Category Archives: commentary

Eaves.ca Blogging Moment #7 (2009 Edition): Explaining the New to the Old

Back in 2007 I published a list of top ten blogging moments – times I felt blogging resulted in something fun or interesting. I got numerous notes from friends who found it fun to read (though some were not fans) so I’m giving it another go. Even without these moments it has been rewarding, but it is nice to reflect on them to understand why spending so many hours, often late at night, trying to post 4 times a week can give you something back that no paycheck can offer. Moreover, this is a chance to celebrate some good fortune and link to people who’ve made this project a little more fun. So here we go…

Eaves.ca Blogging Moment #7 (2009 Edition): Explaining the New to the Old

This year I felt the Opinion page of the Globe needed a loyal opposition. With pretty much every columnist over 50 and most over 60 I was getting tired of hearing how social media was destroying media (and democracy) (it isn’t), global warming didn’t exist, twitter was useless (it isn’t), Palin is a better orator than Obama (she isn’t) and young people don’t care about their country (they do)

If you’ve tuned out of the Globe’s opinion page don’t worry, you’re not alone. You likely are either:

a) under 40;
b) use the internet;
c) think evidence and science matter; or
d) all of the above

The only reason it is depressing is that I believe the Globe matters and I fear they’ve given up on attracting readers who answered (a) to the above.

However, protesting has led to lots of fun, including this debate with Michael Valpy (him, me, him, me) and this response to Lawrence Martin’s piece which, more exciting still, became part of the reading list for Queen’s Pols 110 course.

Eaves.ca Blogging Moment #8 (2009 Edition): Blogging leads to Book Chapters!

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Eaves.ca Blogging Moment #8 (2009 Edition): Blogging leads to Book Chapters!

First, my blogging, writing, work, consulting and public speaking on public service sector renewal earns me the opportunity to write a chapter in O’Reilly Media’s upcoming book on Open Government.

Needless to say, I’m excited.

(Shameless plug within a shameless list: I’ll be giving a talk about open, technology social change and the future of government, some of the themes covered in the chapter, at the Ontario College of Art and Design on January 14th. Details and tickets here, 200 gone, about 60 left.)

Second, after passing it under the noses of numerous magazine editors who expressed interest but ultimately pass it up, Taylor and I decide to simply publish Missing The Link: Why Old Media still doesn’t get the Internet as a website.

The sad news: We wrote it 3 years ago And I think it is just as relevant today.

The good news: Looks like an academic publisher is very interested and will be turning it a chapter for a book. Hurray for just putting stuff out there.

Eaves.ca Blogging Moment #9 (2009 Edition): Rankings!

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Eaves.ca Blogging Moment #9 (2009 Edition): Rankings!

Eaves.ca gets ranked as the 5th most popular Canadian political blog on a Dime a Dozen‘s blog. I’m fairly certain that some of the other blogs lower on the list may get more traffic, but then maybe not… Either way, it was nice to be mentioned.

I’ve noticed I’ve dropped off the list – it may be that the curator has decided my blog isn’t sufficiently political (I do blog about many things) since my Google juice (page rank of 6) and Alexa ranking (444,095) should have had me in 5 place again…. either way it nice to make anyone’s list.

Also nice was that someone nominated me for a Canadian Blog Award. I don’t know who it was, but thank you! Both the top 25 list and the awards take a lot of work so definitely want to send out a thank you to the curators of both for simply keeping them up regardless of whether I’m on them or not.

This stuff aside, my traffic has been up markedly this year, which has been nice. So mostly, I want to thank readers for simply showing up.

Eaves.ca blogging moment #10 (2009 Edition): The CPSR Rat Pack

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#10 Finding the Canadian Public Service Sector Renewal Rat Pack

Through blogging and twitter I discovered a community of public service sector renewal geeks who are equally driven by passion and a belief in the importance of a vibrant, successful and modern public service.

I’ve met some of this crew in the flesh, others I know only through email, comments, reading their blogs or twitter. But whether I’ve met them or not they have been a real community – a group of people with whom I can bounce ideas off of and explore new thoughts. More importantly, we support one another.

Without my blog, I’m not sure I’d have found them or them me.

So three cheers to the Rat Pack of Public Service Sector Renewal. Everyone should be so lucky as to find peers like these.

Some of the Rat Pack members include: Nick Charney, Etienne Laliberte, Peter Cowan, Thomas Kearney, Laura Wesley, Chelsea Edgell, David Hume, Doug Bastien, Tariq Piracha, Jeff Braybrook, Richard Smith, Stephanie Hayes and Bowen Moren.

A Sad Day for Canadian Democracy

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I, like many other people, was unsurprised but depressed to hear about the prorogation of Parliament yesterday. Lots has been written on it, much of it very intelligent, some of it not.

