, and isn’t democratically elected, rather appointed by the executive.
The current governor of the Bank sounds increasingly like John Crown did in the early to mid 1990s when he put Canada into a deeper and deeper recession/depression because he placed inflation-fighting above all, and used the bank. He claimed however that no government should tell him how to manage monetary policy, and made speeches about the need for a constitutionally independent governor. Then, it took the electoral near eradication of the Progressive Conservative Party at the federal level plus the eventual exasperation of Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien to push Crow out.
There’s good reason to be cautious. These don’t always work well, and security can become an issue. Changing the built environment to support safe and active public spaces is challenging.
It would be great to know what factors make a pedestrian mall in a downtown core work well over the long haul and which don’t.
In the 1970s, several Canadian cities emulated European ones and created pedestrian spaces in their cores. Vancouver had a good length of Granville ‘theatre row’ closed for decades and Ottawa had Rideau closed to all but public transit. A great deal of infrastructure investment was made to make them appealing pedestrian spaces. Ottawa still has Sparks street completely vehicle free in the Parliamentary precinct.
Both Granville and Rideau were eventually reopened to traffic after they became crime focal points. Both were places women felt safe to walk on in the evening in the late 70s and early 80s, but by the 90s many pedestrians avoided them during the day and businesses left, replaced by boarded up storefronts.
All to say, not such a simple public good question as some are presenting here.
There are exceptions. Someone who was up until recently a teacher may fall into the category of being in a position of trust or authority towards the minor. Without knowing the legal precedents, it’s hard to know how much of an edge case this is.
From the JusticeThe following factors may be taken into account when determining whether a relationship is exploitative of the young person:
From the* Justice Canada webpage on Age of Consent*
Sexual exploitation A 16 or 17 year old cannot consent to sexual activity if:
- their sexual partner is in position of trust or authority towards them, for example their teacher or coach
- the young person is dependent on their sexual partner, for example for care or support the relationship between the young person and their sexual partner is exploitative
The following factors may be taken into account when determining whether a relationship is exploitative of the young person:
- the young person’s age
- the age difference between the young person and their partner
- how the relationship developed (for example, quickly, secretly, or over the internet)
- whether the partner may have controlled or influenced the young person
Would you consider this from another perspective — if you accept that people should be able to determine what they are called/named, a corollary is to avoid using descriptors for them, or idiomatic expressions, that they say they are finding contribute to systematic bias against them? Or that they find demeaning and experience as micro aggressions?
If you are open to listening to those most affected, it wouldn’t make sense to ask the hearing, for example, whether expressions like ‘falling on deaf ears’ or ‘dumb’ are harm-free.
The Deaf have let us know that these words are still harmful. As one of the most isolated and marginalized communities North America, should their concern about language not be enough to give hearing people pause?
English doesn’t have a the equivalent of L’Academie Française to arbitrate accepted language and usage. So, it becomes an evolving societal conversation of usage.
Surely then, it’s on all of us to listen to those who are saying how old names and expressions, that have negative connotations, are harming them?
You seem to be making the case, on the other hand that, able people should be exempt from considering how our word-choices impact others as long as we feel an expression has fallen into such common usage that it has become disconnected from its origin, and can only cause harm when used in a context that evokes its original meaning.
Or, your position is that if someone doesn’t don’t see the problem, it isn’t one. Interestingly enough, this is almost exactly one of the generally accepted definitions of privilege - not perceiving something is a problem if it’s not a problem for you personally.
Not on a soapbox, just really quite surprised at the implicit assumptions your response and that of others. The number of downvotes OP has received suggests this community is less civil than I had thought.
Currently, private broadcasters and cable carriers have an obligation under their governing legislation to carry information in designated public emergencies. In return for their monetization of their platforms, they have a legal obligation to carry news and information without charge in such situations.
In the US, there is a similar emergency broadcast system.
As well, during the pandemic emergency, most private news sources took down their paywalls so that the public had the opportunity to get a diversity of news sources.
Contrast this with Meta, which is refusing to unblock links during the emergency, saying that people can just go directly to government websites. This runs directly counter to good emergency communications practice which is to get information to the places people usually look for it.
Meta is not being asked to do more than other carriers in a public emergency, but is refusing to back down, even though it is currently not subject to any tax penalties for monetizing the content provided by Canadian news sources.
Meta has built up an ecosystem where local news clients are dependent on its platform. Around Yellowknife, this includes Indigenous language news provided by CBC the public broadcaster and private internet broadcaster Cabin Radio. Both are using other distribution but many users are habituated to accessing these via Facebook.
Perhaps we’d do better to look at the text of Bill C-18.
You seem to be saying that the law itself has already laid out that Meta is who it applies to.
Instead, it says that a list needs to be established.
