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Internet Freedom and the Erosion of Democracy

2012-05-25T10:10:09-04:00

This week, at least 125 million people are watching the Eurovision Song Contest, an annual competition of singers from 56 countries across Europe and parts of the former Soviet Union. This year’s contest is hosted by Azerbaijan, a country whose human-rights record has come under heavy fire.

Azerbaijan is a classic example of how, even when people are free to connect to the global Internet, they can be subject to pervasive, unaccountable, and unconstrained surveillance. It is also a case of how, while western democratic governments have been quick to follow the lead of the United States and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in calling for a free and open global Internet, they are much more conflicted when it comes to surveillance. The democratic world has failed to address the freedom-eroding potential of government surveillance through commercial networks.

China and Iran block Facebook and other social-media services to keep people from using the Internet for purposes of dissent and political organization. Azerbaijan has similar goals, but strives to achieve them through surveillance, instead. Azeris know that their Internet and mobile-phone activity is being logged, and that potentially deviant behavior is automatically flagged. In 2009, several people were interrogated by police because they used their mobile phones to vote for the Armenian Eurovision contestants instead of their own countrymen.

Related: The Spy in Your Pocket

Blanket surveillance of Azerbaijan’s mobile-phone networks is carried out with help from the Stockholm-based Swedish-Finish telecommunications company TeliaSonera. Last month, a Swedish investigative television program, Uppdrag Granskning, broadcast an exposé of TeliaSonera’s operations in Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan. Sources from within the company described how in Azerbaijan, TeliaSonera’s subsidiary, Azercell, installed devices known internally as “black boxes,” which allow real-time blanket monitoring of all mobile traffic without court orders or warrants. Azercell even hosts government security personnel on company premises. As one TeliaSonera whistle-blower told reporters, “The Arab Spring prompted the regimes to tighten their surveillance. ... There’s no limit to how much wiretapping is done, none at all.”

The Swedish government, despite its strong rhetoric in support of Internet freedom and the recent convening of activists from around the world to address the issue, has been easy on TeliaSonera. In response to a newspaper reporter’s question about TeliaSonera’s role in Belarus, where the regime conducts rampant surveillance on its opposition and where a brutal crackdown took place last year, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt replied, “In general, I think that it’s good that we participate in developing telecommunications in different countries. Having a working mobile phone system in Belarus is better for the opposition than for the regime.” In other words, Bildt suggests, Internet and communications technology is necessarily good for democracy.

That may have been a reasonable assumption a few years ago, but governments are increasingly planning ahead in an effort to thwart the challenges to their power presented by the Internet and mobile networks. In countries like Belarus and Azerbaijan, governments – particularly via their police and militaries – are embedding themselves ever more deeply into the infrastructure of the Internet, diminishing the relative advantage challengers once held.

Related: Collusion and Collision in Internet Censorship

Unfortunately, many western democratic governments are doing the same, albeit with more rigorous legal restrictions limiting citizen arrests. The result, however, is that these governments are expanding their powers and weakening judicial oversight. Most notably, the U.S. Department of Defense’s National Security Agency (NSA) has been conducting warrantless wiretapping for nearly a decade. This activity has been possible thanks to the cooperation of Internet and phone companies like AT&T, as well as specialized equipment vendors like the California-based Narus (owned by Boeing) – which happens to sell similar equipment to governments throughout the Middle East and North Africa, including Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt. A cyber-security bill recently passed by the House of Representatives would further legitimize the NSA’s access to civilian communications despite a long-standing American value that says the U.S. military must not operate on U.S. soil against American citizens.

This state of affairs shows just how easily multinational telecommunications service and equipment companies seem to slip into close relationships with police and militaries around the world. Such coziness, however, invites abuse of power in all types of political systems.

People in developed societies now rely on digital networks for practically every aspect of their lives, including politics. It is time for all of us, as citizens of democracies, to use our votes, our investment dollars, and our choices as consumers and users of technology to constrain the power of governments and corporations across the world’s digital networks. If we fail to do so, there will be grave consequences: Democracy where it exists will be gradually, but severely, eroded. Its prospects elsewhere will be substantially diminished – as they have been in Azerbaijan.

Rebecca MacKinnon is the author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Failing Canada's Most Vulnerable

2012-05-24T07:45:15-04:00

Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism, has been a very busy man as of late. In less than five months, he has sought to redefine Canada’s threshold for asylum seekers, and to tighten the handshake that welcomes them to their new home. For those in the medical community providing care for, and advocating on behalf of, refugee patients, these efforts have caused considerable consternation. After a closer inspection of Bill C-31 and the more recent overhaul of the Interim Federal Health Program, it is not a stretch to see why.