Andrew Coyne has a fantastic piece about how, as Radiohead would sing, you do it to yourself and that Parliament has consistently allowed itself to become irrelevant through a thousand small cuts. He is also correct in asserting that only its members can make it relevant again.

Kady O’Malley probably has the best insight in this interview. Why prorogue yesterday? Why not wait until when the House comes back in January in case some emergency arose that required Parliament’s attention. The unusual timing suggests the government wants to avoid letting committees or Parliamentarians do their work (mostly likely on the Afghan detainee problem).

On the less inspired side is conservative blogger Stephen Taylor. Stephen has good post and does as good a job as anyone can expect defending the indefensible. But ultimately, nothing he says counters O’Malley’s point. Moreover, his attempt to suggest that proroguing is constitutionally required (not even the PMO is making this claim) and that it is only those in Opposition who are acting politically is demolished by Ibbitson’s deadly and even handed column on the subject (very much worth reading).

Let there be no mistake, this is a political move.

Just as it was back in 2003 when (as Ibbitson rightly points out) Chretien prorogued Parliament in 2003 to avoid critics of the sponsorship program. Note this was also the time when Chretien’s popularity began to slide… So do people care about the Afghan detainee problem? No (just like they didn’t initially care about the sponsorship scandal). They DO care when their government ceases to be accountable, when it runs and hides from its mistakes. Doing so irrevocably hurt Chretien. It may end up doing the same to this government.

Either way, as pretty much every columnist seems to be saying, today our democracy is a little weaker, and Parliament a little less relevant.

The Supreme Court of Canada: There are no journalists, only citizens

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I’ll confess some confusion around the slant taken by several newspapers and media outfits regarding yesterday’s supreme court decision on defense of libel claims.

For those new to this story, yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a libel claim can be defeated even when the facts or allegations made turn out to be false (e.g. I don’t owe you money if I say something nasty and untrue about you) as long as the story was in the public interest and I met a certain standard around trying to ascertain the truth. In short, my intentions, not my output, is what matters most. This new line of defense has a fancy new name to go with it… the defence of responsible communication.

Boring, and esoteric? Hardly.

Notice how it isn’t called “the defence of responsible journalism?” (although, ahem, someone should let CTV know). This story matters as it demonstrates that the law is finally beginning to grasp what the internet means for our democracy and society.

Sadly, the Globe, CBC, National Post and CTV (indeed everyone with the exception of Colby Cosh at Macleans) all framed the decision as being about journalism and journalists.

It isn’t.

This is about all us – and our rights and responsible in a democracy in the internet age. Indeed, as if to hammer home this point the justices went out of their way to in their decision to essentially say: there is no such thing as “a journalist” in the legal sense.

A second preliminary question is what the new defence should be called. In arguments before us, the defence was referred to as the responsible journalism test. This has the value of capturing the essence of the defence in succinct style. However, the traditional media are rapidly being complemented by new ways of communicating on matters of public interest, many of them online, which do not involve journalists. These new disseminators of news and information should, absent good reasons for exclusion, be subject to the same laws as established media outlets. I agree with Lord Hoffmann that the new defence is “available to anyone who publishes material of public interest in any medium” [paragraph 96]

and early they went ever further:

The press and others engaged in public communication on matters of public interest, like bloggers, must act carefully, having regard to the injury to reputation that a false statement can cause. [paragraph 62]

If you are going to say “blogger” you might as well say “citizen.” All the more so when “publishing material of public interest in any medium” includes blogs, twitter, an SMS text message, a youtube video… mediums through which anyone can publish and broadcast.

Rather than being about journalism this case was about freedom of expression and about laying a legal framework for a post-journalism world. Traditional journalists benefit as well (which is nice – and there will still be demand for their services) but the decision is so much broader and far reaching than them. At its core, this is about what one citizen can say about another citizen, be that in the Globe, on CBC, on my blog, or anywhere. And rather than celebrate or connote any unique status upon journalist it does the opposite. The ruling acknowledges that we are all now journalists and that we need a legal regime that recognizes this reality.

I suspect some journalists will likely protest this post. But the ruling reflects reality. The notion of journalists as a professional class was and has always been problematic. There are no standards to guide the profession and no professional college to supervise members (as there is with the legal or medical profession). Some institutions take on the role of standard setting themselves (read journalism schools and media outlets) but they have no enforcement capacity and ultimately this is not a self-regulated profession. Rather, it has always been regulated by the courts. Technology has just made that more evident, and now the courts have too. Today, when speaking of others we are all a little better protected, and also have the burden of behaving a little more responsibly.

Detailing the Vortex – Canada & Afghan Prisoners

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Campbell Clark has a piece in the Globe today outlining in journalistic fashion how the machinery of the public service was disorganized and at odds with itself and thus, as a result, the truth and accountability become the first victim. I thought it was a good follow up for those who found my piece from yesterday on how Canada has entered a Bush-like vortex to be interesting.

