Earlier today I wrote about CBC”s choice for the top new story of 2011 in B.C. and argued that even though it took place in Vancouver, it has wider implications.
That said, any list that aims to cover the province is going to naturally exclude stories that were big, but only in certain regions. So I’m curious what a top ten list for northern B.C. would look like.
I think my only criteria would be that it’s a localized story. So while the Vancouver riots and the HST debate certainly had implications in the north, I would argue they aren’t top stories for northern B.C. because they are larger stories than the north. On the other hand, something like the gas fracking debate (one of the nominees for top story in B.C.) has implications beyond the north, but is very much localized in a northern B.C. context.
Off the top of my head, here’s what springs to mind:
Anyone else? I’m sure I’m missing a few, especially in regions outside of Prince George. Leave a comment or tweet me, and I’ll post responses below.
Just curious: what would you say are the top news stories for northern B.C. in 2011? #princegeorge #yxs #yyj #ydq #terrace #northernbc
— Andrew Kurjata (@akurjata) December 15, 2011
@akurjata FSJ’s mayor sanctions, hwy 97 upgrades four laning , July floodings, prime minister visits peace region
— Brent Hodson (@brent_hodson) December 15, 2011
@akurjata Top News Stories? I’d say Dan Rogers being the first incumbent PG mayor to lose in 5 decades. Also Layton visit during election.
— Devan C. Tasa (@dctasa) December 15, 2011
CBC has chosen its top B.C. news story: the Stanley Cup riots.
On the surface, this seems like a pretty dismissable choice. It’s Vancouver-centric. It’s flashy, rather than substantial. It’s just hockey.
But think back to when those riots started. Think back to the moment that you realized that the core of B.C.’s biggest city, a city widely viewed as one of the best in the world, in one of the most peaceful countries to ever exist, was descending into chaos. Short-lived as it wound up being, it raised some pertinent questions.
This was a look ahead at what a surveillance society of the 21st century might be. Rather than government monitoring us from security cameras and satellites, we monitor each other from Facebook and YouTube. Rioters happily filmed their actions. Immediately following, fellow citizens began identifying those they could, and turning them into police. Online lynch mobs sprang up. The consequences of this are still not clear.
Also at play was the role of the citizen journalist. Police asked non-rioters who were nonetheless in the midst of the riots to stop filming, stop Tweeting, and go home. Meanwhile, news organizations encouraged people to send in their pictures and observations. The lines of this sort of participatory coverage are still being drawn.
But deeper than this is the question of how this could happen. Is it hockey? Is it young men? Is it capitalism eating itself? (an interesting observation was that retail outlets were attacked while other buildings in the same neighbourhood were left basically unscathed). I remember in the days and weeks afterwards reading the Tweets of Vancouverites talking about the fear they now had of large public gatherings, and of the suspicion with which they now viewed the stranger on the bus, the barista at the coffee shop. How could so many people descend into this so quickly? Not to overstate the point, but this event touched on questions of order, man’s inhumanity to man, and how tenuous our grips on civilized society actually are. As I wrote immediately following the riots:
“If these people, minority though they may be, turned that dark that quickly over something so trivial, what do you suppose the odds are they would keep their heads in the event of a real disaster? Or in the face of a prolonged period of chaos? These people were doing this while they (presumably) had homes to go to, jobs to attend, ready access to food and fresh water, and the visible presence of law enforcement. How would they behave in a darker situation? How many others would join them?”
The two runner-ups to this story were a kidnapping and the HST referendum. The latter is about what the people of this province can do if they ignore their leaders and rise up on their own. The former is about what can happen when a person, for whatever reason, skirts the rules of society and causes great damage to a fellow human being. The Stanely Cup riots are about what happens when you combine both these: a mass of people giving in to their dark side. I still don’t think we’ve fully tackled what happened, why, what should be done about it, and whether it could happen again.
And that’s about much more than just hockey.
****
See also:
Vancouver Riots (thoughts immediately following)
Social Media, Crowd-Sourced Justice and the Vancouver Riots (delving into the mob justice/surveillance society of all this, plus a good list of other articles on the subject)
Yesterday, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced that burkas and other forms of religious face coverings would be banned during citizenship oaths:
From the National Post:
“Kenney said the move follows complaints from citizenship judges, MPs and others who’ve participated in citizenship ceremonies who have argued it’s hard to tell whether veiled individuals are actually reciting the oath.”
From the Globe and Mail:
“He (Kenney) said he spoke with citizenship judges who told him they are concerned that they can’t tell whether some people are actually reciting the oath during the ceremony because of the garments.”
From CBC:
“Kenney said he’s had complaints from MPs and citizenship court judges that it’s hard to tell whether people with their faces covered are actually reciting the oath of citizenship, which he says is a requirement to become Canadian.”
When I posted this on Twitter, someone who recently took the oath was surprised for the stated reason, saying, “from experience nobody checked that we were speaking at all.”
@akurjata from experience nobody checked that we were speaking at all.More likely it’s for ID purposes.
— Jon Campbell (@RandomActPG) December 12, 2011
I’ve never taken the citizenship oath, so I’ll have to take his word for it. The Globe and Mail editorial board backs him up, though:
“At some ceremonies, everyone present (including current citizens) is invited to step forward and recite the oath with the newcomers, en masse. Who can be sure who is saying what?
In practice, citizenship ceremonies are treated less as a solemn oath-taking of individuals and more as a celebration of diversity, of multiculturalism, of the world’s different peoples coming together as Canadians.”
So there’s that. And even if the oath-taking was being more closely monitored, the idea that people were having trouble telling what the women wearing burkas are saying is confusing. Surely there is some mode of allowing people who can’t speak to become citizens without someone closely monitoring every syllable passing through their lips? Or are mutes precluded from becoming citizens?
No, I’m going to guess that burkas and the like are being banned because of their association with certain strains of Islam more than any practical needs to tell if someone is taking the oath. It’s part of the same line of thinking that’s wanted to ban the burka while voting or in other spheres of public life.
And I won’t deny that some women are forced to wear burkas by their families or culture. But that doesn’t mean all women who wear them are doing so against their will, nor does it make banning them the best solution. If there is a women who fears for her safety if she removes her burka, does preventing her from becoming a citizen really help protect her?
Besides, you know what else is derived from a patriarchal and sexist society? Men being allowed to go topless at beaches while women are forced to cover up based on cultural ideas of decency. In an fair and equal society, both men and women should be allowed to be topless while swimming. I’m still not going to support a bylaw that bans bathing suit tops for women. I’m not sure what Mr. Kenney would think of a society that required citizens to strip naked in public in order to vote, because it removed any notions of gender or class inequality.
Let’s apply the same notions of “protecting women” from patriarchy to another item of clothing: spaghetti strap tank tops. From the point of view of some people of certain cultural or religious backgrounds, it is inappropriate for women to wear them. There are girls whose families ban them from wearing spaghetti strap tank tops. This ban is purely cultural, largely based on patriarchal norms. From the point of view of some, these girls are being repressed. Does it follow that shirts that cover women’s shoulders should be banned?
