Here I was, minding my own business

...trying to keep my head down and get some real dissertation work done. I was trying not to get involved in all the latest political controversies, partially because I didn't have time to research them, and partially because I knew I'd just be mad and become useless.

And then today I woke up to discover that my federal government doesn't like me and doesn't think that my opinions represent those of "ordinary Canadians." I also learned that I, as an academic, am part of what the Industry Minister calls "the chattering classes," and he would like us all to know that "we're not here to govern on behalf of the chattering classes."

I didn't even care too much about the issue at hand (I just sort of rolled my eyes and said "Typical.") before this. This kind of divisive, identify-people-as-not-real-Canadians sort of politics is exactly the way you make me care about such issues. (And has me shouting "Really? Are you trying to be Sarah Palin?" at my computer screen on a Monday afternoon.)

For discussion

Canada's Heart and Stroke Foundation just released its annual Report Card on Canadians' Health, where they did a study over several months having people investigating the cost of healthy food in 66 communities across Canada. They were shocked to discover that there was a much higher price discrepancy than they expected, a price spread that went beyond transportation costs and location. (It was most striking to see how much more expensive healthy food is in inner-city Toronto than it is in its suburbs, and how much of a price spread you can get shopping in different areas and suburbs of Vancouver.)

And it's not even a matter of fresh ingredients: dry whole wheat pasta can vary in cost between 99 cents and $7 (not counting sales) in non-remote communities across Canada, while pop, chips and cookies stay roughly the same in cost.

Here's CBC's report on it. I particularly like the interactive map that the Heart and Stroke Foundation has provided, and also their "Apples to Apples" chart, where they compare the price of six apples across the country, (Warning: pdf file).

So: am I being too much of a big old socialist that this sort of disparity makes me angry? Is this just a reality of the marketplace, that people in Calgary should pay so much more for healthy food than Edmonton? What do you think of the H&S Foundation's recommendation that the government should start implementing regulations, to make sure that everyone across Canada can afford to eat healthy food? Should we all just stick to the big boxes like Superstore, which seems to have nation-wide pricing, or can people in the inner cities even access these places?

Discuss.

(And now I'm going to bed.)

Dear Province of BC:

You can't keep the motto of "Best Place on Earth" if you also have Canada's worst child poverty rate for five years running, with no plan of tackling that problem. You have to choose: the "Best Place on Earth" motto or the highest child poverty rate. You can't (honestly) have both.




(Here is the most recent CBC news report about it, although it's pretty sparse in data. And here's the website for Campaign 2000, which has the provicial child poverty report cards for everyone. And here's the National Report Card for 2008, which has the full story. I'm putting all of this here, because in the response to the sparse CBC report, and in the fact-light alternative-news article I also found, some try to make this into a deliberate smear on the BC provincial government in anticipation of the upcoming provincial election. Uh, it's actually part of a national study that's done on a yearly basis, and BC's been exceeding the national average since two years before this government was elected.

Also, I heard the full report on the radio, and Chris has been looking up the data, and it sounds like BC's dubious honour actually has very little to do with the high homeless population on the West Coast, but rather it has quite a bit to do with the ridiculously high cost of living paired with low wages. It also has a lot to do with the incredible cuts that the current "Liberal in name only" provincial government made to pretty much everything that helps children, all while invoking the Bogeyman of the Previous NDP Government. "We haaaave to cut all these teaching jobs! Your old government was NDP and they spent too much! We haaaave to cut the welfare rate! Remember the NDP! Please don't look at the actual numbers!")

Geeking. Right. Out.

Liberals, NDP, Bloc sign deal on proposed coalition.

Things are exciting in Canadian politics! Real-life coalitions (or the potential of them being enacted on my birthday)! (Well, we had one in SK a few years ago, and I guess you could call the Union government during WWI a coalition...)