Bill C-31, or the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act, was first introduced to Parliament in February 2012 with the intention of clamping down on “bogus” refugees, speeding up claimant processing times, and reducing government costs. Stretching a healthy 56 pages, C-31’s most objectionable provisions related to health include:

Automatic detention of asylum seekers for up to one year without review if deemed to land via an “irregular arrival.”
An embargo on permanent-resident applications and family reunification for five years after arrival.
Conditional permanent residency with the possibility of a later revocation.

As a group of Ontario-based physicians pointed out in a Toronto Star column, prolonged detention of refugee claimants leads to increased risk of suicidal thoughts, post-traumatic stress disorder, and self-harm. This comes in addition to incubating infectious diseases and exacerbating chronic ones. Public outcry has led Kenney to amend this portion of the bill, granting review of detention at 14 days, and again at six months. But the remainder of the bill stays unchanged. Delayed family reunification will still serve to weaken already fragile social supports and health, while revocation of already granted residency will still lead to social isolation, slow improvement of language skills, and poor mental health.

Related: A Risky Move to Securitize Immigration

In addition to the above reforms, C-31 also builds on the 2010 Conservative-led legislation, Bill C-11, or the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. It divides refugee claimants into two categories: those from “Designated Countries of Origin” (DCOs) and those not. The stated aim of DCO policy is to deter abuse of the refugee system by those who come from countries generally considered safe. One would expect a panel of experts to make such a crucial distinction – but Minister Kenney has a different idea. Bill C-11 contained no parliamentary oversight, but created a panel of public servants to make recommendation to the minister. C-31 goes one step further, eliminating this provision and granting the minister unilateral authority to deem which countries are considered safe and which are not.

The DCO distinction is not an esoteric one. It has direct and very harsh implications for more recent reforms to refugee health services provided under the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP). These changes do not require legislative reform; no parliamentary vote or committee review is required. Their scope (though not their consequences) requires only the approval of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Cabinet.

Like C-31, the stated aim of the IFHP change is cost-savings. It currently costs the Canadian government $84 million annually, and the Harper government is aiming for a reduction of $20 million. To achieve its ends, the government is leaving no category of refugee unaffected, even rolling back services for those who are government sponsored on recommendation from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR).

For these refugees, ironically referred to as “protected persons” in government releases, pre-reform benefits equate approximately to those available under most provincial social-assistance programs. Post-reform changes will bear little resemblance to this, with health coverage available only for conditions deemed to be of an “urgent or essential nature,” or to “prevent or treat a disease that is a risk to public health or a condition of public safety concern.”

What does that mean in practice? A ministry briefer illustrates a few examples. Come Canada Day, a protected person will be able to be assessed for coronary artery disease by a physician, but their statins and anti-hypertensives will not be covered. A protected person will still be able to see a nurse or physician for a diabetic assessment, but will receive no coverage for insulin. For protected persons, many vaccines don’t even meet these new thresholds. All of these examples are significant changes from current policy. For claimants from the newly created DCO category, the news is even worse. Coverage has been completely eliminated for prenatal care, labour and delivery, and emergency services. Every DCO acute myocardial infarction will go unfunded.

Related: Hard Choices Ahead on Health Spending

Kenney has defended these reforms on grounds that asylum seekers should not enjoy a level of government funding that Canadians themselves don’t receive. Physicians and refugee advocates have responded with both moral and economic arguments. André Picard has pointed out that it is exactly the vulnerability of refugees that necessitates broader health services. Dr. Mark Tyndall has also provided a reality check, arguing that the real challenge is connecting refugees with unfamiliar preventative services and primary care, not stopping them from abusing the system. A Hamilton Spectator health-provider op-ed highlights that, according to the ministry’s own data, refugee claimants’ per-capita health costs are only 10 per cent those of Canadians, a number that is expected to rise with cuts to prevention.

Jason Kenney’s stated ends are to strengthen Canada’s refugee selection process and to save government dollars. But by ignoring evidence contrary to his means, and by adopting a hostile stance to those on refugee health’s frontlines, he risks doing just the opposite. Bill C-31 and the IFHP reforms come into force in less than six weeks. Minister Kenney, you still have time to change course. July 1 deserves to remain a celebration for Canadians already here, and for those that have yet to come.

A version of this piece originally appeared on Open Medicine.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Everything in Between

2012-05-23T00:10:40-04:00

Political-science textbooks usually present the political spectrum as going from the extreme right to the extreme left. According to this schema, you have the libertarians on one side who believe in a small state whose responsibility should be to ensure the rule of law and safeguard contractual obligations. For these people, the world is an agglomeration of self-interested individuals in an open market and, as Margaret Thatcher famously put it, “There is no such thing as society.” For the extreme left, meanwhile, everything is social, because, well, no man is an island. From the property we own and the pay we earn to the air we breathe, everything is affected by, the result of, or contingent upon, social relations. These two extremes largely direct our thinking about political affairs.