The burka and other coverings have a lot of misunderstanding and fear surrounding them. And again, I won’t deny that there are instances where women are forced to wear them against their will. But in a reasoned debate around its use, it is important to understand that this is not always the case. My wife comes from a Muslim background. More to the point, she studied International Studies and engaged in multiple studies of feminism and Islam. I’m going to quote from her here surrounding women who choose to wear the burka:
“some choose to wear the burqa not because it makes them lesser in any way, but rather because it transforms them from a sexual object which can be judged based on outward appearances to an equal to a man – someone who is taken seriously because of what they say and do, as well as how they act rather than how they look. Men are not gawking at their physique and so must listen to their words and watch their actions. Some choose to wear a burqa or niquab as a symbol of their faith; they do not see it as much different than a Christian choosing to symbolize their fate by wearing… a cross.”
There are some instances where the need to see a person’s face trumps any religious rights. Passport photos and driver’s licences spring to mind. That said, in those cases I don’t think it’s too much to ask of an inclusive society that you be given the option of revealing your face in private to a person of a gender that you feel comfortable with, if that can be reasonably accommodated.
The public taking of the citizenship oath, though? I don’t see any compelling reason burkas should be banned there.
With the recent municipal election (and the not-unexpected low voter turnout), I realized something. Even though I now have a pretty good grasp on city politics, it’s in large part due to the fact that I had to teach myself in order to cover city council meetings as part of my job at CBC. If not for this, I would probably still be completely ignorant of how the whole thing works.
Since this lack of knowledge is one of the main reasons I heard given for people not voting, I figured I would put together a little city council 101 piece for CBC. For help, I went to Walter Babicz, manager of legislative services for the city of Prince George. I simplified the very complicated processes he took me through– some of these processes are a little less simple than I make them sound, this is through me simplifying them, not him.
You can listen to the full item on the Daybreak North website.
I should mention that these rules, while specific to Prince George, can be broadly applied to councils across B.C. Some things differ (for example, whether the mayor votes every time or not), but other things, like how you get something onto a council agenda, are pretty much the same.
The gap between readings applies primarily to things like bylaws affecting property, for less consequential agenda items, the first three readings will sometimes take place in one go.
So now that you’re primed, you can follow me on Twitter as I cover tonight’s council meeting. Or you can follow Daybreak North, the more consequential observations will be tweeted from there.
“The Tweaker” by Malcolm Gladwell →
“The point of Meisenzahl and Mokyr’s argument is that this sort of tweaking is essential to progress. James Watt invented the modern steam engine, doubling the efficiency of the engines that had come before. But when the tweakers took over the efficiency of the steam engine swiftly quadrupled. Samuel Crompton was responsible for what Meisenzahl and Mokyr call “arguably the most productive invention” of the industrial revolution. But the key moment, in the history of the mule, came a few years later, when there was a strike of cotton workers. The mill owners were looking for a way to replace the workers with unskilled labor, and needed an automatic mule, which did not need to be controlled by the spinner. Who solved the problem? Not Crompton, an unambitious man who regretted only that public interest would not leave him to his seclusion, so that he might “earn undisturbed the fruits of his ingenuity and perseverance.” It was the tweaker’s tweaker, Richard Roberts, who saved the day, producing a prototype, in 1825, and then an even better solution in 1830. Before long, the number of spindles on a typical mule jumped from four hundred to a thousand. The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world. The tweaker inherits things as they are, and has to push and pull them toward some more nearly perfect solution. That is not a lesser task.”
This is the power of the modern era. The best, most innovative ideas can come from anywhere, because we can constantly tweak the systems put into place somewhere else. Governments in Prince George can study housing strategies in Portland and see what works and tweak what doesn’t. I can read about the transit system in Fort St John and make suggestions on how lessons there might be applied here. Local newspapers can learn lessons from around the world about how to better manage their online comments sections. Or we can try to make a better cola.
The point is, we have access to so many data points, so much information, that there is absolutely no reason that we cannot constantly strive to find ways to tweak things to make them better. Whether it’s music or writing or voting systems, there is nothing stopping you from coming up with a better solution than what’s already been done. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel. Just make it better.
→ The finances of the Attawapiskat reserve have been placed under third-party control, in part to figure out where $90 million of federal government money went in the last five years. But how much is $90 million anyways? And how much money does the government spend on you?
I’ve only been sort-of following the Attawapiskat housing crisis story, but my favourite thing I’ve read on it is the blog post called “Dealing with comments about Attawapiskat.” It is excellent, and I will place a link to it at the bottom of this post so you can finish reading what I have here and then move on to it.
Though there are many parts of said post that are insightful and thought-provoking, there is one portion that made me want to do a bit of research of my own. The author links to a Canadian Press article in which Stephen Harper tells the Commons:
“This government has spent some $90 million since coming to office just on Attawapiskat… That’s over $50,000 for every man, woman and child in the community.”
And then she rightly points out:
“First, please note that $90 million is a deceptive number. It refers to federal funding received since Harper’s government came into power in 2006. In the 2010-2011 fiscal year, Attawapiskat received $17.6 million in federal funds (PDF). The document linked to shows the breakdown of federal funds in case you wanted to know how much is allocated to things like medical transportation, education, maternal health care and so on.
Thus, $90 million refers to the total of an average of about $18 million per year in federal funding since 2006. (emphasis mine)“
So $90 million over five years gets you about $18 million per year. That means Harper’s reference to $50,000 for “every man, woman, and child” becomes $10,000 per person per year. Which still seems like a lot, but it got me wondering– is it? After all, do you know how much the government’s spent on you?
The big ones: health care, education, and social services
I’m not going to go into things that municipalities would normally pay for (water, garbage collection, etc). Instead, I’m going to focus on money that would come from the provincial and federal government to serve “every man, woman, and child.” The reason I’m doing this is because Attawapiskat, being a reserve, derives most of its external government funding from the feds. Non-reserves get money from the province for things like health care and education, but under the Indian Act those items are to come to reserves directly from the federal government. So Attawapiskat would be using the money it gets from the federal government to fund items that, in cities, would be funded by both the provincial AND the federal governments.
So let’s take just three of those items that the provincial government provides for in B.C. and the federal government provides for in Attawapiskat– health care, education, and social services– and break them down.
I’m going to use numbers provided in B.C.’s 2011 budget to rough out these amounts. Right in there, the province brags about having the second lowest per-capita spending on health care in the country- $3,925. This is the biggest item, and it comes to $17.5 billion total. If I divide that 17.5 billion by 3,925, I can guesstimate they’re working with about 4.5 million people. I’m actually rounding that number up so the per-person spending estimates I come up with are low-balled.
Next: education. B.C. is proudly spending over $8,000 per student grades K-12. Total amount is $11.3 billion. Divided amongst 4.5 million people– $2,511.11. Let’s call it an even $2,500.
Finally, social services. Total cost in B.C. is $3.4 billion, or about $755 a person.
Now let’s add it up
To recap: Stephen Harper is disappointed the $10,000 per person the federal government sends to Attawapiskat every year isn’t solving the housing crisis. So upset, in fact, that the federal government has put finances under 3rd party control and ordered an audit. Meanwhile, in B.C. the government is spending roughly $7,100 per person on just three items: education, health care, and social services. That’s before the $2100/person the province spends on “all other items” and money that comes in from the feds.