Someone at the Globe thinks that this story has legs – which is good, since it is of paramount importance to Canadians. If a ministry as important as Foreign Affairs handling an issue as important as the war in Afghanistan can’t tell us where the buck stops then perhaps the model we presently have is broken.

I hope that this situation becomes a case study in Public Policy schools across the country. It is a classic example of the types of conflicts public servants regularly face: what to do when what a political master (or more senior public servant) wants to hear conflicts with all evidence and reality? And don’t think that Colvin was an isolated issue. Remember there were 21 other public servants in addition to Colvin who were subpoenaed by the Military Police Complaints Commission (MPCC) but did not testify. (As an aside: The MPCC – the committee that originally subpoenaed Richard Colvin and which the government tried to block from doing so – ultimately prompting MPs of the The House of Commons’ Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan to subpoena Colvin). Maybe they have nothing of interest to share. But suspect this is not the case – as if it were, why not just testify? Instead, I suspect they have stories that are similar to Colvin’s (or support his) but they fear for their careers too greatly. But for them all that testifying promises is the possibility of ending their careers and the risks of being forever marginalized by senior public servants who don’t want trouble with their political masters…

On that note, I’ll end by reposting an anonymous comment from yesterday’s Globe website that appeared under my article. Suspect there is another story here.

While it is to a far smaller degree on the marality scale, I can assure you all that this is a matter of routine in government/civil servant sectors. I work at CMHC and have been present at a meeting where we were directed as to the language we were to use in upcoming publications. The change was in direct conflict with our mandate to provide unbiased information to the public. When this concern was brought up and a request for written directions made, we were all told very directly that there would never be a written record of the meeting, or the directions.

As this policy remains in place, and we remain in violation of our own priniciples, the higher ups are having to scramble to cover themselves as dissatisfaction grows. The president recently had the director of our function `fall on his sword`over suggestions that it was her that had directed this change in policy.

We all await the next directive that allegedly doesn’t come from her via the PMO.

Has Canada entered a Bush-Like Vortex?

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No new piece on eaves.ca today as I wrote a special for the Globe and Mail.

The piece is entitled Has Canada entered a ‘Bush-like vortex’? and explores how the Colvin testimony suggests the public service has become compromised in a critical way. Specifically, it suggests that increasingly, public servants are being forced to shape facts and the truth to fit a narrative already constructed by our government. It’s a dangerous path down which president Bush took the American public administration with disastrous results. Here, with out traditions of a greater separation between the political and the bureaucratic, the outcome could be even worse.

Anyway, you read it here on the Globe site. I’ll cross post it tomorrow.

Articles I'm Digesting 15/12/2009

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Here are some pieces I’ve been reading of late:

You Can’t Handle the Truth by Mark Pothier in the Boston Globe

A great piece about how the classification of drugs used by most Western countries is completely divorced from how much harm those drugs cause. This isn’t surprising, but as the evidence begins to mount regarding which drugs are actually harmful (read alcohol, cocaine or heroine) versus those which are significantly less harmful (read Ecstasy or LSD) the question will increasingly emerge – will science ever inform our policies around managing these types of substances. Indeed, it is disturbing (and, er… sobering) to once again see the only substance I use the list – alcohol – be put in such a stark and negative light.

At some point a real conversation about drugs is going to occur in the United States – I just hope it is sooner rather than later as it will have a profound effect on effectively we can deal with the tragic situation we have around substance abuse this side of the border.

Fla. Court Tells Judges and Lawyers to “Unfriend” Each Other (the AP)

Always fascinating to see how different fields respond to social networking. In this case a Florida…

…committee ruled Nov. 17 that online “friendships” could create the impression that lawyers are in a special position to influence their judge friends.

This is a great example of how social networking can cause some professions to actually become less transparent and, I would argue, harms the long term credibility of the institution. Notice here that the committee isn’t ruling that judges and lawyers can’t be friends, they are ruling that it would be harmful if the public could see that they are friends. So, in essence, if being a friend compromises the judgment of a judge, we solve that by preventing the public from seeing that the conflict could exist, rather than dealing with the conflict. Weird.

The last line is priceless:

McGrady, who is sending a copy of the ruling to the 69 judges in his circuit, said this potential conflict of interest is why he doesn’t have a Facebook page.

“If somebody’s my friend, I’ll call them on the phone,” he said, chuckling.

Errr, right. Good to keep it all in the old boys network where those on the inside know where the conflict may lie, but there is not digital trail or map that might allow the public to be better informed… Oh, and you’re the last generation that will only “pick up the phone” so this solution has, at best, a 20 year shelf life to it.