Then, there is everything in between.

But it’s precisely this muddled middle that we should begin thinking about as one of the defining poles of the contemporary political playing field. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, political consciousness has redefined the right-left paradigm opposing “right-of-centre” and “left-of-centre.” In a way, the political spectrum has been clipped on both ends. And banishing both extremes from the playing field has, in the past few decades, resulted in redefining what an “extreme” position is. Just look in our own backyard: Prime Minister Stephen Harper has repeatedly referred to the NDP as “socialist,” while his own party has, in some circles, been summarily described as “fascist.” The same can be said of, say, left-of-centre governments of South and Central America, which – all rhetoric aside – are still far from socialist.

For most democracies, the political history of the past few decades can be reduced to a sort of pas de deux around an elephant in the room called the political centre. This usually leads to ideological parties betraying their base in the hopes of actually getting elected. But the centre is a moving target. Today, there are right and left wings in Communist China, just as there were in Soviet Russia. In the context of a liberal democracy, the centre is a general popular appraisal, at a given time, of what should be left to markets and what should be administered by the state.

One of the things the “Great Recession” of 2008 has revealed is just how interchangeable the centre-right and centre-left can be. In Canada, the Conservatives have run the biggest deficits in Canadian history. In the United States, a Democratic president used state coffers to bail out the country’s biggest banks. In Spain, it took a right-wing president to take control of troubled Bankia. These would be considered cardinal sins in normal times.

Related: Politics in an Uncertain Age

But these actions show that, in the end, centrist parties share the same inherent goal. The common denominator here is that the financial system must be saved at all costs. The economy is proving to be the ultimate social good that cannot be sacrificed. From big bankers to suburbanites, and from small-businesspeople to pensioners, most people are still on board despite enormous long-term sacrifices. Little does it matter that future generations will bear the brunt of the costs of bailing out the financial system, or that economic growth will perhaps still stall for 20 years, despite the extreme measures that were taken.

This is still the majority view, as evidenced by recent elections in the West. Most people just want their familiar points of reference back – to have a decent-paying job, an eventual retirement, and maybe some opportunities for upward mobility along the way. This sentiment is what got Obama elected at the dawn of the crisis. Ironically, it’s the same sentiment that, barely two years later, sent a wave of Republicans back to the House and Senate. The same frustration got the social-democratic parties out in Spain just before they gained power back in France. It got Labour out in Great Britain and would get David Cameron and Angela Merkel out in the U.K. and Germany, respectively, if they were up for re-election today. Even in Greece – the most fertile ground for western radicalism – centrist parties still came out number one and three when all the votes were counted in the most recent election.

The constant in this revolving door of centre-right/centre-left substitutions is the misplaced hope that “the other guy” will somehow right the ship. A decade ago, it looked like the right was sweeping Europe. Now, it just looks like a lamentable game of musical chairs.

Related: A Look Inside the Tea Party

True: This informal centrist coalition is being shaken. The Pirate Party has surprised many in Germany, even sending representatives to state parliaments this month. In Greece, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn garnered an alarming seven per cent support in the most recent election. About half of National Front supporters in France decided not to bother voting, this time, for what would normally have been their compromise candidate on the right in Nicolas Sarkozy. These are parties that profoundly challenge the rules of the game.

Closer to home, there’s the Tea Party in the United States that sprouted in opposition to the bank bailouts while yearning for the good ol’ days of a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. Occupy protesters, for their part, put the blame squarely on Wall Street. But in the end, aren’t the Tea Party and the Occupy protesters really opposing the same thing – a state-sponsored corporatocracy whose members refused to fall on their swords after placing a fatal bet? Does freedom from taxation to support bailing out the ultra-rich not amount to about the same thing as more equitable distribution of wealth to the 99 per cent?

In other words, the common enemy here is none other than the conflated centre. And the emergence of this mixed bag of fringe movements all over the western world has not only created new political forces, but has also revealed the centre as the dominant pole in the global political arena. Only time will tell if the muddled middle will ride out the general malaise. But as long as the centre stays strong, the new aristocracy will comfortably prevail.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Baby Boomers and the STD Bulge

2012-05-22T00:41:09-04:00

As a teenage sniper in the Haganah, fighting for Israel’s independence, I never imagined I’d end up being famous for talking candidly about sex. But someone had to do it, and I stepped up. Yet today, in my mid-80s, I sometimes wonder if I’ve been preaching to the deaf, at least where Baby Boomers are concerned.

Recent studies indicate there’s an alarming increase in the rates of sexually transmitted diseases among Baby Boomers. Why is it that a generation that grew up in what was supposedly an era of sexual liberation can often be dumber about STDs and the need for safer sex than their own offspring and pubescent grandkids?

