Yule Heibel's Library tagged canada →  View Popular, Search in Google

I love this presentation by Garth Lenz - and (sorry, but it has to be said) I hate Canada very much for condoning the tarsands. Canada gets away with pretending to be better than the US, but the tarsands show otherwise.
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A visual journey through the Alberta Tar Sands and a discussion of the the local regional and global impacts and how we can respond.

For almost twenty years, Garth's photography of threatened wilderness regions, devastation, and the impacts on indigenous peoples, has appeared in the world's leading publications. His recent images from the boreal region of Canada have helped lead to significant victories and large new protected areas in the Northwest Territories, Quebec, and Ontario. Garth's major touring exhibit on the Tar Sands premiered on Los Angeles in 2011 and recently appeared in New York. Garth is a Fellow of the International League Of Conservation Photographers

Filmed at TEDxVictoria on November 19 2011
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tarsands oil_sands boreal_forests canada garth_lenz tedx victoria video environment

Admittedly, I ignored this post when it first came out because, given my current interests, I didn't think I'd find anything worth reading from a Canadian journalist. Wow, was I wrong. This essay is brilliant and a must-read. Nagata is not your average 24-year-old or average anything.
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Consider Fox News. What the Murdoch model demonstrated was that facts and truth could be replaced by ideology, with viewership and revenue going up. Simply put, you can tell less truth and make more money. When you have to balance the interests of your shareholders against the interests of the viewers you supposedly serve, the firewall between the boardroom and the newsroom becomes a very important bulwark indeed. CTV, in my experience, maintains high standards in factual accuracy. Its editorial staff is composed of fair-minded critical thinkers. But there is an underlying tension between “what the people want to see” and “the important stories we should be bringing to people”.
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kai_nagata canada politics journalism ctv cbc press

Uh-oh Canada?
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As the Globe wrote this morning based on a leaked copy of the report (sigh), “Canada ranked worse or stagnated in 18 of 24 benchmarks tracked by the council since its 2008 report.”
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maclean's canada economy knowledge_economy

Corporate Knights's Issue 34 on Sustainable Cities (Canada).

cities sustainability canada corporate_knights

Must-read article about heroin, Afghanistan, war, and Canada...
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“Opium is the problem in Afghanistan. A corrupt narco-elite runs the country,” [Amir Attaran] said.

Attaran is a University of Ottawa law professor and development expert who has studied Afghanistan’s drug trade.

He said both sides in the country’s war have an interest in perpetuating the conflict because of their involvement with opium. “You cannot grow opium and traffic it on a large scale in peacetime. You need a fog of war,” he said.

“If you want to understand the conflict in Afghanistan, you have to understand this is a gang war.”

Attaran’s solution: Legalize Afghan opium and sell it for medical uses, joining countries such as India and Turkey that grow legal opium crops for the pharmaceutical market.

The result, he thinks, would be to turn warlords into regular businessmen and reduce the country’s violence and corruption. “I don’t really see an alternative that would succeed,” Attaran said.
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afghanistan heroin drugs war addiction canada times_colonist

Excellent summary of some of the issues around online privacy, transparency, and - lately - re-anonymization. Interesting roadblocks ahead, too:

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However, there are powerful opponents to this kind of anonymity software, and they aren't online advertisers; they're security agencies. Simply put, the same technology that allows people to maintain their privacy online also makes criminals tougher to catch. As such, there is a push to limit anonymity on the Web.

A perfect example is Research In Motion's BlackBerry. For years, big businesses have purchased the devices in droves because of their strong encryption, which makes messages sent from BlackBerrys much more difficult for outside parties to monitor. But now, a host of countries are threatening to ban BlackBerry services precisely because RIM keeps the data too private.
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globeandmail privacy online_privacy canada internet

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If you have access to fast broadband, your friends all work online and it is easy to find venture capital, then you are in a digital hub. And you're not in Canada. Our country trails the world when it comes to building these centres of digital innovation. In this episode of "Our Digital Future - Digital Hubs", leading voices from Canada's digital community discuss the characteristics of a good digital hub and the investment needed to create intelligent communities for tomorrow's digital economy. The episode features: Mark Kuznicki, a leader in the field of citizen and community engagement; Sarah Prevette, founder of Sprouter.com, an online community for entrepreneurs; Jesse Brown, journalist and an influential voice in the world of social media; and, Bill Hutchison, the Executive Director of Intelligent Communities for Waterfront Toronto and a renowned business and social entrepreneur.
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canada innovation broadband internet video tvo

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Slow down please, this is Canada! Canada's digital networks are some of the slowest in the world, running between one hundred to a thousand times slower than other countries in the developed world. In this episode of "Our Digital Future - The Need for High-Speed", Bill Hutchison, Executive Director of Intelligent Communities for Waterfront Toronto describes the sorry state of our digital infrastructure, stressing the need for major investments in advanced broadband networks. Bill Hutchison is a renowned business and social entrepreneur. He has been a founder of four successful business start-ups and CEO of three corporate turnarounds. As a social entrepreneur he has been the founding chair or director of ten industry and social consortia and charitable foundations.
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canada innovation broadband internet video tvo

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Today's Reality

But now the alarm bells are ringing as Canada has been falling down the international leadership staircase in terms of the innovation and application of technology in ways that could continue to improve the quality of life for all citizens. A recent study indicates that Canada:
* Has some of the poorest high-speed internet service in the developed world;
* Ranked 22nd out of 30 countries against measures such as broadband adoption, network capacity and pricing; and
* Ranked 16th on broadband adoption.