So as far as I can tell looking at the numbers, that $90 million in Attawapiskat isn’t an excessive amount. In fact, it seems to be about on par with what Canadians everywhere (or at least in B.C.) have “spent” on them by the appropriate levels of government. I’m assuming, of course, that Attawapiskat receives roughly an equivalent amount in infrastructure grants for roads and the like from the federal government that other communities do– that is, I’m assuming that $90 million refers only to normal funding, and that the federal government has given one or two infrastructure grants over the past six years, as well. If they haven’t, then Attawapiskat could well be below average. I’m also comparing to B.C. Ontario spends considerably more per person on health care. So there could be differences there. But again, these are rough numbers, but looking at them, $10,000 per person a year doesn’t (to me) appear to out-of-line.
So why the audit?
I’m curious what the reaction from the general public would be if the federal government seized financial control from any form of government other than a reserve. I know for sure it wouldn’t stand for a province. But what if the federal or provincial government tried to take control of a city’s finances? Of your city’s finances? And then started throwing out numbers about how much they’ve already spent on you as justificiation. I mean, it’s not as if there are that many levels of government out there that aren’t running deficits of some form or another. Should they be allowed to be in charge of themselves? Why the different standards?
I’d also love it if anyone had some better numbers to work with. I’m really roughing out per person costs here, but there could well be more reliable statistics. How much public money does the average Canadian get for healthcare? For roads? For arts and culture and tourism grants? If you’ve found any of these statistics, please do let me know. Comments are below, and here I am on Twitter.
Oh, and as promised, here’s that link again. I highly recommend you read it:
Dealing With Comments About Attawapiskat
See also: Stereotypes
————————————————————————————————————–
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AS I FIND IT:
Update 1:
Maclean’s Aaron Wherry posts this exchange from the Commons between the NDP’s Nicole Turmel and Stephen Harper:
“Turmel. … Outside of first nations, social standing in Canada is about $18,000 per year per person (emphasis mine). According to his own numbers, federal spending in Attawapiskat per person per year is about half of this amount. How is that possible? Why is he blaming the community?
Harper. … this government has made tens of millions of dollars of investments in this community, infrastructure investments of over $50,000 for every man, woman and child.”
Wherry adds:
“In using the phrase “infrastructure investments,” the Prime Minister overreached. As the government’s own numbers show, the total infrastructure spending in Attawapiskat is about $28.6 million. Divided by a population of 1,700, that’s just under $17,000 per person (emphasis mine).”
So I’m again not seeing where the people of Attawapiskat are getting any more government money than your average Canadian.
Update 2:
A pretty good article by Kathryn Blaze Carlson in the National Post gets into the debate over how or whether it will be possible for Attawapiskat to be economically viable in the long term. It also contains this:
“The province also invests more than $4-million each year, and the community earned more than $3-million from the First Nations-run Casino Rama, according to a federal audit.”
So another $4 million from the province divided by 1,700 makes an extra $2300 a person (again rounding down). I’m not sure if the casino should count towards money “given” by government, though. If it’s run by the reserve and generates its own profits, I’m guessing it shouldn’t. I’m only looking at money gives the people of Attawapiskat versus the money it gives any other Canadian.
Summary: Even though the province of B.C. has a branch that can order landlords to repair or upgrade their rental units, it’s up to municipalities to make sure the work gets done. And many cities, including Prince George, have no mechanism to do this. So what are renters supposed to do when they have a problem? And who can fix it?
Local government doesn’t matter?
I’ve been working on the story of the Victoria Towers fire for the last while. About 100 residents were displaced when an early-morning fire forced their evacuation on November 3. I didn’t do the initial coverage (that goes to intrepid news report Betsy Trumpener), but I’ve been working on the follow-up. It’s nearly a month a later, and residents have been living in hotels and are moving on to other, more permanent re-locations. Here’s what I’ve done so far:
Out of this, I’ve had a few former tenants tell me that they felt like the maintenance of the Victoria Towers was less than stellar. I must stress here that as I write this that no official cause of the fire has been released. Anything you might hear is pure speculation. I have no idea what caused this fire, and I wouldn’t hazard a guess. This blog post is not about what caused the fire, the fire is just what brought me to what this blog post is about: inspection and maintenance of rental units.
I wanted to look into the complaints, and I wanted something official, not just people telling me they didn’t like the way things looked. Tony told me that he had, in fact, filed complaints with the Residential Tenancy Branch about the building. Indeed, both the Prince George Free Press and the Prince George Citizen reported on these complaints. For the Citizen, Arthur Williams reported:
“Residential Tenancy Branch officer T.A. Evans ruled that Victoria Towers owner Pacific West Properties failed to meet its obligations.
Evans ordered Pacific West Properties to complete 15 repairs on the unit to the bathroom, plumbing, ceilings and rest of the unit.”
I contacted the Residential Tenancy Branch on behalf of CBC, and received an email that included this information:
“· The Residential Tenancy Act requires landlords maintain a rental property in a state that is suitable for occupancy – and meets all health, safety and building standards required by law. · However, the province has no jurisdiction to force property owners to fix-up their buildings – that responsibility lies with local government.
· Municipalities establish standards of maintenance that are enforced through the local government’s own by-law enforcement procedures.
· We can’t comment on who applied to RTB, but we can tell you that a dispute was heard and RTB ordered repairs to be made to the building and provided monetary compensation to the tenant applicant.
· There was no further application, so we don’t know if the landlord complied with the repairs. Again, enforcement of safety codes is the responsibility of local by-law enforcement officers.”
This is where the story stops being about the Victoria Towers altogether.
It surprised me that even though the province has a mechanism that rules on tenant-landlord disputes, it’s up to local governments to enforce them. How do they do this?
As part of my research, I spoke with Tom Durning of the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre. He suggested one of the better mechanisms is a Standards of Maintenance Bylaw. From the TRAC site:
“Municipal Standards of Maintenance (SoM) Bylaws allow local government to force landlords to keep their rental buildings in good repair. Although not all municipalities have SoM bylaws, TRAC strongly encourages all municipalities to not only pass these bylaws but strictly enforce them.”
And from the province:
“A standards of maintenance bylaw provides local government with the ability to meet the needs of tenants who live in unsafe and unhealthy accommodation due to poor building maintenance. The province has heard from many tenants who are frustrated by the sub-standard and deteriorating housing conditions in which they find themselves. The 1992 report of the Provincial Commission on Housing Options noted that while the location and extent of poor housing was generally well known to community organizations and local government officials, there was no mechanism to allow local officials to require improvements. Local governments also indicated an interest in using a standards of maintenance bylaw to expand their authority to maintain the affordable housing stock in their community and protect it from premature demolition. The Commissioners concluded that most municipalities would be willing to enact minimum maintenance standards bylaws if they had the authority to do so.
Now that the authority to adopt a standards of maintenance bylaw exists, a model bylaw has been provided to serve as a starting point for use in drafting a bylaw suited to local conditions.”
So I contacted bylaw services in Prince George. Turns out there is no Standards of Maintenance Bylaw here.
There is, however, a Standing Committee on Homelessness that has been looking into the issue. City councilor Murry Krause is on that committee, so we called him.
And here’s the thing. Even though the Standards of Maintenance Bylaw seems like a solution, Krause says their research says otherwise. There’s a few issues. First is the issue that comes along seemingly every city policy these days: cost. You can have this rule, but what will it cost to enforce it? How many extra staff will you have to hire to make it effective?