We should all be a lot wiser now. There’s a wealth of information available about STDs, whether it’s via public health campaigns or any number of websites – most of them geared towards young people. Clearly, they also need to aim higher.

In a way, I think members of the Boomer generation share the same conceit as a lot of young people: They think they’re invincible.

Related: A Different Perspective on Aging

When Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex was published in 1983 – the first of more than 35 books that were triggered by my pioneering radio broadcasts – the main STD risks were chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, and syphilis. HIV/AIDS was still on the horizon. Then it exploded into an epidemic and, for a while, people – particularly those belonging to post-Boomer generations – became hyper-aware of the dangers.

Now, with the initial horrors of the AIDS crisis behind us, when becoming HIV positive is no longer a death sentence – at least in the developed nations – people are tending to let their guard down.

Compounding this “It can’t happen to me” attitude is the fact that Boomers are ill-informed about STDs, and wouldn’t necessarily be able to identify the symptoms. At the same time, they’re living longer and being told – correctly, of course – that it’s good to keep having sex. Treatments for erectile dysfunction and the availability of effective female lubricants nowadays make this easier than before.

This would be fine if Boomers were smart about the risks, but they grew up in an age when sex education was virtually non-existent. By the time AIDS came along, many of them were settled down, raising families, and more concerned about what their kids might be up to than about their own sexual habits.

Related: Debunking the 'Grey Tsunami' Meme

So what’s to be done? In a nutshell, there needs to be more education. We need to keep shouting information from the rooftops, and doctors need to pay closer attention to their patients’ sexual health.

Unfortunately, my sense is that a lot of doctors feel uncomfortable talking to older patients about sex, and, for their part, Boomers are reluctant or embarrassed to broach the subject.

Well, get over it. We’re adults. Having a healthy sex life is as important as eating properly and getting enough exercise.

Boomers: When you go to see your family doctor, gynecologist, or urologist, go prepared with questions. Doctors generally have the answers, or can refer you to someone who does. It’s just that they may not bring the subject up on their own – you need to be proactive about it.

I believe that having sex is fundamental to human existence. It’s a wonderful, joyous, life-affirming shared activity – and not just for young people. But Boomers must recognize that the same risks apply to them as everyone else.

Photo courtesy of Elliot Margolies.

Join the Food Revolution

2012-05-18T08:20:23-04:00

According to the World Health Organization, global obesity rates have more than doubled since 1980. For the first time in history, being overweight is killing more people than being underweight. At least 2.8 million adults around the world die each year from being overweight or obese. And yet, obesity is preventable.

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is known for his successful campaign against the use of processed foods in national schools in England – a campaign he’s working to spread around the world. This Saturday, May 19, The Jamie Oliver Foundation is organizing a global Food Revolution Day with events aimed at improving diets and cooking habits.

We reached Jamie Oliver in London ahead of the day of action.

What are you hoping to achieve this weekend?

Obesity and other diet-related illnesses aren’t going to disappear overnight, but small changes will help. Cook something from real food. Grow a vegetable. Teach a friend to cook. Learn a new recipe. Have people over for dinner. Get excited about food. Join the thousands of people on May 19 who are showing they care. And stay tuned: This is only the beginning. Check out www.foodrevolutionday.com for a list of things happening in your area.

What is the most creative event being held on the 19th that you have heard of at this point?

There are so many things happening that it’s truly humbling. I’ve heard about a bread-making course in Italy, a free organic food cookery lesson in Brazil, one of Hong Kong’s biggest chefs doing a free demo, and some amazing events in places like Dubai, Turkey, Malaysia, and Slovakia.

A lovely Canadian woman getting married in Portugal on Saturday is dedicating her entire wedding to the food revolution. In lieu of favors, she and her soon-to-be husband are making a donation to the Jamie Oliver Foundation, and all of the food they are serving will be local Portuguese dishes. They are even saying something in their vows about their commitment to food. It’s lovely and an honor for me.

And a great group in Toronto is doing a pass-along cooking lesson. You can check it out here.

One of the chief obstacles to your movement in North America is that bad food is really cheap. How do you encourage people to change their eating habits under these circumstances?

Cheap, processed food stops being cheap when you have to feed more than two people. I have spent time in some poor regions of the world, and I have noticed the people in those areas eating some incredible food. You know why? Because they know how to cook. Inexpensive beans or lentils, cheap cuts of meat, a little rice or pasta, and a few onions can make a great dish – and serve a lot of people very inexpensively. But none of that can happen if you don’t know what to do with the lentils or cheap cuts of meat. Once we teach people how to cook again, they will be able to make better choices. They will be able to duck and dive and find ways to economize. Fast-food drive-thru won’t look so appealing any more.

In Canada, students recently fought junk-food bans in schools, saying such bans were violating their right to choose what they eat. How do you respond to that kind of reaction?