I just need to get one thing off my chest, after reading too many ill-informed commenters on CBC (and after listening to too many ridiculous conservative pundits on the radio). For the record, the next person who calls this a "coup," "illegal" or "undemocratic" gets a virtual punch in the head: this is entirely legal, democratic and constitutional. It's just a reconfiguration of the current members of parliament, swinging the balance of power away from the ruling party. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it illegal. Unlike the US, we do not vote for a Prime Minister: we vote for a member of Parliament. And even if you did view each vote as being for the Prime Minister, the majority of the country voted against him anyway (which usually happens when you have a minority government), and so the whole "this is going against what Canada decided" argument is false.

So I guess what I'm saying is that you have the right to express discontent with the possibility of what may happen a week from now (or in January, if Harper actually dissolves Parliament this week). You may question the motives of those involved, and ask whether this is really for the good of the country. (I'm a big old lefty, and so of course I think it is. But you may have different economic views than mine.) Just get to know how your country works before you word that discontent.

(It probably helps that I love Stéphane Dion and am pumped about the prospect of him being our Prime Minister.)

Bits of Thoughts and News

• I ran a fundraiser auction this week (the same one as last year, and yes I did dress as Vanna again) and it went really well! We broke last year's record-breaking fundraising, which means that it'll be even cheaper for the students from my department to attend our conference. It makes me happy to feel like I've done something well.
• Canadian politics are suuuuper-interesting right now. I'm even letting Chris listen to all of the CBC program The House right now. (By the way, it's driving me nuts to hear the Conservatives saying that the forming of a coalition would be going against democracy, and would going against Canada's wishes based on how they voted. If you're a minority government, it means that the majority of the country voted against you, which theoretically means that the majority of the members of Parliament could form a majority against you.) Maybe it's the German historian in me that just loves the political potential of coalitions so much.
  
• The one thing that stumps Chris and me is who ought to be Prime Minister, if a coalition is successfully formed. This conversation has led to a lot of discussion of the hilarity of The Moustache as Prime Minister.
• I'm still figuring out what I thought of Baz Lurhmann's Australia. I definitely liked it as I watched it, three-hours-long notwithstanding. It was emotionally satisfying. But on reflection afterward...I'm not sure. I'm going to have to see it again. (I read Ebert's review and found myself agreeing a lot, even if Ebert did get some of the details of the movie wrong.)
• What should I do for my birthday? I'd like something special, but I don't want anything where I'm having to do a lot of work and planning, because those are the birthdays where I get stressed out and then cry.
  

Who knew Calvin Coolidge owned a hippo?

For your enjoyment: List of United States Presidential Pets, on Wikipedia. The best ones are Herbert Hoover's two alligators, Calvin Coolidge's entire zoo (seriously! He owned lion cubs!), and the fact that Teddy Roosevelt owned a badger named Josiah.

Everyone's Favourite Office Linebacker Returns!

(I really hope that Ariann, Mark and Meg read this!)

Terry Tate's back! In election specials!




Also: Here's the whole Return of Terry Tate website

For Bronwyn

"New ID rules cause confusion at the polls" (CBC).

Bronwyn and I were Twittering back and forth this morning about how much we suspect the new voter ID rules affected the (relatively speaking, but record-setting) low voter turnout this year. The comments on CBC's website are sometimes really obnoxious, but this time some of them are really informative: there are accounts of people being turned away at polling stations, and reflections on how the new "prove your address" rules negatively affected students and the very poor.

(Mostly I just feel ill, hearing about how 2/3 of Dalhousie's students got turned away at the polls.)

The election is over.

It feels good to say that. Whatever happened last night, it's all over and we can move forward. We have another Conservative minority government, and I've decided that (instead of dwelling on how sad I was for Stéphane Dion last night) I'm going to reflect on the election in an Accentuate the Positive list:

• At least we don't have a Conservative majority; they can't push through whatever they want, but need the help of the other parties. I find minority governments to be really interesting and creative times, particularly if all the parties are willing to co-operate and compromise. (So, political parties of Canada? How about you do that this time around? Work together? I'm particularly looking at the ruling party when I say that, because regardless of all their complaining about the deadlock in Ottawa, they were the primary ones not playing along.)
  
