Anniversary Post

When I'm not studying language policy and political history, I do spend some time dabbling in issues of commemoration. So even though nothing in the news has really twigged my desire to blog on anything particularly profound, I wanted to put up a post today.

Today is Pample the Moose's 5th birthday! It's been a heck of a 5 years. I've lived in three provinces, teaching at three different universities. This most recent one has kindly decided to grant me tenure. I'm not sure if that means that my posting will become more outrageous in the years to come, but I rather doubt it. I'm a rather moderate fellow - most of the time.

And now, back to my holidays. There are leftover Christmas cookies that aren't going to eat themselves!

Conservative Ten-percenters - A Truly Macchiavellian Interpretation

I've just received my weekly ten-percenter attack flyer from the Conservative Party. The Conservatives clearly have their eyes on Guelph - we literally get one of these damned things every week. This week's charmer is themed "Ignatieff: Just in it for himself", which doesn't even pretend to discuss Conservative policy.

I'm starting to wonder about the overall Conservative strategy. These flyers have become increasingly personal and partisan over the last couple of years, and the other parties don't seem to have fully caught on to their potential use. We're now seeing the Liberals fighting back against their content, and we've seen suggestions that perhaps these flyers, which are sent using public money at no charge to the political parties in question, should be banned.

Here's a thought. Maybe that's been the Conservative plan all along! The Conservatives have a much larger war chest than the other parties. Maybe the strategy has always been to use this tool, for free, as long as possible, steadilly ratcheting up the partisanship in the content, until the other parties demand that the program that allows them be discontinued. Then the Conservatives can turn to sending out the same content, paid for by their more substantial party donations, while the other parties are left without this free option, and have to spend scarce dollars to counter the Conservative ads.

It seems far-fetched, I'll admit. But given that Stephen Harper almost brought down his own government last December over his party's plan to abolish federal subsidies to political parties, wouldn't this be a crafty way of eliminating another federal perk that his opponents could theoretically enjoy?

This post has been brought to you by the tinfoil-hat society of Guelph.

Vancouver Olympics Podcast for the "Intellectual Muscle" Series

And now for a bit of shameless self-promotion!


Back in August, I was invited to participate in a series of podcasts as part of the educational programming for the Vancouver Olympics. Entitled "Intellectual Muscle", the podcast series was developed in conjunction with VANOC, the University of British Columbia and the Globe and Mail. Over twenty universities are part of the series, which addresses themes related to sustainability, sport and culture.

My podcast - "They like us, they really like us!": Defining Canada through International Accomplishments - discusses on the the changing state of Canadian culture and national identity since World War II, with a particular focus on how Canada's governments have attempted to mobilize popular support around new conceptions of national identity, in an effort to develop national unity and pride. Of course, there are limitations to how much nuance I could incorporate into a 20 minute talk, but hopefully it will provide some interesting food for thought.

My podcast goes live today on the Globe and Mail's website, and will be up until the Olympics.

Canada Border Services - Arbitrary Censors Gone Wild

Canada Border Services is up to its old nasty tricks again, seizing gay films destined for Ottawa's gay & lesbian Inside Out film festival. All three films have been shown in Canada before, and two of them are rated PG. But CBSA is insisting that it pre-screen all three films, a process they indicate may take up to 4 days - the films were slated to be viewed this weekend.

This sort of arbitrary censorship has been going on at CBSA for decades. Years ago, when I was on the board of the Making Scenes film festival (Ottawa's previous queer film festival), we held a screening of the documentary "Little Sisters, Big Brother", which tracked the decade-long efforts of the Little Sisters bookstore in Vancouver to fight against Canada Customs (now CBSA) seizure of its books. The courts sided with the bookstore. Back in the 1970s and early 80s, Canada Customs used to black out information pertaining to safe sex information because it was deemed pornographic - a thoroughly appalling practice in the early days of the AIDS crisis. Gay and lesbian bookstores and festivals face this issue all the time, and have ongoing troubles covering legal costs associated with gaining the release of their materials.

It's ridiculous that bookstores and film festivals are still having to go to court to have these materials released - and doubly so when the materials have already been shown in this country! Small, volunteer-run festivals don't have the resources for legal challenges; they can barely afford to pay for a part-time staff member. When their financial lifeblood - the films they screen - is seized, they risk financial ruin.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that sanity will prevail and that the festival pulls through. But given past experience with CBSA, I'm not counting on it.

New Brunswick Sign Laws

In my various publications, I've often taken a fairly strong stance against some provisions of Quebec's language laws, particularly early versions of the Charter of the French Language which prohibited signs in languages other than French. So the announcement of a proposed new bylaw in Dieppe, the francophone suburb/co-city of Moncton, New Brunswick which would mandate that all new signs must be either bilingual or in French, is intriguing to me.

I haven't viewed the proposed wording of the new sign bylaw, and I'll be curious to see if there is any language about how prominent French must be on bilingual signs. However, my initial reaction to the bylaw is a positive one. I've never had any major difficulty with language laws that are additive - requiring that another language co-exist or be promoted. Where I object is when these laws cross over into prohibition - denying any right to use another language. The bilingual compromise being proposed by Dieppe seems to meet the bill. Essentially, the bylaw appears to require some inclusion of French on commercial signs, leaving it up to individuals to decide if they also want to include another language. For a community which has essentially become the urban centre of the Acadian community, this seems to fall in the category of positive measures to encourage the use of French, without denying the rights of other language communities to express themselves in their own language.

Of course, I'm sure that there will soon be outbursts of complaints about what the translation costs involved are going to be. I think these will be overstated. And in light of Moncton's shameful historic treatment of its Acadian community (see: Leonard Jones), some encouraging measures are needed.

Canada's Economic Action Plan: Now Creating Advertizing Jobs!

I guess this story can safely be placed in the "a braindead gopher could have foreseen that this would provoke problems" file. Not that I personally care all that much that an American company was contracted to paint signs to advertize the B.C. and Canadian governments' stimulus spending. But it's hardly the first time that this sort of issue has landed a government in trouble.

For me, the bigger issue is how much taxpayer money is being spent pimping "Canada's Economic Action Plan". I suppose it's creating jobs in advertizing. Why, between those ads and the "Save Local Television"/"Keep Cable Fees Low" spending spree, something like 50 short-term jobs must have been created, right? I mean, where else are those terrible actors going to get work? [/end dripping sarcasm]

Senate Reform Proposal - Just for Fun...

Here's a Senate reform proposal - doubtless an unworkable one for many reasons. But I'm feeling perky today. I'll make a proposal, and you, my small cohort of readers, can pick it apart and improve it, because what else are you going to do on a Friday.

The EEEP! Senate (a variant on the Reform Party's Triple-E Senate)

110 Senators total
"E"qual representation - 10 from each province, 1 per territory, 7 "floaters"
"E"lected to serve 8 year terms
"E"ffective, and can alter/send back to the House all non-financial legislation
"P"roportional representation by province. 10% of the vote in a province gets you a Senator. The 7 floating seats are allocated to make the national total of Senators more closely reflect to the national PR vote.

Tear it apart, kids!