Why should kids get to choose what they eat? They are children. They need education. Do they choose whether to learn math and history? Is that violating their rights – forcing them to go to school when they want to play video games all day? I don’t even know how to respond to such a ridiculous situation. Kids need to be given the best food possible to set them on a path for a healthy and successful life.

What practical advice can you offer other countries based on your experience with schoolchildren in the U.K.?

Take charge and keep at it. You’ve got to market better foods to kids. When we boycotted the flavored milk in Huntington, W.Va., all the younger kids in the school chose the plain milk. When asked why, they said it was because their teacher had told them to. It’s that simple with the younger ones. With the older ones, you have to be a bit more clever. Make it cool to choose healthier foods. Make it cool to learn to cook. Recruit a diverse group of influential kids to be your ambassadors, and market to them every day. Beat the big food companies at their own game.

Why is this personally so important to you?

Because our kids are the first generation not to live longer lives than their parents. And as a father, that is unacceptable to me. If making this kind of telly and hosting Food Revolution Day can help get things back on track, then I have an obligation to do it. As a chef and a parent, I care about food and our future too much not to.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Police: Presumed Racist Until Proven Otherwise?

2012-05-17T04:55:42-04:00

On May 4, Ottawa police announced that they have agreed to collect race-based data. This, they revealed, has been agreed to as part of a settlement of a human-rights complaint that was initiated after a seemingly textbook case of racial profiling.

The complaint came from a then-18-year-old black youth, Chad Aiken, who was stopped by police while driving his mom’s Mercedes. Aiken alleged that he was stopped because he is black, and also claimed that the police assaulted him after he asked for their badge numbers. While few other details have been made public, what seems to have been central to vindicating Aiken’s claims is an audio recording that his fast-thinking girlfriend captured of the incident.

Without getting into whether it is a positive or negative thing that Ottawa police have agreed to collect these race-based statistics, what is problematic about this case – and the public’s reaction to it – is that it serves to encourage continual acceptance of the idea that the word of a black man against a police officer is effectively worthless in its own right.

Are all Canadians genuinely equal before the law? Within our public consciousness, it seems that whereas the average Canadian who is intercepted by a police officer enjoys the privilege of being assumed credible and honest until proven otherwise, blacks in these circumstances are presumed to be inherently non-credible until they prove the opposite.

Related: What It Means to Be Black in Canada

Worse still, within the Canadian public psyche, blacks are not permitted to prove their credibility or honesty through their own words, conduct, or character (heavens no!), but must rely on a recording device or brave witness – the value of whose testimony diminishes in proportion with the amount of melanin in their skin.

This presumption of black dishonesty might be understandable if it weren’t the case that there is a corpus of data consistently revealing that there are disproportionately higher levels of police bias and misconduct being exercised against black people (especially young black men) throughout North America and much of the western world.

In the last few years alone, several reports have documented rampant anti-black over-policing and racial profiling in Toronto, Kingston, and Montreal.

This program of state-sponsored and often-deliberate anti-black police harassment is no doubt linked in meaningful ways to the fact that since 2000, the number of blacks in federal prisons has spiked by 52 per cent. By 2010-2011, the proportion of blacks in federal prisons had risen to 9.12 per cent, despite the fact that blacks only represent about 2.5 per cent of Canada’s general population.

Unfortunately, some police officers also seem less inhibited to exercise police brutality or fatal force against black Canadians. Just think of some of the latest cases: Stacy Bonds, Junior Alexander Manon, Michael Eligon, and Eric Osawe. (In the latter case, an officer has now been charged with second-degree murder for fatally shooting Osawe.)

Related: Racism and a Living Cake

As if all of the above is not enough, The Toronto Star recently conducted a nationwide investigation that ultimately led to a startling finding: Since 2005, there have been more than 100 cases across Canada involving more than 120 officers who were reprimanded by judges for “outright lying, misleading or fabricating evidence.” Since The Star released its report, Ontario’s chief prosecutor has promised to investigate the matter of police officers who are found to have lied in court.

With this kind of evidence revealing the systemic practice of anti-black racism in Canadian policing, in addition to some officers’ apparent willingness to lie in court, might it not be foolish for us to leave the police to resolve these issue themselves? In order to bolster our credibility as a free and democratic society, it seems we need a national discussion on whether the law should shift the burden onto officers (regardless of their race).

If we can reopen tired national debates on when a human life starts, squabble over proper decorum in the House of Commons, and exchange jabs about which federal party was a latent supporter of Hitler, I don’t see why Canadians cannot openly, fairly, and fervently debate the merits of requiring that in each and every case, police be obliged to rebut the presumption that their interception of a black person is based on racial profiling or some other form of anti-black racism.

