Pie Palace

I really shouldn’t be surprised:

The Green Party isn’t being included in the debates because three of the four establishment parties don’t want the Greens there. I’m surprised that they cared enough to threaten to pull out.
(Update: Edited for style)

So it’s finally happened. The Green Party has a federal MP. It didn’t happen through the blood, sweat, and tears of an election, but through a sitting MP switching his affiliation. More of a whimper than a bang.

Blair Wilson was elected as a Liberal in the BC riding of West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country. He left the Liberal Party under allegations of election spending irregularities (of which he was cleared by Elections Canada), but tried to rejoin as recently as last month.

How does this new, high profile Green effect the Party? His status as a sitting MP removes the most recent excuse for the television stations barring the Green Party leader from the televised national debates. The significance of that can’t be overestimated – it gives us credibility, and the ability to reach a huge audience. Of course, the TV stations could simply raise another barrier, as they’ve done when we met their requirements in the past.

Sadly, Mr. Wilson probably won’t get a chance to represent the Party in the House, since Harper looks to be gunning for an election at the earliest possible date.

Welcome aboard, Brian. We’re happy to have you. Hopefully you’ll have a few more GP pals in the House come this Fall. And do try to get re-elected.

For the past few years I’ve been trying to use Intuit’s QuickTaxWeb to do my taxes. I say trying because it hasn’t worked for the last 2/3 years. In 2005, I noticed that they weren’t calculating tax properly on research grants that I’d been awarded. This year, their crappy web interface didn’t provide me with anywhere to enter my political contributions (thereby raising my income by about $200). Their help told me I could go back to the start of their wizardy interface and put myself into “advanced mode,” but 30 minutes of searching still hadn’t revealed that shortcut to me.

When I was using their help tool, the search stopped working due to server errors. (NullPointerExceptions – the Java equivalent of not doing a NULL check before dereferencing a pointer)

Foolishly, I decided to buy their desktop edition, on the assumption that a $19.99 desktop app would have the same functionality as a $19.99 web app. Nope – it doesn’t handle RRSPs, or other “advanced” tax issues, without using the “forms view” which is basically a glorified paper and pencil view.

Can anyone recommend a decent Canadian tax package?

On the off chance you’re interested in the RSS feeds that I read, here’s a quick rundown:

Local

Blogawa.ca

Blog aggregator for Ottawa-related blogs. I wrote the aggregator, so you should read it. =)

Runesmith’s Canadian Content

The rambling of Jennifer Smith. I enjoy her ongoing outrage at the Conservative government.

Ottawa LiveJournal Community

It’s more of a “where can I get X” listing, but it’s sort of interesting to see what the kids are up to.

THE CANADIAN DESIGN RESOURCE

A near daily listing posting of random bits of Canadian design from the past hundred or so years. I have no idea why their name is in ALL CAPS, but that’s the way it’s presented in their feed.

Geekery

Lila’s Dreams Blog

Lila’s Dreams is a dev blog for an upcoming web-based MMOG. The setting is inside the psyche of an 11 year old girl. I’m not sure what the game is going to end up being, but it sounds like gardening should be a large part of game play, which sounds quite neat.

Dubroy.com/blog

I went to school with Pat, and he’s blogging as a grad student, which is a lifestyle that’s dear to my heart. He opines about usability, the evils of hierarchical filesystems, and difficulties installing stuff on Macs. I disagree with most things he says, but he’s well read and he comes at problems from the right angle.

datalibre.ca

Breathless open data zealots who think freely available data is a really good thing. They don’t trouble themselves with the hard questions of data ownership (curation, metadata, dealing with licensing/access restrictions) but approach the problem from a public interest standpoint. I’m not sure why I read this blog.

The Online Photographer (TOP) and Photoborg

I’m not sure why I read these sites. They’re kinda/sorta about photography. I’m looking for something with a few more tips, but I do enjoy the opining.

Funnies: Defective Yeti, xkcd, I Can Has Cheezburger?

I woke up this morning to a story on CBC about the (re)arrest of Mohamed Harkat. Rage is a lousy way to start the day.

For those who don’t know, Mohamad Harkat was arrested in Ottawa in December 2002. Without being charged, he was incarcerated until June 2006, when he finally won bail. Under conditions of his bail, he can’t leave his house, he must wear an electronic monitoring device, and must remain under the supervision of his wife or mother-in-law. Last February, the Supreme Court ruled that the “security certificate” that Harkat was held under was unconstitutional.

This guy has been held, in one way or another, for over five years. CSIS, the organization that destroyed evidence against the Air India bombers and lost laptops containing top secret documents at a hockey game, is being trusted to provide evidence to a judge in closed hearings that Harkat poses a danger to Canadian security.

This situation is ridiculous. I find it hard to believe that there is an ongoing plot that is so dangerous that Harkat must be imprisoned, but the evidence is so sensitive that his lawyers can’t be told what it is. CSIS either has to shit or get off the pot: charge the poor guy with a crime, or let him go.

Sadly, the JusticeForHarkat.com website doesn’t list any upcoming events that I can take part in.

I’ve been reading the Manley Report on Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan.

Something I’ve wondered about (since 2002ish) is why our troops are there. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be, I’m just curious what the mandate is. What are the goals the Canadian government wishes to achieve? The question isn’t as facetious as it sounds. We can’t decide if the mission is complete until we know what we’re supposed to accomplish while we’re there.

