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Canada 2.0 – The Satirical Masses

2010 February 9


I stand...with the Onion Ring!

Custom user images often show up when an internet protest picks up steam. Think "I'm with Coco.".

You gotta love Canada.  We are a humble people but we are also a deeply funny and self-effacing people. The latest political trend involves a deep fried ring of onion, a Prime Minister and the spicy dipping sauce of Facebook protest.

The aforementioned onion ring, a very tasty looking one I must say, recently became a star with its own FaceBook page entitled “Can this Onion Ring get more fans than Stephen Harper“.  In case you aren’t familiar, a FaceBook is webpage on FaceBook meant to represent a person, product, party or any kind of entity that might have ‘fans’.  Instead of joining a page, like you would with a FaceBook group, you become a fan of a page.  The page can still contain discussion forums, links to videos and of course has its own FaceBook wall.  A FaceBook page is almost like a new user in the FaceBook universe.  A user that can message its fans and serve as a meeting point as well as a badge for devotees.  This makes it perfect for the kind of passive protests and trends that wax and wane over the internet.

This kind of protest grabs a lot of interest and can quickly pick up supporters.  It makes a statement in a fun way. And it can be the base for real action.  The Canadians Against Progoguing Parliament protests last month showed that internet protests can get thousands of people out on the streets.  The Onion Ring page is now declaring that it has more supporters than the entire Conservative party received in individual donors last year. They are asking everyone who supports the Onion Ring to donate $10-$15 to their favourite political party in protests.

A Great Democracy Deserves a Great Protest

2010 February 5


In response to this article about the latest degradation of American democracy. One senator is essentially holding up all nominations for government posts in order to get special funds, called earmakrs, for his state.

I agree that if the Democrats capitulate and negotiate again like they did with Lieberman they have essentially ceded their majority power and their mandate.  That doesn’t mean democrats shouldn’t vote for them or stay home during elections by the way.  It means you should demand, I mean demand, your representatives and Obama to rule as they were elected to rule.  Do whatever is needed to get rid of this silly 60 vote ‘rule’.

Canadians recently showed up on the streets in over 60 cities in unprecedented numbers to protest an abuse of parliamentary rules by our Prime Minister (he shut dow read more…

Harper plays games while democracy crumbles

2010 February 3
by Mark Crowley


My comment on the Globe and Mails recent story:

Tories seek parliamentary extension

This is a non story, by casting it as some kind of tricky dilemma for the Liberals and NDP the Globe is accepting the Conservative game. You can almost hear the writer salivating at the dramatic irony of the opposition voting against more time in parliament when they threw such a fuss about prorogation!

Please, do you think we’re children? Harper apparently does, I expect better from the Globe and Mail.  The problem with prorogation was not that parliament would not be sitting.  It was that parliament was cut off during serious investigations into torture, a time of economic crisis and to deflect opposition attacks on the government.

Of course the opposition parties will agree to cancel their vacations.  But its a moot point, because we should have an election before those vacations would occur anyways.  Once the budget comes up for a vote, it should be voted down.  This government has demonstrated they cannot be trusted with the reigns of power.  This latest little trick is a side show meant to distract voters and the media.  We’re not falling for it. I wish you wouldn’t either.

Canada 2.0 – Way to go Canada!

2010 February 1
by Mark Crowley

Update on my recent interest in seeing Twitter go Canuck. Good going Canada! It looks like more people are setting their locations because I’ve been seeing more and more Cancon in the Trending list on Twitter. Last night 4 of the top five words were the names of hockey players as Canadians chimed in on the big Calgary Flames and Toronto Maple Leafs trade.

This morning I have seen for the first time a number one trend that isn’t just an echo of  a us hashtag game. The tag is #followamuseum which asks everyone to follow their favourite museum (some ideas of museums to follow listed here). If you look at the regions where this is trending right now (10:30AM PST Feb 1,2010) its very interesting:

#followamuseum Trending #followamuseum Not Trending
Seattle
San Francisco
London
Washington DC
UK (number 3 overall in UK)
Canada (number 1 overall in Canada!)
Mexico
New York
Atlanta
Houston
Philadelphia
United States
Brazil
Ireland
Worldwide

What’s interesting about this list is not where people care about museums or not. Trends come and go all day long and could be because of other local stories.  The interesting part though is that most Canadians are talking about this trend even though the overwhelming majority of Tweeps worldwide are not.  The trend does not show up on the worldwide list or the US list. So that means the Canadians who saw it and made it a trend here by retweeting or commenting must be watching the Canada trend topics (or the UK).  This is very exciting, as now Canadians can trust that our voice can make it through the defining din of Twitter.

Democracy in Canada 2.0 – Twitter

2010 January 31


I my first article in my series Canada 2.0 I introduced the idea that social media technologies, Internet 2.0 or social media, are beginning to reach a critical mass in Canada that can enable a transformation of our democracy and society as a whole. Those who want to take part and shape this future need to understand what is happening and how to take part. Twitter gets a lot of coverage in the media as the current ‘in’ thing. And its impact in the Iran elections and Barack Obama’s victory in the US cannot be dismissed. But there is one thing that pundits and commentators often miss when applying this to Canada. No one in Canada is on Twitter. Well, statistically almost no one.