Introducing a reverse presumption of anti-black racism for Canadian police officers may seem unfair, but it is no less so than presuming that every black person who submits a complaint of police misconduct is a liar, as was the case from the 1600s to the 1860s. If introducing extreme precautionary measures is what is required to counter the systemic racism that still prevails in some aspects of Canadian society, then that is what we must do.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Avoiding a Lost Decade in Canada

2012-05-16T00:27:48-04:00

This is the first article in a two-part series on understanding alternative scenarios for the future of employment and the Canadian economy. In April, Deloitte and the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA) released a report entitled CanadaWorks 2025. Through discussions with 50 notable academics, CEOs, Chairs, ex-Ministers, and economists, the report outlined three alternative – but plausible – future scenarios for Canada, setting the foundations for a broader public-policy debate on what Canada needs to do to remain economically competitive.

As the recent election in France signals another shift in the European austerity debate, Canada has entered its own round of fiscal conservatism, characterized by a discourse that is polarized rather than nuanced. Lost is the notion that fiscal prudence in some domains need not be mutually exclusive from selective and bold investment in other areas.

The best business and financial managers know that real long-term growth comes only through clear vision and measured risk. What calculated risks are Canadian governments willing to take to invest in a prosperous future? Looking to position Canada for success in 15 years will require a balance between the two polar positions in the austerity debate, and the courage to distinguish between genuine investment in the future and politically expedient spending for today.

Related: Ensuring Canada's Economic Recovery

Canada’s long-term future is rarely debated as part of the public discourse. This is in part because we are buoyed by high commodity prices, low unemployment, and relative stability. Yet, Canada is at an inflection point. Whether by design or by an accident of history, Canadians are, for the most part, currently prosperous. On the horizon, however, there are warning signs that, if ignored, could result in a “lost decade” of declining growth and lost opportunity. The governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, recently alluded to record levels of debt, slow income gains, and tepid export growth as signs of a new era of stagnating economic progress.

Such warnings assume that Canada will lag in productivity, output, and innovation. However, if these assumptions are challenged, an entirely different decade may be awaiting our firms and workers: We could, as the Deloitte-HRPA report suggests, see a Canada that resembles a “strong and robust” “northern tiger.”

This is precisely what Deloitte and the HRPA partnered to examine. Through research and interviews, we sought to define alternative (but ultimately plausible) scenarios for the future of the Canadian economy, and, in doing so, to develop public-policy recommendations that position Canada for success.

In order for Canada to become a “northern tiger” (with a strong, diverse economy), we need public- and private-sector leadership capable of navigating beyond the status quo. Our research demonstrated that maintaining the status quo would leave Canada on a potentially dangerous course. Imagining a scenario where global recovery flounders, we examined what Canada’s lost decade would look like for our economy and its firms. While it would be markedly different from the Japanese experience (which popularized the phrase “lost decade”), it would have one key similarity – a jarring halt to the conventional wisdom around the inevitability of economic progress.

Through our research and interviews, it became clear that some Canadian influencers view a lost decade as a distinct possibility. They envision a future where GDP growth hovers at one per cent, and where, for the first time, we see jobs without skilled people to fill them, and people without the skills to fill jobs. Structural unemployment would be driven by an immigration system that continues to put the brakes on the potential of new Canadians, failing to balance the economic drag of a rapidly aging population and an education system that is ill-equipped to prepare the graduates that our labour market demands. Additionally, in this dark future, chronic underinvestment in machinery and equipment, a lack of availability of risk capital, and insufficient support for innovation would leave Canadian firms struggling with continued low productivity.

Some of our interviewees believed this to be too dark a depiction of the future, pointing to the buffer that our natural-resources sector provides. Our argument is that such a resources boom may represent jobless growth. Mining, oil, and gas extraction offer well-paid jobs, but few of them: Today, those sectors employ fewer than 200,000 Canadians. Even if the industry tripled in size by 2025, it would still represent less than three to four per cent of all the jobs in the country. In other words, while Canada’s GDP might rise due to sustainable increases in the price of oil, the resulting wealth (as seen in buoyant stocks and healthy RRSPs) would mask the many underlying workplace and equity challenges present in the economy, a scenario we call “unsustainable prosperity.”

Related: Tory Deficits and the Austerity Budget Ruse

So what is to be done? If Canada is to avoid these two scenarios and be more than a staples economy of hewers of wood and drawers of water and oil, we need to make some fundamental changes such as bold investments in education and immigration policy. The second part in this series will be dedicated to examining the need for these investments in detail. The challenge is that many of these investments will come with a heavy price tag when government leaders are locked in a period of fiscal austerity.