The Killer App of 1900 by Glenn Fleishman in Publicola

As some readers know, I’m a big fan of historical examples that show we are experiencing similar pressures, transformations, evolutions as experienced in the past. Part of it is the historian in me, part of it is how it helps ease the minds of those concerned or intimidated by change. There are, occasionally, genuinely new things that appear under the sun – but often those of us interested in technology and social change are too quick to scream “This is new! It changes everything!” Moreover, it does a disservice to our efforts often making people more skeptical, resistant and generally conservative towards the perceived change. Still more importantly, the past often sheds light on how power and influence created by a new technology or system may diffuse itself – who will be the winners/losers and the resisters.

In this context this article is a priceless example of the type of writing I wish I did more of.

The Score: Advice to Young Composers by Annie Gosfield in the New York Times

While written as sounds advice for composers, this is (as the friend who sent it to me said) sounds advice for policy wonks or, in my opinion, bloggers as well. (It’s actually just sounds advice for life).

A couple of credos in the piece that I hope my work, and this blog lives by:

Take your work seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously: Hope that is evident in my writing style.

Be willing to put yourself and your music on the line: Try to do that everyday here on the blog.

Don’t fear rejection: Something a blog is really good at teaching you.

A couple of credos in the piece I know I struggle with:

Don’t assume you know what’s accessible to the audience and what isn’t: Although counter to what the piece says, I occasionally run into a friend who says “I had NO idea what you were talking about in X blog post.” It is crushing to hear – but also really good. I do want to challenge readers but I also want to be accessible. Do let me know if I ever get to a place where a newbie is going to be totally lost.

Details count: So, er, anyone who reads my blog regularly knows that I have the occasional typo in a post, here or there… Blogging longish pieces four times a week is draining, and so I don’t proof as much as I could (plus it is hard to see one’s own errors). But I could do better.

Hope you enjoy these pieces as much as I did!

Why David Suzuki Matters

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Last night I had the enormous privilege of being able to attend David Suzuki’s “The Legacy Lecture.” The lecture which took place at the Chan Centre out at the University of British Columbia was premised on a simple idea: If I had one last lecture to give, what would I say?

I confess I’ve never seen David Suzuki speak in person – and he is compelling. Yes, he is a skilled orator – especially when he relaxes, jokes with us and is self-deprecating – but that isn’t what really struck me while watching him speak, alone, on stage.

What struck me was how David Suzuki has always managed to have an appeal to me and my friends – that he has spoken to and engaged us right from when we were little, to today, when we are (mostly) adults. This is no small feat. Having grown up at the tail end of Gen X (or front end of Gen Y – depends who you ask) I would say that if one thing defines this cohort it is a constant (sometimes important and sometimes vicious) sense of ironic detachment from almost everything. As a teenager my media exposure to stories and people “who were me” were found in films like Reality Bites, Pump up the Volume, Singles, Office Space, Swingers, or Fight Club, where the characters lived in worlds that are far from ideal, or worse unraveling, and in which the leads had limited (if any) control. More importantly, these characters all struggled to believe in anything and to genuinely become part of something. Detachment: that is our thing. There is a reason Seinfeld was so iconic.

Boomers, of course, have a cliched lament that we don’t protest, and sing protest songs. But, (and this will be odd to hear for those who know me) it wasn’t through politics that I became aware of this difference, instead, our collective detachment came home to me while listening to my Dad’s favourite (and now mine too) Ramsey Lewis albums where often the crowd can be heared enthusiastically clapping and singing alone. For most Gen Xers this would require a sense of presence and a willingness to submit to an immediate sense of community, or a moment, that is simply – and for reasons that are not totally clear to me – uncomfortable.

But this is what, I think, David Suzuki has been able to do his entire career. In a quiet and intense way, he enabled Gen Xers to watch his show without the need to be ironically detached. His message – the environment – his mode of inquire – science – and his humble but unrelenting approach appealed to boomers yes, but more importantly, and rarer among CBC type presenters, it appealed to the rest of us. Rare among his generation was an ability to connect, even with those who sometimes shunned being connected with.

Sitting in that theater and watching him speak, that talent came crashing home. With David, I still listen critically (we don’t lose that facility) but, I don’t feel the need to be ironically detached. I enjoy being part of the community he creates and want to enjoy the moment and even feel emotionally connected.

It’s a brave thing to give a legacy lecture. To lay out everything you believe you have been, are and will be, and then share that publicly. But alone, and somewhat naked up there on stage, I got a real insight into why I – and I believe so many of my friends – love David Suzuki. That even if they sometimes call him Dr. Doom & Gloom he still reaches out to us, makes us think, and wants us to feel part of something bigger, greater and more beautiful than we knew. And for those of us who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s that is a gift that cannot be underestimated.