The second big issue he raised is that of whether or not it would be effective. Like other bylaws, it would be complaints-driven (ie the city would look into things if someone complained, not just by randomly inspecting apartments and other rental units). The problem? Most people living in units that would need to be upgraded are those living in the cheap places. And people who live in the cheap places are usually living there because they are poor, on some form of income assistance, or otherwise vulnerable and marginalized. They are in these places because they don’t feel like they have any other options. They don’t want to run the risk of being out on the street because they start complaining.
There’s other problems, too. From a Tyee article on landlord problems in Vancouver, speaking with then-mayoral candidate Peter Ladner:
“There is some difficult history in enforcing the Standards of Maintenance bylaw,” said Ladner, “where we’ve been challenged in courts and tied up in legal cases and wasted a lot of resources not achieving what we wanted to achieve. It’s inexcusable that people should be living in these kinds of conditions, but the city’s actual powers to change that are not clear.””
Murry Krause is of a similar opinion. In his interview on Daybreak, he said, “It’s about us not passing feel-good legislation, it’s about us making sure that we put mechanisms in place that work.” What that is isn’t clear.
In my conversation with him, Krause seemed to be of the opinion that it involved improving access to affordable housing through the city and/or government so that low-income people aren’t at the mercy of low-cost-but-not-great-to-live-in rental units. But it’s still under investigation. As he said:
“I certainly don’t have a magic bullet.”
Indeed.
See also:
The Black Press is pretty sure you can’t troll them if you have to use Facebook to comment on their stories.
Visiting any of their paper’s websites this morning, you will see that comments are closed as they prepare to make the switchover. This affects a number of Black Press-owned publications in northern B.C., including the Lakes District News, Caledonia Courier, Houston Today, Terrace Standard, Northern View, Omineca Express, and the non-Black Press-owned-but-still-affiliated-online Prince George Free Press. This change was announced about a week ago in a post entitled “An End to Anonymous Comments,” in which online manager for the publisher Rob DeMone wrote:
“Our community newspapers don’t print anonymous letters, yet we’ve allowed our websites to become a place where people can hide their identity while occasionally taking shots at one another.
Starting Dec. 1, that policy will change.
People will only be able to comment by using their Facebook account, which means their name, often even their photograph, will be linked to the statements they post.”
While I sympathize with their desire to remove vitriolic comments (the comments section on that story gave me enough evidence that they have their fair share of pot-shot takers on the main site), I feel like they’re confusing the cause and the cure.
First of all, it’s misleading to write a post called “An End to Anonymous Comments” and then act as if they had no choice but to go to Facebook. The Black Press currently uses the wonderful (my opinion, obviously) Disqus system to power comments. I use the same system on this blog, and a number of other sites do, too, including the Prince George Citizen, AVC, and Macleans.ca (for my money, the place that has the best comments of any national news source). And using Disqus, you definitely don’t have to allow anonymous commentators. I logged into my account and within 30 seconds got here:
As you can see, while you can allow anonymous comments, you can also set it so you require a verified email address before saying anything.
Do you know what it takes to sign up for a Facebook account?
An email address.
So I don’t really see how requiring people to have a Facebook account will achieve anything more than requiring people to verify their Disqus account with an email would. And if you think people can’t use Facebook with fake names, I suggest you take a look at my news feed, full of people with names that include things like “Gonzo” and “—“. Trolls will figure this out. In fact, they’re already saying as much on the Black Press story.
But what’s wrong with Facebook?
But you may continue to wonder why I have a problem with Facebook comments. And if pressed, I have nothing that I feel is a completely air-tight argument against using them, but there are a number of factors that make me dislike them:
1. Aesthetics.
I’m beating an old horse, but Facebook is ugly. Facebook comments are ugly. The text is too small, it’s boxy– it looks exactly like commenting on something on Facebook. When you’re in a site with larger text and nice graphics, Facebook comments just look out of place.
2. Conversation threads.
Disqus has the wonderful ability to reply to replies in comment threads. This may seem like a small thing, but when it comes long conversations with multiple points (the sort of thing you may well get on a news story), this is great.
Facebook doesn’t have this ability. And it’s annoying as heck. If I comment on someone’s post, I get notified when anyone else comments on it as well. Which is awesome, if it’s relevant to my point or the first person’s point, but when they’ve high-jacked the conversation to be about something else, then it’s the worst. If they had these threaded conversations, then only the people who are involved in that portion of the comments thread get notified, while the rest of us can get on with our day. Disqus has this.
3. I never want to comment on stories using Facebook.
I’m not the most active internet-commentator. But when I feel like I contribute to the story in some way, I like to. But I have never, ever done this on a site that requires Facebook comments. Maybe it’s just me, but I still tend to treat Facebook like a bit of a walled-garden. Not because I’m really posting things on Facebook that I wouldn’t on Twitter or Tumblr, but more because I’m on Facebook out of the necessity that everyone else is on Facebook than I am because it’s my favourite social network. And since it’s NOT my favourite social network… I don’t really like using it as my public online persona.
You’ll notice that on my start page for this site (a site designed to be the first thing that comes up when people Google my name) I direct people to my blog, my Tumblr, and my Twitter. These are my public online personas. If people read one of my comments somewhere, and click on my name to see what else I’m about, I’d prefer they go to one of those places than to my Facebook. By saying to me “you’re Facebook Andrew on this site, or you’re nothing”, I’m going to go with nothing.
4. People may have legitimate reasons for using pseudonyms.
There’s a difference between anonymous and pseudonymous. I follow plenty of real people on Twitter who don’t use their real name. And I’ve seen plenty of legitimate and thought-provoking comments from people not using their real names. There can be any number of reasons they don’t use their real name. Maybe they are in government or political work and shouldn’t be expressing opinions about sensitive topics under their “true” identity. Maybe they want to comment on a story about being a closet homosexual, but don’t want all their Facebook friends to know that they are, indeed, a closet homosexual. Who knows? The question Black Press should ask itself is do they really want to exclude these people from the conversation?
(and yes, these people could sign up for a fake Facebook account, but then so can the trolls, so what’s the point of the Facebook thing, anyways, and on and on and on…).
Let people choose which face they put forward, Facebook isn’t the only legitimate online identity.
5. Real names do not mean better comments (and fake names don’t mean worse ones).
The question of what makes good online comments is the subject of countless blog posts and online discussions. As someone fascinated by this topic, I’ve read my share of opinions on this front, and I think it’s fair to say that the comment system alone has very little to do with the tone of the comments.
More important is how the site’s owners interact with their commentators. Macleans uses Disqus, but it also regularly sees its writers jumping into the comments section to engage with readers. So do the personalities behind CBC Radio 3 and the program Spark. Not surprisingly, these are two of the most robust and insightful comments sections anywhere on CBC.