• I'm glad the election's over now. I don't think I could handle another week of electioneering, especially since I'm living in a region considered to be a "swing vote" or something; we've been inundated with signs, calls, rallies, and party leaders. If I saw another road side/constantly-crossing-the-road-while-carrying-blue-signs rally that was slowing down rush hour traffic, I was going to throw something.* But it's over now. Early this morning, I watched volunteers take down all those blue signs for the Conservative candidate running in our area.
  
• And, regardless of what else happened, my riding stayed NDP. And Ariann and Derek's riding stayed Liberal, even though it was a nail-biter (their PM won by only 68 votes!). I'd been really worried about my riding, because the Conservative candidate's campaigning was so visible and rush-hour-traffic-stopping. But my MP re-won the riding handily.
• CBC's coverage was lovely. Well, they could've deployed Rex Murphy and Rick Mercer more than they did, but their coverage was good and even-handed (both politically and regionally), and I loved their live-updating interactive map on their website. I could keep it open while I worked on other stuff on my computer and check periodically to see what colour the ridings had turned.
• Last night, I'd been just looking at the Edmonton map (on a map of Alberta that was solid blue with Conservatives), when Lynnie's riding suddenly turned orange! And stayed that colour! Seriously: Lyn's only lived there for a few months and she's already socialisted the place up. That little dot of orange made me happy.
  

* I find it ironic that the candidates that were running on a platform of "reduce rush-hour congestion!" were campaigning in a manner that increased rush-hour congestion.

Odds and Ends

Sorry that it's been so long since I've updated, guys! My brain's been eaten up with my dissertation's historiography, which has to be in by Wednesday. All of my thoughts are in small and scattered form and so you get a bulleted list:

• I think I actually like my research again. That's a good thing, you know.
• Do you know what makes me happier than happy? The Montreal/Calgary auditions episode of So You Think You Can Dance Canada. You Americans should be jealous. SYTYCD is sustaining me through this autumn.
  
• I also have become obsessed with goat cheese, particularly with chèvre. It makes me endlessly happy to eat little pinches of crumbly goat cheese off of the block. It's such an obsession that, when the over-saltiness of the frozen chicken breasts ruined my stuffed chicken breasts, I actually wrote a letter to Westfair Foods to complain. (In my defence, we'd been buying these same chicken breasts for years, and in the past month or so the chicken we've bought has been inedibly salty. Uh, gross. And when it makes me waste goat cheese...) Wow. That was a lot of writing about cheese right there.
  
• I got to see my great-aunt and great-uncle today; they're from the same farming community as my grandparents, and so having them here was a nice little bit of home today.
  
• On a less joyful note, if I see another attack ad for the Canadian election, I'm going to throw a shoe through the TV. What country have we become?
  

And the race is on

So, this morning Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canada will be having a federal election on October 14th. This amuses me, because that means that we Canadians will have an entire election campaign and decide on a Prime Minister over the course of six and a half weeks, and it will be all over a full three weeks before the American election.

(Of course, the Canadian political parties have leaders, who are the ones who run for Prime Minister, and they choose their leaders at entirely different times. But it's still hilarious to me that we're having an election right in the middle of everything.)

Veering toward the political for a moment

The problem with letting your brain go on vacation is that you miss major news for a few months and then one day you wake up and discover that your federal government is trying to make your academic life more difficult. So, have you heard about Bill C-61?

"New Copyright Bill Harms Educators and Researchers" - Canadian Association of University Teachers Bulletin.

"Lock up that Lecture Good & Tight" - Laura Murray.

Seriously, Bill C-61 is bad news for Canadian academics. I'm going to have to wholesale copy and paste the "Limitations" section of the Bill's Education and Research Amendments fact sheet because this is where you really see the problems (with my own italics for emphasis):

• Technology-Enhanced Learning: Schools would have to ensure that Internet access to a lesson is restricted to teachers and students in the course and that the lesson could not be copied or distributed by students. After a course has ended, schools would have to destroy the recordings of the lessons from that course.
  