However, it is misleading to suggest that austerity-focused governments avoid large investments. At the risk of wading into a separate debate, it is important to recognize that we spend vast multi-year sums on national defence in this country. To take just a few examples, could similar sums of money not be invested to modernize the Canadian K-12 classroom and build a 21st-century curriculum to teach children the basics of business and technology? Could we not invest more seriously in immigrant credentialization and training or targeted upgrades to our crumbling infrastructure to improve labour mobility?

Though our thesis may differ from the recently released Drummond report on Ontario’s fiscal challenges, the spirit of its recommendations are aligned. As Don Drummond, chair of the commission on public-service reform, argues, “across the board” austerity plans can be damaging. His report states that, “Higher priority should be assigned to programs and activities that invest in the future as opposed to those that serve the current status quo. This is never easy, the status quo has plenty of advocates; the future does not.” It is time we think critically about the investments we need to make as a country to ensure a positive future for the Canadian workplace.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

2012-05-15T00:55:02-04:00

For much of the 20th century, governments around the world wanted to boldly go where no man had gone before. More recently, though, austerity budgets around the world and political mindsets that view science with suspicion have threatened the survival of the kinds of projects that put humans on the moon.

I got my PhD in the 1970s, when we finally had the technology to begin answering the question that, for millennia, has boggled the minds of priests, philosophers, and anybody who’s looked up to the stars: Are we alone? After all these centuries, I belong to the first generation that can begin answering that question.

I joined the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, helping to found the SETI Institute. The institute’s searches were funded entirely by NASA until 1993, when a single senator terminated our funding. We’ve been raising funds privately since then. But last year, we had to temporarily shut down because we couldn’t secure funding to keep our operation going – and our operating cost is only $100,000 a month, which is essentially a rounding error in a federal budget.

Related: NASA Wants You to Plan Martian Exploration

NASA itself, probably the best-known scientific institution on the planet, is under enormous financial stress, although it has fared better than some other agencies in recent budgets. Now, for the first time, American astronauts have to hitch a ride with the Russians if they want to get to space.

It is extremely worrisome to see politicians refusing to invest in science and technology when we need it the most – when our survival depends on our ability to use it to get ourselves out of the holes that we’ve dug. This dynamic is responsible, for instance, for the never-ending fight to secure funding for climate science.

We would all be better off if our elected officials could think ahead, not just to next year’s budget, but tens, even hundreds of years down the line. Civilizations used to be able to take a longer view, simply because things changed less rapidly. (Remember, there was a 400-year gap between the printing press and the typewriter.) That’s not the case today, when things are turning over in time scales of years, or even months. People are getting used to the idea that their tools will change. What they learn to use today, they’re going to have to relearn to use three months from now. This is, fundamentally, a new point of view.

But there are still problems that have intrinsically longer time scales that are set by the planet and the laws of physics, such as the warming and cooling of the planet, shifting of the tectonic plates, desertification, and so much more. If you want to solve our ecological challenges, you have to think in 500-year time scales. Other ambitions, like sustaining a colony on Mars or making contact with extraterrestrial life, are similarly long term in their outlook, if not quite 500 years away.

Taking the long view, the importance of education becomes clear. It’s lamentable that individuals with decision-making power would in any way celebrate their ignorance of science and technology and our need to innovate. Another disturbing trend is the politicization of science of all kinds, degrading a field that is based on observation and fact by overrunning it with opinion and sentiment. Robust public education – not just in the sciences and maths, but also in language, history, and more – will ensure that students of today don’t have these same blind spots and biases when it’s their turn to control the levers of power.

Questions about our place in the universe, and how our behavior affects the planet, are what stimulate and sustain interest in science, just like the space race did in the 1950s and ’60s. When it comes to my line of work, I believe that projects such as SETI can profoundly change the way we see ourselves and our relationships with other earthlings and our home world.

Related: First Ever Earth-Sized Planet Discovered

The Kepler Telescope, run by NASA, has led to more discoveries in the past three years about potentially habitable planets in the Milky Way than we’d previously found in decades. It has legitimized SETI in a way that we couldn’t before, because now we can finally say, “If there’s life anywhere, this is where it’s going to be.”

The work of NASA, SETI, and other foundations contributing to this research has given us this amazing opportunity to appreciate the Earth as one of probably billions of planets within our galaxy, and to appreciate our galaxy as one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. That is profoundly humbling.

I keep a bottle of champagne on ice in case we happen upon signs of someone else’s technology – that is, extraterrestrial intelligence – during my lifetime. Now, we’re not talking about extraterrestrial salvation, or some message that explains the meaning of existence. Extraterrestrial life forms are not going to tell us how to solve our problems. What we’re looking for is a proof of existence – likely an electromagnetic contact – rather than something on our doorstep threatening us. It will be a huge opportunity to learn about where we fit into the vastness of the cosmos. But we’re not going to find it at all unless we transform into a global society – one able to see the big picture – and figure out how to survive as a technological civilization far, far into the future.