Manley et al. never provide an “official” (ie, government endorsed) answer to this question. Instead, they provide us with the following reasons:

1. It “concerns” global and Canadian security (p. 3, p. 20)
2. we need to maintain Canada’s international reputation (p. 3)
3. we need to help “impoverished and vulnerable” people (p. 3, p. 8 )
4. a lot of Canadians have already died there (p. 3)
5. to engage the international community in future peace keeping/making efforts (p. 8, p. 22)
6. the UN mandated a mission (p. 21)
7. NATO mandated a mission (p. 21)
8. we are there at the behest of the Afghan government (p. ???)

The cynic in me suspects that Canadian involvement in this mission was okayed for diplomatic reasons (ie, appeasing Washington) before a public justification was formulated. Interestingly the reasons provided on the DnD website are much more specific than the those listed by Manley et al.

For the past few years I’ve resisted posting about Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan. With the release of the Manley Report¹ that situation has changed. Here we have a report by a (supposedly ) disinterested panel that has had time and resources to explore the issue thoroughly.

The post will provide background, as described by the report.

Here’s the background: In 2001 western forces invaded Afghanistan, toppling the repressive Taliban government. The UN and NATO pass resolutions condoning the action. Since then, the Afghan Compact has been signed (in 2006), and a fairly diverse grouping of nations has, at the request of the Afghan government, been supporting the fledgling Afghan military’s efforts to establish something approaching a national government.

In the seven years since 2001, the Afghan economy as grown at 10% annually. The number of children attending schools is currently at six million (although we aren’t told what that number was back in August ‘01, I assume it’s higher now). Afghanistan lingers near the bottom of the UN Human Development Index. Although the report states that “living conditions in Afghanistan have seen measurable, even significant improvement,” (p. 3) it offers no measurements other than these.

Canada currently has 2500ish troops in Afghanistan and nearly 50 civilians in the country (representing CIDA, the RCMP, Correctional Services, and Foreign Affairs)². Our current number of casualties is close to 80 Canadians. We have the highest number of per-capita casualties of the international force.

1. More correctly named “REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT PANEL ON CANADA’S FUTURE ROLE IN AFGHANISTAN, according to their website. (back)
2. The report does not state how many civilians represent the various government departments, so I’m reading between the lines, using information provided on pages 23 and 28 of the report. (back)

A little before Christmas, I started to notice that the IPod Touch had become the fetish object of the season. My fellow Ottawa denizens were wandering around lovingly stroking the screens of their Touches. In the winter. In the cold. Outside. Without gloves. Like idiots.

But it isn’t really their fault, is it? The Touch was developed in Cupertino, California, where the average temperature in January bubbles around 4°C and 15°C. Canadian fetish objects are pretty much the same as those in the United States, but we have a reality that our southern cousins don’t: winter.

Winter plays a huge part of our identity. Canadians snowshow, snowboard, ski, skate, and skidoo. We invented hockey. We dominate the sport of curling. We essentially invented the modern ski resort. In the temperate south of the country, we endure subzero temperatures five to six months of the year.

But our consumer goods, our clothing styles, architectural styles, and fetish objects are designed elsewhere. We use stuff designed in climates where zero is considered cold, and a light dusting of snow will close a city.

Imagine what gadgets would look like if they were designed with winter in mind. When it gets below minus five(ish), you don’t want to expose your skin to the elements for more than a minute or two. If MP3 players were designed by Canadians, they would be easy to control inside a pocket or mitten. They would have controls that are easy to manipulate without being seen. Alternatively, they would have buttons large enough that users would be able to control the volume or navigate tracks without having to remove their frostbite preventing gloves.

When you start to consider the realities of winter, more and more of our society seems like a cargo cult. We’ve imported styles that were created for much warmer places. When you see people walking around in winter, how many people do you see wearing long coats? I don’t mean coats that cover their hips, I mean coats that go to their ankles. When you’re wandering around Ottawa in -20°C weather, wearing a coat that goes to your waist is silly. It means your legs freeze, or you have to wear long-johns¹. But do Canadians wear long coats? No. Because we’re suckers and we import our ideas of style from the south.

The realities of winter hit architecture hard as well. When six months of the year necessitate heavy clothing and heavy boots, our buildings should respect that and provide somewhere to store our sweaters and jackets when inside. Do they? For the most part, no. Malls, libraries, movie theaters, hospitals, and office buildings require us to carry our surplus duds around with us. The few buildings that do feature a coat check tend to be bars or clubs, where being seen is part of the experience.

It would be wonderful if Canadian designers and architects could reverse our fixation on southern climates. Well made Canadian goods that were attractive and designed for our climate would be wonderful. But they seem unlikely to catch on. Too much of our media comes from southern climes, where gloves are a fashion statement, and open air dining is an option year round.

Note: I didn’t notice our tom-foolery myself. It took the first 60 pages of John Ralston Saul’s Refliections of a Siamese Twin to wake me up to our national fixations on warmer climates. Perhaps a solution to our cargo-cultish behaviour was contained in the rest of the book, but JRS didn’t manage to keep my attention past page 61.

1. Woe betide the individual wearing long-johns during their morning commute. When they get to work, that toasty long underwear will be too hot, and they’ll have to find a bathroom for a quick change. (back)

The MetaBall magazine has put together something they call Measure of Progress, which is essentially a system for tracking responses to email queries from MPs.

The idea is elegent: when you want to make correspondence between you and an MP public, you CC democracy@metaball.ca. The emails (and any response CCing the MetaBall people) are indexed by MP and made public on their website.

It’s a pretty nifty idea.

So CBC doesn’t have the spine to stand up to the Chinese government by airing an unedited documentary on the Falun Gong. But the do have the guts to report on their own editorial lapse (then again, the story is just an AP wire story, so maybe their feed-reader published it without human intervention).

Now they say they’re airing a modified version of the documentary. I’d be interested in seeing a comparison of the before and after.