Unlike FaceBook, which has around 14 million Canadian users, thats about 42% of the total Canadian population, twitter has a measly 1% pop covereage. This means that everything Canadians say on twitter is bound to be drowned out by their American and even British peers. Canadian Twitter accounts make up about 5% of Twitter. When something shows up as a trend on twitter (which means its one of the top 10 most popular phrases showing up in all current 140 character messages on Twitter) it pretty much means a lot of Americans are talking about that topic.

But if you look at stats at politwitter.ca, which aggregates Canadian political discussion on Twitter, you’ll see that there are tens of thousands of active Canadians tweeting about politics and following national leaders. That’s not nothing.

A Canadian Voice

So what about little ‘ol us? Last week there were huge national protests and everyone I know was tweeting about it with common tags #noprorogue #CAPP and #cdnpoli.
Some part of me hoped, that just for an hour one of those words would show up on the venerated trending topics list. But it was not to be. Then I looked into it a bit and found the stunning 1%. Add to that the fact that many people register for twitter, don’t get it, and never use it again, so 1% is probably high. Twitter is not as easy to ‘get’ as FaceBook. It doesn’t seem useful to jabber on in short bytes with people you don’t know. But sometimes it can be really powerful. FaceBook is much easier for everyone to udnerstand, you link up with freinds from the real world, chat, play games and generally just keep up to date with their life.

So why is this knowledge important for activities in Canada trying to gain awareness for their cause and rally people and media attention? Its important because the media doesn’t know this, or is too enamored of simple stories to use this information properly. If the reporters and pundits see something trending on Twitter, they’ll see a big thing, Twitter is big right? That’s a story. So how does that help? Well…

Twitter just recently, this week, added a new feature to their website that lets you view trending topics by region. Now, if people can choose to view trends from several countries or large cities. Canada is one of the countries although no Canadian cities are present yet. Right now the trends look pretty much the same as the Worldwide trends except for the presence of the word ‘Canadian’ and ‘Tim Hortons’. Since Canada is such a small group of users (hundreds of thousands rather than millions) that means that getting topics to trend in the Canada view should be much easier than in the default Worldwide view. But for this to happen, Canadians need to add location information so that Twitter knows they are in Canada. I suspect the trends are the same now because most Canadians haven’t put their location down, this may even explain the 1% being so low. Well it turns out now that it really is useful to tell Twitter that you at least live in Canada, even if you don’t want to give more info. This way we can all use the Canada trending topics view to find out what Canadians are really talking about rather than continuing to listen in to our neighours to the south. We’ve listend to them long enough, I think we know what they’re talking about by now.

Instructions on Setting your location in Twitter:

  1. go to Twitter.com and sign in
  2. Click Settings at the top right
  3. You will be on the Account tab, go down to Location and enter Canada
  4. Go the bottom of the page and click save

That’s it. Now if you click “Change” under the trending header on the right hand side you can pick the country or city you want to view and your tweets should be included.

Can’t wait to see what we’re talkin aboot.


Canada 2.0

2010 January 23


Today’s protests around Canada against the Conservative’s reckless abuse of power were a great success, look here, even the Globe and Mail is impressed.

So, how did a little ‘internet protest’ turn into over 25,000 feet on the ground in over 60 locations across the country today? Two reasons. First,  Canadians are awesome!  Second, Facebook is not some silly little internet toy in Canada. Di you know that around 45% of Canadians are on Facebook.  That’s not 45% of Canadians on the Internet…its 45% of all Canadians!  read more…

Today, we stand for democracy.

2010 January 23


Throughout our land today,
we raise our voices for democracy.

We march in peaceful protest to send a message to you who claim to lead us, be you blue, red or orange.
The message: This shall not stand.

We raise our voices today to remind you that you serve at our leisure, not your own, nor the Queen’s.
You have been sent forth to uphold our values, the build a just society, to build a vibrant economy and to stand for peace and honour.
You’re power flows from us alone, so listen well to our voices, all of you.
Put aside your petty squabbles.  You have been told to work together, and so you must.

You discard our votes, you ignore our wishes, you play your games with the checks and balances of power.
But you will not discard the traditions of centuries, traditions for which endless blood has been split.
We march today as defenders of the traditions you cast aside, of reason and debate, of parliament, the foundations upon which democracy, Canadian democracy, is built.

Our small but great northern nation has achieved so much through being guided by reason and tradition.
Reason and tradition led us, like almost no other nation, to freedom without war or bloodshed. Let us have these concepts restored to rule our democracy once more.

For be warned, though we grow weary of your games, do not bread apathy amongst us. Do not dare to use our cycniscm and weariness against us or we will cast you aside and wash the slate clean!

vive le Canda!
vive la Démocratie!