Please take a few minutes to view the TVO video on the impact of Canada being way behind the rest of the world in terms of our digital economy and broadband infrastructure. Canada's speed is 1/100 to 1/1000 slower than 20 major competitors.
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canada innovation broadband internet

Great article that explains how Canada's taxation system destroys innovation and grass-roots ownership, even under the new Budget 2010 revisions, which were touted by Finance Minister Flaherty as supportive of investment & innovation...

Brief extract below, but click through to read the whole thing.

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As an illustration of the dire consequences of the proposed new changes in stock option taxation, we have had to halt the IPO process for a very successful Canadian technology company. Under the proposed new rules, if all 300+ employees exercised all of their vested options at once, post-IPO, the company would have an immediate withholding tax liability of about $20 million. This is a new, open-ended and completely uncontrollable contingent liability. If we happened to get “irrationally exuberant” technology markets again, the liability could be multiples of $20 million.
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canada taxation innovation economic_development techvibes

"Formed in 1974, Business for the Arts is a national business association dedicated to increasing the quantity and quality of partnerships between Business and the Arts through a cohesive set of programs that foster and promote business leadership in the Arts, facilitate funding relationships and connect business volunteers to the Arts. Founding members include Great West Life, London Life & Canada Life and Royal Bank of Canada – businesses that have set the standard for arts support in this country.

We are committed to enhancing the quality of life in Canadian communities by increasing private sector support of the arts."

arts arts_development arts_funding canada business

Insightful (and often cutting) article on the status of innovation in Canada. Stephen Downes responded in a blog post, http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2009/07/innovation-in-canada.html, basically agreeing, saying that we need a bit of free market and a bit of government direction as well, and that we (Canadians) need to wean ourselves from our corporate overlords.

In an aside, the G&M journalist (Konrad Yakabuski) notes that Canadians already log more work hours than Americans and are workaholics compared to Europeans - who innovate more and therefore, because they work smarter, don't need to work harder. As it happens, I was just wondering about Canadians and partying/ sociability over the beginning of July (what with Canada Day and Independence Day). Canadians are far less social than Americans, in my experience. For Canadians, sociability and partying means getting drunk - it always has, for as long as I can remember. Americans in this respect are actually the kinder, gentler people. Is it because of work?

innovation canada globeandmail productivity technology resources economic_development konrad_yakabuski

Curators in Context dot CA is "art curators talk about curating." Page links to individual presentations. (Text and audio)

art museums curation curating canada reference

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The CIBCWM Metropolitan Economic Activity Index

Using 9 key macroeconomic variables, we have developed a metropolitan index of economic activity, which is structured in a way that approximates the change in each city's level of economic activity. With data going back for almost 10 years, our index enables us not only to monitor the current performance of a given city but also to track its cyclical behavior against the national economy and other census metropolitan areas (CMAs). The focus is on the 25 largest CMAs in Canada.

The macro variables used to develop the index are: (1) Population growth, (2) Employment growth, (3) Unemployment rate, (4) Full-time share in total employment, (5) Personal bankruptcy rate, (6) Business bankruptcy rate, (7) Housing starts, (8) MLS Housing resales, and (9) Non-Residential building permits. We combined all the above information into one index per city: "The CIBCWM Metropolitan Economic Activity Index"1.
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The link to the synopsis (Metro Monitor - Canadian Cities: An Economic Snapshot 12/17/08) is on this page (PDF) :
http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/metro_monitor.pdf (6 pages)

cibc canada metros census_metropolitan_areas economy world_markets markets

Yet another article on the massive infrastructure crisis in Canada, and the federal attempts to boost the economy by putting money into infrastructure upgrades.

national_post canada cities infrastructure_funding infrastructure federal bailout

Excellent little chart that compares the Canadian and American systems.

How interesting, that in Canada the head of state is the queen's representative (i.e., the governor-general), who is not elected but rather appointed (by someone who also is not elected), and that the prime minister is also not elected by the people, since the people only elect the members of parliament but not the party leaders, and the PM is simply the leader of the party with the most seats in the house of commons.

The Westminster System of parliamentary democracy: can't say I'm a fan. This is the alpha version of a less-than 1.0 version.

canada coalition politics election westminster_system

Excellent article by Christopher Hume, commenting on the post-Federal election blues reality in Canada. Key quote: "In an age when an 'economic tsunami' can sweep across the planet in days and hours, however, only the quick survive. But nimble we're not." Canadian cities are hobbled by the British North America Act and the subsequent cast of the Canadian Constitution (difficult to fathom how it could be written in the later 20th century), and instead of nimble, they're paralyzed.

christopher_hume thestar canada cities politics

I was already opposed to the oil sands project on several levels (it seems inefficient, for one thing), but this really clinches it: exploiting the oil sands in Alberta will lead to a build up of refineries along the Great Lakes, which will raise pollution and environmental degradation levels exponentially in that region.

The article references a report by UofT's Munk Centre, which calls the pipeline network for transporting the fuel a "pollution delivery system."

Great...

pollution oil_sands canada great_lakes environment water

Hume rips into municipal politics, as well as provincial rights over cities, in a way that to my mind evokes parallels with Victoria, BC. The point of departure is Toronto's seeming inability to develop its waterfront with any sort of sensibility or vision. Sounds familiar (re. Victoria). See notes & annotations for more.

thestar toronto christopher_hume canada cities infrastructure municipal_politics tedco waterfront

Critique of Harper's Conservative party for being contemptuous of cities and for trying to start a "culture war" of sorts between the salt-of-the-earth rurals vs those decadent urbanites. Sigh.

thestar toronto canada cities election stephen_harper infrastructure_funding municipal_funding