Photo courtesy of Adam Evans.

Fighting for the Arts

2012-05-15T10:55:19-04:00

Canadian documentaries are an important part of the country’s multibillion-dollar film industry, and institutions such as the National Film Board have historically offered support to Canada’s emerging artists. Facing cuts, Canada’s documentary filmmakers are rallying to save one of the country’s most cherished art forms.

Award-winning director of Up the Yangze and China Heavyweight, Yung Chang discusses why he believes arts funding is worth fighting for:

Photo courtesy of Sean Liliani.

Foreign Affairs in Disarray?

2012-05-14T01:58:39-04:00

For decades, Canada has put most of its economic and foreign-policy eggs in the American basket. However, the prolonged economic crisis in the U.S. makes it clear that the Harper government needs to make new friends and influence people beyond those in North America. So far, the government’s record in other important world regions is not encouraging.

Rescuing the “Americas Strategy”

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched the Conservatives’ “Americas Strategy” in July 2007, the government identified the region as a “critical international priority.” Increased attention to Latin America makes sense, given the increasing maturity of the region’s democracies, the rising prominence of countries like Brazil and Mexico, the growing economies of many countries in the region, the longstanding links between Canadian and Latin American civil-society organizations, and the presence of many Canadian mining companies in the region.

Unfortunately, the strategy never reached its potential and is now in need of a reboot. No new resources have been allocated, and the main focus has been a series of trade deals with Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica, Panama, and Honduras. The heavy focus on trade suggests that the strategy is designed to promote the prosperity of a few Canadian companies rather than the people of Canada or of the region. Meanwhile, Canada’s image is becoming increasingly tarnished as mining companies face a range of criticism from environmental, human-rights, and indigenous organizations throughout the region.

Related: Canada's Epic Fail in Latin America

Out of Africa

Apart from some well-publicized humanitarian funding for victims of the drought/conflict in Somalia, the Harper government’s interest in sub-Saharan Africa since the 2011 election has continued along the trajectory established after it was first elected in 2006. It froze and then cut foreign aid, closed four embassies and consulates, and Canada’s contribution to UN peacekeeping in Africa is at an all-time low. Ditto our reputation across the continent.

Former Canadian diplomat John Schram deplores the closing of embassies. “In effect,” he says, closing an embassy is “walking away from 50 years of Canadian investment,” abandoning hard-won credibility and ceding ground to “Chinese, Indian, Brazilian and European competition in the race to win markets and influence.” Today, Canada has embassies in fewer than one-third of Africa’s 54 countries, while Brazil is represented in more than half and China in 47.

This is not to say that Canada has no interest in Africa. On the contrary: According to the Canadian Council on Africa, since 2000, Canadian mining companies have spent $15 billion in mineral extraction and exploration on the continent, and the current value of fixed mining assets owned by the Canadian mining industry in Africa stands at $32 billion, a ten-fold increase over the past decade. The Harper government applauds this kind of investment, but is openly reluctant to rein in the worst excesses of Canadian mining companies abroad.

Net Canadian official development assistance to Africa grew significantly during the first years of the Harper government, but in 2010, then-foreign-minister Lawrence Cannon announced that there would be no more increases. The Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) “countries of focus” in Africa have been reduced from 14 to seven. Four of them (Senegal, Ghana, Tanzania, and Mozambique) are what the donor community likes to call “better performers.” As a result, they are on every donor’s priority list, leading to donor crowding and co-ordination problems. But CIDA has a mania, these days, for “results,” and where better to get results than in countries with fewer problems than others?

Related: CIDA's Risky Business Venture

Asia: Putting on the Flip-flops

Finally, Canada needs to play catch-up in Asia, home to the world’s fastest-growing economies. Disregarding Asia may have been forgivable when its population consisted only of three billion-plus very poor people, but Europe and the U.S. noticed a decade ago that Asia was going to become either their new rival or – preferably – their partner in global affairs, especially trade.

With Canada’s huge immigrant population from this mega-region, we should have been ahead of the game, not the last to notice. During the early Harper years, we were coy with the Chinese and ignored the Indians as we chased trade with Colombia and worried about the threat from Hamas. Now, with a stalled world economy, Harper belatedly joins the supplicants, asking to be allowed to sit among the observers at ASEAN Summits. Even then we arrive invisibly, as the junior yes-man to the U.S., forgotten by friends we made in decades past. Asians respect dignity, wisdom, and – perhaps most of all – consistency in their friends. In this regard, Canada has a lot of lost ground to make up.

In sum, after years of neglect (or worse), Canada needs a sustained engagement with the “developing” world – and not one based solely on ad hoc or narrowly defined self-interest.

This article has been adapted from a longer paper, “The Cowboy Way,” available at www.mcleodgroup.ca.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.