But Black Press sites aren’t national shows with a mostly young, tech-savvy audience. They’re much more like something like… well, Opinion250, a news site serving Prince George run by veteran broadcaster Ben Meisner and his partner Elaine. They regularly draw a huge number of comments, rarely from people using their real names. Here’s what Ben had to say on Black Press’ move:
“We also have agonized over some of the posters who take perhaps far more liberties than they should be allowed to take, take cheap shots at one another, and on the odd occasion cross the line of what we think is appropriate comment about an issue or person…
In the end, we have over 17,000 people who have registered to make comments on Opinion250 since its beginning. Just over fifty have been a problem and of that number we have had to cut privileges to them on more than one occasion, suggesting that they don’t learn easily. Fifty out of 17,000 suggests to us that the people want to have the right to post while maintaining their privacy. We insist that when we go the ballot box that we have the right to privacy and so it should lend that we also would want the same in our writing.Trying to censure who writes what and when is a slippery slope. What you and I might deem as in poor taste may seem perfectly alright to someone else. What is an issue to someone may not necessarily be an issue to another poster. Everyone should have the right no matter what level of intelligence we think they possess to be able to have their thoughts known. We try as best to not interfere with that freedom of speech unless you have crossed the boundaries of the items I mentioned earlier.”
The comments on Opinion250 are not always inspiring. But they are rarely anything that would make me think “OK, time to shut this whole thing down!”, either. They are what they should be– people, talking about things they care about, using whatever public persona they choose.
Conclusion
Black Press doesn’t have to allow anonymous comments. It doesn’t have to allow comments at all, actually. A number of sites have chosen not to. But I get the impression from this move that they want comments, they just don’t want the sort of comments they’ve been getting. And they think switching to Facebook will fix that.
I disagree. There are a number of people who won’t take part in a discussion that doesn’t allow fake names, and not all of them are people you necessarily want to exclude.
Further, there are no shortage of examples of websites with a decent commenting community that allow fake names. If Black Press finds they aren’t getting this, these other sites are proof it’s not just because they allow anonymous comments. It’s something else. And if they are committed to fostering a robust online community, they may want to figure out what that is rather than putting all their eggs in Facebook’s basket.
Have a thought? Leave an anonymous, trolling comment below!
rush{hour} by DJHuber
I’m going to take this one as vindication.
The city of Fort St. John has reported a 29.9% increase in ridership over the past year (the highest for BC Transit which serves Prince George, Victoria, and most other major B.C. cities outside Vancouver). The main reason, according to Victor Shopland, Director of Infrastructure and Capital Works?
“The big thing is that we changed the routes and we put the transfer station back down at the Cultural Centre. All the buses now meet together at the same time in half hour routes that are more convenient (emphasis mine).”
Earlier this year I wrote an overly-complicated post that basically says that the number one problem with Prince George’s transit service is it’s just too complicated. Trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B cannot be done quickly or intuitively, in part because there is no main hub, and also because they don’t leave with any consistency– you could be waiting at any given stop for any length of time between 15 minutes and an hour. From that post:
“I’d argue that if you were to worry less about hitting every side street as effectively as possible and instead focus on main roads and more frequent departures, you’d see a big uptick in people using this system… This might not be the MOST EFFICIENT route to take, but it is the MOST CONSISTENT. It would be easier to understand. If you know which main roads your destination is near, you know, roughly, how to get there. And you know how long you have to wait, transfers and all, because EVERYTHING leaves every fifteen minutes. Or half an hour, if that’s too often for the system to bear. But at least YOU KNOW.”
Fort St. John did this, and they’re seeing results. In fact, my central word (consistent) is attributed to Shopland in the article:
“He pointed out that having the buses all come together at one location creates consistency so people know exactly where and when they can always get on the bus.”
I even had the opportunity to interview Mr. Shopland in preparation for his appearance on CBC, discussing Fort St. John’s success. I asked him whether the increase might be attributed to other factors– more elderly, more students, more temporary workers, less gas money. He said it was possible, but was adamant that the consistent departure times of half-an-hour and central hub were the number one factor, to the point that there was a measurable uptick in use almost from day one these changes were implemented.
I’m glad Fort St. John is having this success. And I truly hope that other cities are paying attention.
See also: What Bus Systems Could Learn From the iPhone
Yesterday’s Citizen featured an opinion piece by Todd Whitcombe, UNBC science professor and past provincial NDP candidate. It’s behind a paywall, so here’s the portion that I’ll be commenting on:
“None of these economic opportunities are going to generate the thousands of jobs that we need in this town in order to prosper and grow. And in order to enhance the tax base so that we can afford the services that we hold near and dear.”
This is an article entitled “Stagnant city needs more than review.”
I’ve already expressed by suspicion of the growth gospel in a previous post. In it, I wrote:
“Maybe we need growth in the short term, and even in the medium term. We’re in a relatively sparsely populated part of a relatively sparsely populated country. But I’d feel more comfortable if there was some conversation about what our target population is. What do we need to enjoy a comfortable level of living, have various services provided, and avoid a crushing mass of people everywhere? How do we hit our target and then plateau?”
That’s a question I’d like to see Mr. Whitcombe and the other politicians/commentators who’ve raised this stagnancy point answer. What is the guarantee that population growth will lead to a better overall city? Mr. Whitcombe is calling for thousands of new jobs. I’m going to assume this includes a few thousand new residents. And I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to live here the opportunity. But once again I would like to ask– why pursue this above all else? Why growth as an end unto itself?
I have been squeezing some research on this subject into my reading. The best argument I’ve seen in favor of growth comes from “urban physicist” Geoffrey West. He’s been studying the mathematics of cities and has found that every time a city doubles in population, it only requires an 85% increase in infrastructure, energy, etc. As a New York Times profile on him suggests:
“This straightforward observation has some surprising implications. It suggests, for instance, that modern cities are the real centers of sustainability. According to the data, people who live in densely populated places require less heat in the winter and need fewer miles of asphalt per capita. (A recent analysis by economists at Harvard and U.C.L.A. demonstrated that the average Manhattanite emits 14,127 fewer pounds of carbon dioxide annually than someone living in the New York suburbs.) Small communities might look green, but they consume a disproportionate amount of everything. As a result, West argues, creating a more sustainable society will require our big cities to get even bigger. We need more megalopolises.”
Which is fine, up to a point. Even West acknowledges that our current lifestyle and growth rate is unsustainable, short of some remarkable innovations. Countering this urban optimism is another bit of math that comes from investor Jeremy Grantham. I’m quoting wholesale from the Business Insider column I read this in, in which Grantham writes (emphasis is mine):
“Four years ago I was talking to a group of super quants, mostly PhDs in mathematics, about finance and the environment. I used the growth rate of the global economy back then – 4.5% for two years, back to back – and I argued that it was the growth rate to which we now aspired.
To point to the ludicrous unsustainability of this compound growth I suggested that we imagine the Ancient Egyptians, whose gods, pharaohs, language, and general culture lasted for well over 3,000 years.
Starting with only a cubic meter of physical possessions (to make calculations easy), I asked how much physical wealth they would have had 3,000 years later at 4.5% compounded growth. Now, these were trained mathematicians, so I teased them: “Come on, make a guess. Internalize the general idea. You know it’s a very big number.”
And the answers came back: “Miles deep around the planet,” “No, it’s much bigger than that, from here to the moon.”
Big quantities to be sure, but no one came close.
In fact, not one of these potential experts came within one billionth of 1% of the actual number, which is approximately 10 raised to the 57th power, a number so vast that it could not be squeezed into a billion of our Solar Systems.”