In Defense of Reasonableness

2010 January 20


What make’s us Canadian? Its an oft asked question. Its unavoidable that whatever it is will be cast in some way relative to our neighbours to the south.  But there is a core quality that Canadians have, that permeates our history and explains why we chose to structure our society and our democracy differently than Americans did. The quality is an overriding tendency towards being reasonable rather than emotional or idealistic.  Its what makes us great, its what will save us, but we need to defend it.

Here’s why. read more…

Michael Ignatieff Talks at UBC – but will he Say anything?

2010 January 15


UBC is being visited today by the Liberal party road tour, Michael Ignatieff will be talking about his and our dreams for Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017.  I’m planning on going, hopeful there is room for questions from the audience. If so I’m going to ask him this:

Will your party commit to working with other opposition parties to address the democratic deficit in Canada? Fair Vote Canada recently sent a letter to your party and the others suggesting some ways to improve democratic representation in Canada.  This is more important now than ever when we have to endure a Conservative minority government that was rejected by 60% of the population and who are willing to reckless abuse the constitutional powers of government to shut down debate and investigations.

So, Mr. Ignatieff, will you commit to working with the other opposition parties to ensure that Canada gets the representation that they actually vote for in Ottawa?

Thank you.

I’ll let you know what he says later…

Update : A Full summary of the event can be found here.

Update II: So as for my question, I didn’t get to even get in the room there were so many people.  I did hand my question to one the organizers to ask on behalf of the “people outside the room” in the lobby.  But I don’t think it got asked because there were a lot of questions and there was a little environmentalist protest in the middle of his speech. Which I get, I just think there’s a  lot going on right now and it would be better to constructively discuss solutions than disrupt discussion. Especially when its someone who can’t actually do anything right now.  The Liberals are very very guilty of not putting the environment first in the past, but you really can’t fault Ignatieff for that, since as his opponents so frequently point out, he wasn’t even here for that.

I did like his speaking style, except that he says “Interesting” about 10 times too much, which might make some people think he’s a bit of an academic, ahem.  But he defended himself well and stood his ground on awkward questions.  He also was able to make a joke or two. So he comes across well in these town hall style things, a bit stiff, but considering his competition that’s ok. He should do more of these. I’m dissapointed that there wasn’t more discussion about democracy and prorogation in the questions.  He mentioned it right off the bat and said the most important thing to restore was public trust and involvement in democracy. So that’s great.  But of course, he’s also very good at saying nice sounding things without being specific. And being Liberals we can’t expect them to make lots of exciting, progressive changes unless we absolutely force them to.

So, lets force them to.

My rating – Ignatieff:

Not as dull as you’d think, mike make a decent Prime Minister someday. Next!

Liberals stand out like a raisin in a raisin muffin.

2010 January 14


Its clear that the with the prorogation of parliament the Conservative party has wasted most of its ‘benefit of the doubt’ support that was keeping it ahead of the Liberals.  A new poll shows the two parties are neck in neck in national support.  Just as clearly, this statistical tie has not come about because the Liberals have wowed everyone with their inspiring leadership.  Most of the bled Conservative support is no doubt going to the Liberals but simultaneously past Liberal support has moved on to the NDP and Green parties.  The Green party is now approaching 12% polling support.

The Globe suggests that the Liberals have yet to capitalize on the crisis to make their fortunes really rise.  They suggest that people need to vote for the Liberals rather than just against the Conservatives.  I agree.

May I suggest that the best way to distinguish the Liberals from the Conservatives, a way that you know they can’t steal from you, a way that addresses the current crisis, would show big thinking on the part of your party and really make a difference for the future welfare of Canadians as a whole?

Its simple.

Democratic reform.

The recent letter sent out by FairVote Canada offers some suggestions to the Liberals and the opposition parties of what needs to be done.  These are good suggestions, but there are many options to improving the democratic deficit in our country.  You don’t need to commit to a particular solution right now, you need to commit to find a solution and implementing it, with the cooperation of your opposition peers.  This would distinguish the Liberals from the Conservatives in a way that Stephen Harper wouldn’t dare to emulate.  The only democratic reform the Conservatives care about is Senate reform, which is only the tip of the iceberg and does not relate to the anger now rising from Canadian citizens about his prorogation of parliament.

This is an issue the Liberal party can stand behind, one that can get them votes and can serve them well into the future.  The only explanation for why they haven’t realized that yet is pure, unadulterated hunger for absolute power and/or self-delusion.  If the Liberals truly realize they have no natural right to majority rule in Canada then they must admit that their best future interest lies in electoral reform that gives them all the votes they deserve and would allow them to usually form either majority governments or minority coalition governments with the NDP and Greens.

The prize of champion of democracy is there for the taking. Look at that Green 12%, for example.  Its  travesty that they have no seats. But how would they vote in the next election if the Liberals promised true reform? They might hold their breath long enough to give the Liberals minority control to implement real change. Then in the new era of real democracy you’d have a party with 10-15 seats to work with (and remember the Bloc has less support than the Greens so they’d have less seats than that, starts to make coalitions look a lot more doable, no?)

Can anyone think of anything else that will really distinguish tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee that Harper can’t usurp as Conservative policy? I don’t.