Michael Geist wrote an article in the Toronto Star today breaking down how Canada can become a leader in global broadbrand ranking, as well as take action to provide Canadians equal access to content it controls or helps to fund:

I was really hoping someone would write this article, and Jonah Gindin has done it brilliantly.

"Venezuela's and Canada's Very Different Approaches to Oil," originally published in Alberta Voice (but I found it on Venezuelananalysis.com), runs through the making of oil policy in these nations, pointing to the places where these policies converged and ultimately diverged over time.

Gindin recommends Canada take a page out of Venezuela's book by increasing oil royalties on the Alberta tar sands and diverting these funds towards social programs. He makes two excellent cases for such a move: the first, being the ecological unsustainability of current oil production, ultimately arguing for a reinvestment of oil dollars into a world-leading, renewable, alternative energy industry; the second case, based on fostering a strong, political, civic culture in Canada, where every Canadian has an opportunity to go to university, to get access to free health care, and to eat healthy, nutritious, locally-grown food. At least that's the success Gindin points to of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. It's exciting to imagine there being no more excuses for cut after destructive cut to Canadian social programs in provinces across the country.

A conference presented by  
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT)
 
Fairmont Château Laurier Hotel
Ottawa - October 27-29, 2006

I meant to post this last month, but didn’t get a chance. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) held a conference in Ottawa this October on the impacts of intellectual property (IP) on the university. I caught one day of the three-day conference and found most interesting the presentations that lay out the complex, over-laying legal jurisdictions and social norms that govern intellectual property.

Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa, and Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-Commerce, is agitating for a national open-source network for all civil servants, including  City workers and academics.

Although Geist is addressing all civil servants he tends to save his harshest criticisms for the university and its industries. He points out in the linked interview that, “At the moment, we’ve got what strikes me as a ridiculous proposition where we fund the research and then spend thousands of dollars to purchase that research within our own institutions, and the public isn’t even granted broad access to it.”

He is among many others in Canada calling for an open-source repository where researchers, after publishing their work in peer-reviewed journals, would make it publicly accessible. John Willinsky, who directs the Public Knowledge Project at the University of British Columbia, is also a strong advocate of open-source, connecting it to a healthier public domain and political culture. Willinksy expands on these ideas in an excellent article where he highlights the convergence of open source, open access, and open science: underpinning these "open" movements is a shared understanding of freedom based on collective knowledge and mutual aid. Willinsky also touches on the relationship between the "information commons" and place-based political struggles, as well as providing a good introduction to "open" movements more generally.

Edward Said brilliantly taught us how imperialism may be initiated through military combat and conquest, but that the cultural support in the motherlands had to be cultivated through different means. In Canada, our participation in repressions in Haiti are buttressed by the doctrine of our "Responsibility to Protect" - a cultural prism of altruism through which all Canadian are meant to see themselves - and which is part of a larger American global strategy of "democracy promotion."

In a recent article published in Canadian Dimension, Anthony Fenton describes how "democracy promotion" has become the acceptable term for imperialist intervention on the global stage. Canada's piece in this pie is the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine, presented to the UN in December 2001 and at the 2005 World Summit, where Canada advocated for its adoption by world leaders. According to Yves Engler and Nik barry-shaw, the doctrine "asserts that where gross human rights abuses are occurring, it is the duty of the international community to intervene, over and above considerations of state sovereignty."

CALL TO ACTION from ARTHUR MANUEL

I've attached the call to action here. But I wanted to highlight a particular distinction the call makes between Indigenous demands and what government policy pushes:

COLLECTIVE LAND BASE: Our peoples collectively made decisions and cared for the land, it is inalienable. We have the right to control our territories.

versus

FEE SIMPLE: If a group signs a treaty, the “treaty lands” are returned as fee simple lands—held like settler property that can be seized, forfeited and sold to settlers.

The idea of Crown Land in a colonial, settler state is problematic to begin with. However, at least it is contestable in this form. Once the land is sold or leased, it makes it that much harder to negotiate for Aboriginal title and rights.

According to Judith McKenzie (Environmental Politics in Canada: Managing the commons into the twenty-first century. Oxford University Press, 2001), the privatization of Crown Land has become more common in Canada since the introduction in the 90s of a neo-liberal agenda.