Now, I know he’s talking physical wealth here but he goes on to write about population sizes:
“So, I then went on. “Let’s try 1% compound growth in either their wealth or their population,” (for comparison, 1% since Malthus’ time is less than the population growth in England). In 3,000 years the original population of Egypt – let’s say 3 million – would have been multiplied 9 trillion times! There would be nowhere to park the people, let alone the wealth.”
Would you like to know the world’s current growth rate? 1.14% per year. We are straight up shooting for something that would result in no physical space left on the earth’s surface.
So I repeat my questions. Why growth? To what end? When Mr. Whitcombe and others speak of the need for growth, are they planning for stagnancy at some point, either in this generation or in some future one?
Further: Why is a city of 70 to 80 thousand considered a failure? What are these services that we desperately need that we cannot possibly achieve without a few extra thousand people? Should every small community that hasn’t hit this magical number be aiming for growth on an even larger/faster scale than Prince George? And given that Toronto, Montreal, and Edmonton– Canadian cities with much larger tax bases– are struggling with their infrastructure, would Mr. Whitcombe prescribe a larger tax base (ie. a larger population) to solve all their woes as well?
The pursuit of growth, in both population and in wealth, is an incredibly pervasive goal– one that I rarely see questioned anywhere in the political or theoretical spectrum. And I would really like to know why this is. Because I don’t see us getting the technology to populate a billion solar systems– not now, and not in 3,000 years. At some point, this conversation is going to have to shift.
photo: The Smithsonian/Flickr Commons
Prince George has a new mayor, and a mix of old and new on city council.
As has become customary for election campaigns over the past few years, there were a number of candidates running on the idea of re-connecting with voters, being more accessible and transparent, and having a two-way conversation with citizens.
I’m curious if this will match up with another election theme: having a presence on social media.
In the United States, both the Republicans and the Democrats have caught onto using Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr et al to get their message out there.
In Canada, the federal election featured politicians on all sides Tweeting, and even an NDP iPhone app.
Most candidates in this past city campaign had at least a rudimentary presence online. Let’s see how they were used by those who were elected:
Frank Everitt
Everitt is a new face on council. He had no official website, but he did have a fairly robust Facebook page. He started with a post in early October introducing himself and posted with increasing frequency as time went on. Posts included explanations of his inability to attend one of the all-candidates’ debates, photos, and links to articles about the election. His most recent post as of this morning is an enthusiastic thank-you for his election.
He was on Twitter significantly less, and with far less conversation. In fact, his four most recent Tweets seem to be mistakes, with his latest (from election day) being the somewhat baffling statement “Could be sure taken their sweet time.”
34 “likes” on Facebook, 7 followers on Twitter, following 1, 5638 votes.
Garth Frizzell
Frizzell is returning to council, and is no stranger to the world of social media. He has had a robust Twitter presence for years, engaging in conversation multiple times a day, and he has opened up his personal Facebook page to subscribers, as well. He also has a blog, Google Plus, and LinkedIn accounts. Given that he reportedly found out he was re-elected via Twitter while at a Tweet-up, he odds of him connecting online are pretty much 100%.
1,296 followers, following 1,561, 830 friends, 6189 votes.
Dave Wilbur
A veteran of council, Wilbur ran a decidedly non-social media oriented campaign. As best I can tell, he has no presence on Twitter. He has the word “councilor” on his personal Facebook url which may be an effort to identify himself as a politician, or might just be him identifying his job. His wall is public, and the last few posts include a campaign sign and him touting his efforts to bring 911 to the Bulkley Nechako. Prior to his October announcement of running for re-election, though, the most recent posts were a few from July, and then a few from April. During the course of the campaign he posted six times.
116 friends, 6932 votes.
Cameron Stolz
Another incumbent, Stolz also ran a (failed) campaign to be the Conservative candidate for Prince George – Peace River while sitting on council. Did this extra campaign beef up his social media presence? Not on Twitter, where he has 32 followers, is following five, and has no Tweets. CameronStolz.ca does show a link to his Facebook page, and he has been pretty active on there: mp3s of his radio appearances, videos from candidate forums, links to articles about the election, and status updates.
Go back, though, and you’ll notice a complete absence of posts between March (when he lost in his Conservative nomination to Bob Zimmer) and September, when he announces his re-run for city council. We’ll see if he goes equally silent now that he’s no longer campaigning.
It’s also worth mentioning he seems to be more active on his personal Facebook page, which is open but I’m not linking to since he has fan page. I was only able to go back as far as October, when the page was overrun by happy birthday wishes.
32 followers, following 5, 109 “likes,” 542 friends, 7146 votes.
Albert Koehler
Albert Koehler is the second new face we’re talking about, and he seems to have a pretty firm grasp of the two-way conversation to be had on Twitter. If you visit his page this morning, it’s full of him replying to people congratulating him on his win. During the campaign, his messages showed him actively following people and replying to ideas and questions they were providing. His Facebook page was regularly updated, including with links to his blog expanding on and explaining his positions. He has a YouTube channel, too. If I were a betting man I’d say that aside from Frizzell, he has the best chance of maintaining a presence online now that’s been elected.
130 followers, following 111, 92 “likes,” 7324 votes.
Murry Krause
There’s a Facebook page, but I’m fairly certain Murry doesn’t run it (unless he has a propensity for speaking in the third person that I haven’t observed in any other venue). It is official, though, since MurryKrause.ca links to it, and run by a very enthusiastic fan who posted links, appearances, etc. Given that the page was “re-elect Murry Krause to council” I don’t know how much life it will have outside of the election campaign. No Twitter that I could find.
52 “likes,” 7976 votes.
Brian Skakun
Skakun was in and out of the Twitter world during his last term on council– mentioning the occasional concert he went to or observation about the city. He became much more active during the campaign, talking about politics and non-politics with others, and continues to be active today responding to congratulations and offering his own. He created an official Facebook page in early October and has been fairly present on there, as well. Again, if I were to guess I’d say we’ll see him intermittently on these platforms, but not with the regularity of Frizzell or Koehler.
235 followers, following 432, 168 “likes”, 9040 votes.
Lyn Hall
A newbie to council (though veteran of school board), and top of the pack for council votes. He has a Facebook account that was created in late September, shortly before his council run, but it’s speculative to say the two are related (though not illogical). I see two or three posts that Lyn made, both mentioning that he’s running for council, then a bunch of activity and messages from friends. If there’s a Twitter, I’m not finding it.
154 friends, 9529 votes.
Shari Green
The new mayor of Prince George has forayed into Twitter in the past, apparently under the example of Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi and the advice of Garth Frizzell. She made two Tweets– one in June announcing she was on Twitter, a second in September expressing her shock that her dad was on Twitter, then nothing. What did surface was the @ShariGreen4Mayr account (the misspelling of which I’m a bit baffled by since “sharigreen4mayor” was available). It made one Tweet with her slogan “Let’s Get Moving!”, followed one inactive account and went silent.
Perhaps this silence was due to all the activity on Facebook. Actually, probably not, since there were only a few posts there, though there were replies to pretty much everyone who wrote on the wall (and there continue to be, as congratulations go up). That said, I’m not expecting her to have a bunch of time to learn and use social media now if she didn’t see it as a useful tool of the campaign. Again, just a prediction.
21 followers, following 1, 146 “likes,” 6969 votes.