List of digital news intermediaries 8 (1) The Commission must maintain a list of digital news intermediaries in respect of which this Act applies. The list must set out each intermediary’s operator and contact information for that operator and specify whether an order made under subsection 11(1) or 12(1) applies in relation to the intermediary.
Meta clearly sees that the law is intended to apply to digital platforms with significant market power such as it has. But it has not yet been designated.
Timing - coming into force - you are correct that there is a hard deadline at end of year.
180 days after royal assent (6) Despite subsections (1) to (5), any provision of this Act that does not come into force by order before the 180th day following the day on which this Act receives royal assent comes into force 180 days after the day on which this Act receives royal assent.
Basically, you are justifying Meta’s actions on the basis that it recognizes that a law it doesn’t like will apply to it in future.
The tax and the legislation is at least a half a year from coming into force, the regulatory framework to operationalize it hasn’t even been published for public consultation.
Meta has started blocking preemptively. This is a power play protest about avoiding being subject to other countries’ law. That’s it.
CBC provides service in the north in numerous Indigenous languages, including through its Facebook pages which many in those communities rely on.
As a public broadcaster it has a duty to meet the needs of Canadians for essential information where they look not just in English and French on standard internet sites, or even their low bandwidth emergency ones.
Lemmy is neither large enough nor monetizing our views so it’s outside the scope of the legislation and the new regulations that will need to be written, formally consulted through the Canada Gazette process and then approved by Cabinet. Basically, what Lemmy’s doing is still fair use by a carrier.
As I understand it, the Canadian legislation is different than the Australian one in that the Australian version would just have had a minister name which companies would be subject to the tax.
Canada, having been in trade disputes with the US over ministerial designation processes that can be argued to lack transparency, went a different route that would make the tax come into effect for large platforms, monetizing content without paying the sources/creators.
The whole point in an emergency is to get the official guidance out to where people look first for information, not retrain them to go to official sites.
What you are suggesting is that Facebook and Twitter be legally required to push official emergency information from governments to the top. That would parallel what the broadcasters and cable carriers typically have to do. It makes sense, but given that they don’t seem to want to be obligated to carry government information except as paid advertising, this would require a new emergency system for internet platforms.
Cell towers work in some but not all the smaller hamlets.
This doesn’t seem to the point however. Meta and X not carrying links isn’t a barrier for those who have no Internet access whatsoever. Whether north of 60 or not, a very significant portion of the population has become reliant on Meta and X to feed them news to the point that they don’t know where to get reliable evacuation guidance in an emergency.
As an aside, resilient emergency communications to the public a reason that the CBC will be maintaining AM radio stations that broadcast curve of the Earth. The public needs to know where to find that and have AM radios to access it however.
Kelowna is a significant regional metropolitan area.
But get into the bush beyond Vernon or up to William’s Lake and you will find that people who used to rely heavily on CBC and other AM radio in a crisis are looking to their regular internet sources. If that’s where they get their information, then that’s where government’s need to make sure it’s available in an emergency.
Here is a Walrus feature on the story of a mother whose son went unexpectedly missing from the University of Toronto, and whose body was found washed up from Lake Ontario much later.
The family’s attempts to access her late son’s email and social media accounts from Google and Facebook went to court, and there was an order, but both refused to comply and insisted she take it through California courts (which she eventually did as part of a group case).
The mother’s efforts were also reported on by the Ottawa Citizen in several articles and a video, the CBC, and the Globe and Mail .
While this case raised significant questions of digital privacy and what should be the legal standard to access accounts posthumously in cases of missing and suspicious deaths, Facebook and Google fought the case on the grounds of jurisdiction and refused to comply with the Canadian court order.
But Facebook is doing business in Canada while refusing to be subject to Canadian law or courts while doing it.
It’s platforms are up in Canada, recruiting members, collecting and monetizing data on Canadians.
There have been court cases and orders in Canada where both Meta and Google have refused to comply with judicial decisions on the grounds that only California and US federal courts have jurisdiction over them.
The law in this case could require Meta, Google and X to carry emergency information and links to it without monetization, just as it does for private broadcasters and cable carriers.
As someone who sees MS Word forms regularly force Canadians to use Month/Day/Year formats which were never native to Canada and don’t meet the ISO standard either, I am inferring the impetus transition.
But truly, I old enough to recall many standards being harmonized in the early 90s in the wake of the North American free trade agreement.
Whether or not a digital archive document demonstrates that Canada Post intentionally harmonized to match the US is TBC.
But it is a verifiable fact that the two-letter standard for provinces and territories has not been commonly established in all federal regulations or data standards or in provincial and territorial data systems standards.
That is to say, it has not been formally adopted as by Canada or as the ‘Canadian data standard.’