  Schools must also take measures to limit the distribution of digitally delivered course materials to students in that course, and to prevent students from copying or distributing course materials (e.g., other than making one print copy for themselves).
• Educational Use of Internet Material: Teachers and students could not rely on the exception if their use of the Internet material has been restricted by a digital lock or prohibited by a clearly visible notice. The exception would not apply to material posted on the Internet without the consent of the copyright owner.
• Library Materials: The patron receiving the electronically transmitted material [from interlibrary loans] could not make permanent copies, digital or otherwise, other than a single print copy, and could not distribute it further. Electronic access to the material would terminate after five business days.
  
  The library must ensure that only the intended recipients receive the protected material and that they abide by other conditions set out in the provisions.

According to the Canadian Library Association's statement, that last limitation would "force many libraries back to delivering interlibrary loan via paper copies" because of a lack of resources available to digitally lock these journal articles (which would slow down the research process, and be both a financial and environmental nightmare). And destroying all online course notes if they contain any copyrighted materials? Seriously, this is a bad idea.

And did I mention that you could be fined $500 for having downloaded music on your computer?

My childhood understanding

Last night, as we were half-talking while we were falling asleep, I asked Chris what his earliest memories of politics were. He stopped, and started figuring out in which grade he probably learned about governments. I interrupted him and said no. I meant world events. When did he first notice what was going on in the world around him, politically speaking?

It turned out that he had mostly known about Saskatchewan's premier, and didn't really comprehend what was going on in the world around him until he was older.* (On the other hand, he doesn't remember not knowing about the atomic model, and he knows that he explained to someone how a nuclear submarine worked, back when he was in grade 3.)

I asked him this because last night I was finishing up yet another sweeping history book that came all the way up to the recent past, and I started coming to terms with my childhood remembrances of these world events, as I was forced to compare them with the written record.

And it has occurred to me that, for a child born at the end of 1980, I sure knew a lot of what was going on around me through the 1980s.** The first federal election I remember was 1988. My parents encouraged us kids to pick a favourite and cheer for him through the election. We watched the big debate between Brian Mulroney, John Turner and Ed Broadbent. I chose Mulroney (I confess), Janny chose Turner, and my brother cheered for Broadbent. I won, and was confused when I read a political cartoon that depicted the Prime Minister as a pig, waving a flag that read "Four More Years!" (My understanding of the world only went so far.)

I know that the reason why I cheered for the incumbent was that I had a pretty static understanding of the world. Mulroney, Reagan, Thatcher, Gorbachev, the Berlin Wall and the USSR just were. And they loomed pretty largely in my worldview. It's probably because we watched and listened to a lot of political satire on the CBC, because we watched the news a lot, and because I liked political cartoons so much.

I'm reminded of this as I read account after account of historians having been so suprised in 1989, and again in 1991, as everything that they thought was permanent fell away. I'm also reminded of this as I read Paul Kennedy's 1987 exhortation not to hope for the dissolution of the Soviet Union, even as it appeared to be in decline, because dissolution could only happen in the midst of a bloody war. As I read these, I find myself remembering watching TV as the Wall came down, amazed that it could really happen. And I remember reading a political cartoon in 1991, which depicted Gorbachev at a Lost and Found station (trying to find his lost country); I remember feeling a little sad and bewildered that something that seemed so permanent on my map and in my mind had now changed.

(On the other hand, I feel that same sadness and bewilderment when I read about political leaders now trying to recreate Cold War politics all over the globe. There's this part of me that wonders: didn't we leave this behind us when I was a child?)


* I'm not saying he wasn't exposed to current events as a child. He probably was. He also doesn't remember the names of any of his elementary school teachers, but can tell you in detail about the cool experiments he did, and can pretty much draw a map of every town where he ever lived. He's just like that.
** I apologise to anyone who's older than me, who now feels even older by that realisation.