Stray Observations
We are obviously not at a point where social media is an essential component of a campaign, especially given that two of the least active users got some of the highest vote counts. Nor is social media an essential component of being an open, accessible leader– most of the candidates listed phone numbers and email addresses where they could be reached, and perhaps were spending so much time using those forms of communication broadcasting to the minority of people on Twitter seemed less essential. After all, if you only have 27 followers but 60 unread messages, where might you spend your time?
Further, while much of the focus in the tech and media world is on Twitter, based on this cursory glance you’re going to see more activity from local politicians on Facebook. This is reflective of the population at large– there are still far more people on Facebook than on Twitter (and far more actively using phones and email than on either of those platforms, particularly when it comes to the age groups that vote).
That said, the next campaign is three years away. Three years ago, I don’t know that any of the candidates used Twitter. Maybe a few were on Facebook. Municipal candidates, at least here, seems to be some distance from keying in on the social media demographic compared to federal and even provincial politicians. But that’s their base. The Twitter community in Prince George now is still not as robust as the one in Vancouver was two years ago. So you’re not going to see people chasing votes there.
But that Twitter base is growing. And the whole “mobilize your base online” thing really started with Barack Obama, and then trickled outwards. With that team gearing up for another run, it will be interesting to see what, if anything, trickles down here.
Ultimately, it’s up to you. Would you like your new mayor and council to interact with you online? Or by some other method. I’m guessing this is the time to let them know.
| Name | website | Phone | |||
| Shari Green | @sharigreen4mayr (@greeninpg) | page | sharigreen.ca | 250-563-4733 | vote@sharigreen.ca
(greeninpg@gmail.com) |
| Lyn Hall | (none) | (none official) | lynhall.com | 250-964-3080 | lynhallpg@gmail.com
|
| Brian Skakun | @brianskakuncity | page | brianskakun.com | 250-964-2489 | bskakun@telus.net |
| Murry Krause | (none) | page | murrykrause.ca | 250-561-2772 | info@murrykrause.ca |
| Albert Koehler | @albertkoehlerPG | page | albertkoehler.com | 250-659 or 250-560-5665 | email form |
| Cameron Stolz | @stolzpg | page | cameronstolz.ca | 250-640-5299 | cameron@cameronstolz.ca |
| Dave Wilbur | (none) | (none official) | (none) | ??? | councillordavewilbur@shaw.ca |
| Garth Frizzell | @garthfrizzell | subscribe | garthfrizzell.com | 250-613-2363 or 250-564-8377 | garthfrizzell@citynotice.ca |
| Frank Everitt | @frankeveritt | page | (none) | ??? | kfeveritt@telus.net |
See also: Prince George Election 2011 Informal Recap
Note: This is an informal reflection on the results of last night’s election. Opinions are completely my own, and subject to change.
The votes are in, and Prince George has a new mayor and a few new faces on council. From the start, pundits were saying the race between Green and Rogers would be a close one, and the fact that Green ousted the incumbent is a surprise, perhaps, only because it is notoriously difficult to oust an incumbent mayor (this is only the second time in the city’s history). On council, everyone running for re-election made it with the exception of Deborah Munoz, and the three newcomers (Lynn Hall, Frank Everitt, and Albert Koehler) are all established names in the city. On school board, a couple of incumbents were ousted, and look to be joined by five new faces.
The following is a few observations that I’m making after a brief glance around on Sunday morning:
Slates and Endorsements
It’s a bit of a hunt to find endorsements this time around, but there were a few (if I’m missing any, I’d appreciate you letting me know). The one that is likely the happiest this morning is the Prince George Recreational Hockey League, who had all of their endorsements (Green, Everitt, Koehler, Hall, Stolz and Skakun) get in.
Cope 378 had some endorsements, too, and came up about 50-50. Rogers is out, on council Munoz failed to get re-elected but Krause, Everitt, and Skakun all got in, and of their two choices for school board, Bekkering is in while Crawford is out.
The People’s Action Committee for Clean Air didn’t run endorsements so much as they graded candidates based on a questionnaire, however knowledge on the subject of clean air didn’t seem to be much help in getting elected. While Hall received an “A+” and topped the council race, the “A”‘s received by Dan Rogers, Deborah Munoz and Brad Gagnon didn’t seem to help much. Nor, for that matter did the fact that Shari Green and Brian Skakun received a “C+” seem to hurt. Of the remaining elected council members, Wilbur, Koehler, Everitt, Krause, and Stolz received a “B” grade while Frizzell was not graded as his form was submitted late. However, you can read his (and all the other candidates) answers here.
Absent from this year’s race, at least publicly, was anything resembling the “Let’s Go PG” movement of business owners endorsing candidates. Ben Meisner, however, reported on their absence earlier this year with a look at their past set of endorsements. As of nomination papers being filed, he had had no luck finding any slate from this group.
How much any of this mattered in how people voted, of course, is anyone’s guess.
Diversity
This is an interesting one. It is being widely reported that this is the first time Prince George has had a female mayor since Carrie Jane Gray left office in 1969, but it’s also a pretty male dominated council. This may not be surprising since only four women even ran for a seat (out of a total of 19). In terms of visible minorities, a group that the Globe and Mail reports is vastly underrepresented in local government in Canada— well, I wouldn’t exactly say those elected reflects the diversity I see when going about my day. Perhaps this is because there weren’t a lot of visible minorities running. The issue of why this might be, or if it even matters, could be an interesting discussion.
The World Is Run By Those Who Show Up
We had an open line for candidate’s to make their pitch to voters at CBC. A candidate from another city opened by saying “The world is run by those who show up.” If you take the world to be run by elected officials and/or the people who vote for them, then this certainly holds. Early numbers say that 15,266 people bothered to vote, in a city of close to 80,000. That puts total numbers at something like 18%, give or take a few, which is hardly a ringing endorsement for anyone. UPDATE: HQ Prince George says there are 53,000 eligible voters, putting turnout at 29%, though those numbers are still far from impressive.
I hesitate to speculate but I would guess that low turn-out in city elections is less people saying “it doesn’t matter who I vote for because my vote doesn’t count” than it is “it doesn’t matter who I vote for because city elections don’t matter.” But again, who knows? Either way, I’d argue they’re wrong because city’s are under increasing pressure to do more with less, and the next decade or so is going to see significant strain on budgets and infrastructure. Whether that contributes to increased turn out next time around– well, we’ll see in three years.
image via Opinion250
” you must have two pieces of identification that prove who you are and where you live. One piece of identification must have your signature on it. If your identification does not show your residential address, you can make what is called a “solemn declaration” as to your place of residence. The voting clerk at the voting place will have the form you need to use to make that declaration.” If you need to know more than that, go here.
Who Should I Vote For?
Hahaha, I’m not going to tell you that. But I will give you a list of places where you can get some of that information.
So there you are. You have until 8 pm tonight to do this, so you should, at the very least, be able to find a couple of people you like and vote for them– no obligation to vote for a full slate. But it is worth it to try and find people who you think can make your city a better place.
And as an aside, I’ll be working tonight on the CBC election special for northern BC. Starting at 8 we’ll have coverage of the full northern region, with punditry from UNBC professors Jason Morris and Jason Lacharite, former MLA/deputy premier and former school district trustee Lois Boone. We’ll have live coverage of the results, so tune in.
It is snowing out there today, and this morning I got an email telling me that the #91 bus in Prince George was delayed. That means it’s time for me to remind all of you that I created a tool that will email, text or Tweet you all delays and cancellations issued by BC Transit for Prince George. It’s useful if you’re a transit user who doesn’t want to refresh the website every few hours. Here’s what you do:
For those interested, my original post provides information on how I made this.
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December 15 2011 | ∞
This is one I’ve been meaning to write for a bit. It started December 2, when news broke that the Gitxsan Hereditary Chiefs in northeastern B.C. had apparently entered into an agreement Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Project. The exact words:
On the heels of an alliance of First Nations leaders signing an agreement to block the project, this was reported as a modicum of support. Which it was, I suppose, but it quickly became more complicated than that.
On Twitter and Facebook, Gitxsan were quickly voicing their opposition to the project. And before long, a press release came out saying that the Gitxsan people were outraged by the decision. Who put it out? Gitxsan band leaders and Gitxsan hereditary chiefs.
Then things got more complicated. Elmer Derrick and two other employees of the Gitxsan Treaty Society were fired. Except they weren’t. And then there was a protest outside the treaty office. Which has now been ordered to be shut down. Except it isn’t.
So what’s going on here? Well, like anything involving deciding who is the voice of the people, it’s complicated.
****
A Bit of Background
Before going further, I want to stress that I am not an expert on the Gitxsan, and I don’t want to pretend to be one. Any information I pass here is completely as a lay-person, and the material I’m working with is very much up for interpretation. I only intend for it to be a starting point for a wider discussion. That said, I think it’s important to have at least a basic understanding of how things work in order to get to the heart of these recent events.
Until very recent times, the Gitxsan were governed by a matriarchal hereditary system. According to the Gitxsan Treaty Society’s website:
That system continues to survive, and I understand that there are in the dozens, possibly over 100, hereditary chiefs today.
In parallel to this is the more recent band council system. This system was set up by the Canadian government, and involves a system of government more familiar to most Canadians: regular elections choosing leaders.
At least one of the issues is a conflict between whether the hereditary chief model or band council model winds up choosing the “legitimate” leaders of the Gitxsan. This came into play in a court case filed earlier this year. I am going to borrow wholesale now from the blog BC Treaty News, which outlines the issue thusly:
What all this boils down to is one portion of Gitxsan leadership is trying to negotiate with the B.C. government. Another portion disagrees with what this first portion is trying to do and has taken them to court to argue they are unable to do this.
The divisions are not precisely the same ones that have come up in this Enbridge argument, but they are similar: a group claiming that the treaty society can make decisions on the one side, and a mixture of elected band leaders and hereditary chiefs on the other.
****
Not A Homogenous Unit
There was a mistake, I think, in the initial media coverage of the Gitxsan agreement. The press release said “Hereditary Chief Elmer Derrick” and an assumption was largely made that “hereditary chief = leader.” As we have seen, that is not the case. While the title of hereditary chief means something, it does not mean anyone who holds it speaks for the Gitxsan. We have multiple hereditary chiefs on opposite sides of this issue. The reason Elmer Derrick was making an announcement was because he was the lead negotiator, not a hereditary chief. Including the honorific in the coverage was akin to referring to someone as “alderman” or “Dr.” It designates their role in some aspect of society, but is not necessarily relevant to the matter at hand. It was not until competing press releases were put out that we even saw any sign that there might be some conflict in this seemingly simple manner.
What I take from all of this is the reminder that the “Gitxsan” or “First Nations” or “Aboriginal people” of Canada are not, and must not be treated as, a homogenous unit. If Stephen Harper makes an announcement, the media goes to the NDP for a reaction, because there is an assumption that there are competing viewpoints. When “Hereditary Chief Elmer Derrick” makes an announcement, it took a while before anyone went looking for that competing Gitxsan viewpoint.
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So…. who speaks for First Nations?
But before anyone takes this as a good reason to do away with First Nations autonomy altogether in favour of a system more easily understood, I ask you this– who speaks for Canada?
Consider an issue in the news now, Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol. The Conservatives were elected to a majority government. They went to negotiate with other nations. They chose to withdraw from this particular negotiation. Does that mean they speak for all Canadians? Based on the reaction, obviously not. We have elected leaders in the NDP and Liberal who are criticizing these moves. We have people protesting in Montreal saying the government does not speak for them.And we have the fact that the Canadian government, when the Liberals were in power, supported the protocol. The Conservatives are moving away from that commitment. But to an outsider not following the internal politics– Canada signed on, now Canada is signing off.
On other issues, such as the crime omnibus, we have a group of provinces led by Quebec and Ontario saying they will not enforce the rules passed by the federal government. Who legitimately speaks for Ontarians? Their elected leaders in Toronto, or those in Ottawa? Who speaks for British Columbians– the elected provincial government that signed up for HST, the small majority that chose to get rid of the HST, or the elected federal government that may or may not let B.C. back out of the deal without paying some significant coin?
My point being that even in a system more of the mainstream population understands, the question of “who speaks for x?” is not always easily answered.
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But they were elected…
Then there’s the issue of whether or not hereditary chiefs can ever speak for a group of people better than elected band councils can. This is an issue with a long political, judicial, and moral history and one that I don’t have the capacity to delve into fully here. It is a multi-book length argument.
What I will say is this: there is a lengthy (and ongoing) political, judicial, and moral discussion tackling precisely this question. It is tackled to an extent in Delgamuukw, a landmark court case which the Gitxsan played a key role. It is tackled in multiple policy papers and university courses and academic treatises and ongoing community discussions around the country. And it is not as easy a question to answer as it might seem.
Governments only work if the people they purport to represent view them as legitimate. A minority government is able to “speak” for the Canadian people because enough Canadians view the way they were elected as legitimate to prevent the whole system from breaking down. If a government is democratically elected, but the people it wants to represent don’t think it got there by legitimate means, it cannot be effective.
There are members of Aboriginal people in this country who do not believe democratically elected band councils are legitimate. The system does not come from any pre-established methods of government, but rather the colonial Canadian government. They question how a system set up by colonizers can legitimately speak for them. As such, what to an outsider may look like a more legitimate form of government may look like a oppressive tool to them.
I’m not saying I take either of these viewpoints. I’m not saying this is a majority view, or even a widely-held view, because I legitimately have no idea how widespread it is. I do know it exists, because I’ve both heard and read it presented. I’m simply attempting to convey the way this seemingly simple question can become more complicated.
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Conclusion
This is a messy post, without a well-formed argument. I’m not sure it successfully conveys what I’m trying to get across. What I do know is that throughout history and into the modern world, governments have struggled with the question of which other governments to recognize as legitimate: China or Taiwan? Quebec as nation or province? Palestine or Israel, or which combination of the two? And the question of who the people themselves view as their legitimate leaders is equally complex. Less people voted for the Conservatives than voted for someone else, and yet Harper is on the world stage, purportedly representing all Canadians. Whether any individual Canadian views him as their legitimate spokesperson or not falls on all points across the spectrum.
If I have any point, it’s this: in international issues, we expect some messiness, and some diversity of views. We expect the same when covering federal politics, provincial politics and municipal politics. We should expect no less- and equally important, no more– from First Nations governments, their leaders, and their citizens.
Filed under: Best Of, British Columbia, Canada, Indigenous | Discussion