Where will Ontario fall in the secularism vs Conscience Rights debate?

"Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.” - anonymous judge.

It has always been the case that rights cannot be treated as absolute, and that one right must end where exercising that right infringes upon someone else's rights.

This debate is in full swing in Canada as it relates to the religious rights of employees providing provincial services and the sometimes conflicting rights of the public that receives these services.

On June 16, 2019 Quebec passed Bill n°21 : An Act respecting the laicity of the State (Official Status legislation), which discusses which subset of employees of provincial services must offer that service with their face uncovered, and a further smaller subset that must do so without wearing religious symbols.   The idea is simple:  when employees are within specific positions they have an additional duty of impartiality, and must not only be impartial but be seen by those receiving the service to be impartial.

There have been arguments, including from some federal politicians during the recent federal election, suggesting that this infringes too far upon the religious rights of the employees.

It might have been a response to the critique of Quebec's laicity bill that lead to the tabling of Bill 207: Conscience Rights (Health Care Providers) Protection Act in Alberta.  In this proposal the religious rights of a health care provider or religious health care organization is suggested to be paramount.

In each case there is an obvious conflict between the religious rights of employees and a wide variety of rights of those receiving government services.  In the objections to Bill 207 several policy areas were often raised: abortion, services for sexual "minorities" (LGBTQ), and medically-assisted death.  These issues were being raised as that bill only related to health care providers, but if a bill extended to other provincial service providers the list of conflicting rights would have grown considerably.

When it comes to religious rights, I suspect for most people being forced to carry out a procedure that is offensive to ones religious identity is more severe than being asked to refrain from wearing religious symbols.  While bill 207 has not yet passed, and has thus far been rejected by a committee, I suspect this is only the beginning of the discussion in the province given how high-profile this issue is being made throughout Canada.

One of the main problems I'm having with this debate is that the loudest arguments against Quebec's bill 21 end up being arguments in favor of Alberta's bill 207.  The reverse is also true, where objections to bill 207 should be seen as arguments in favor of bill 21, and yet the conversions are happening in information silos.

Schuklenk pointed to countries such as Sweden, where there is no legal right to conscientious refusal for workers in any profession, including in health care. This is also the case in Finland and Iceland. 

Sweden holds that because no one is forced to enter into a profession and may resign at any time, no one can be prevented from acting on their own moral or religious beliefs.

(Global news: Medical schools should deny applicants who object to provide abortion, assisted death: bioethicist) 

While the government does not have a monopoly on employment, it does have a monopoly on the provision of government services.  Governments are left with 3 different scenarios, each of which will be seen by someone to infringe upon someone's rights.

• Have some separation of church and state where specific employees must carry out the provision of government services impartially, expecting them to represent the state over their religious identity and/or expression.  It should not have been surprising that Quebec would take this position, as it can be seen as the general direction initiated during The Quiet Revolution.
• Protect the religious identity and expression of the employees, even if this is in conflict with the impartiality of services offered by the government.  This is the direction being proposed in Alberta, with some suggesting that conscience rights are already protected in the province.
• Try to operate in some middle-ground where the state subjectively determines what religious identity/expression rights to respect and which to deny.  This last option is the option taken so far by most governments in Canada, and I do not believe this is a sustainable way to operate.  I am very uncomfortable when the state is effectively being asked to regulate aspects of religion.

I live in Ontario, so am concerned with this province.  Ontario is one of 3 remaining provinces to have a separate school system, the others being Alberta and Saskatchewan.  While it is unfortunate that this is still the case in 2019, as I believe the separate school system infringes on both laicity and religious rights, it might be an indication of the direction that Ontario would lean in this debate.  As with Alberta, Ontario may lean towards protecting religious identity and expression over protecting the rights and interests of those requiring provincial services.

It has been frustrating to watch Ontario's NDP fighting so strongly against Quebec's secularism bill, especially as we currently have a premier who has sided with Alberta and Saskatchewan on a number of other controversial issues.  The last thing we need is for the Ontario government to start looking seriously into protecting the religious conscience rights of providers of provincial services, as I believe far more rights are threatened by that position than is theoretically protected by it.

Conservative party members should stop pointing fingers at Scheer

You can see it all over the media: Conservative caucus members and other party members trying to lay the blame for perceived electoral failures at the feet of Andrew Scheer.  There have been multiple calls for his resignation.

As someone who actively watched and voted in the 2017 leadership race, I can only remind people that Andrew Scheer and the predictable outcome of the recent election was what party members wanted.  Andrew Scheer became leader not because of some slight of hand, which can easily be the case under voting systems not based on ranked ballots, but because this is what the majority of Conservative party members wanted.


The vast majority of Canadians recognize the climate crisis is the most important economic issue of our era, and agree that putting a price on carbon is a critically important tool in the toolbox.  This fiscally conservative tax policy long predates Justin Trudeau becoming an MP, so any attempt to label it as Justin Trudeau's idea only demonstrates a lack of understanding.  Even calling it a "left wing" policy makes no sense, as it is not a so-called "progressive" tax (IE: not focused on ability to pay).

When it was obvious that party insiders were campaigning against the best possible candidates if the Conservatives wanted to form a majority government, I asked:  Will the Conservative Party choose to fail like the US Democrats?

The outcome of that leadership race confirmed that the answer was: Yes, they did choose to fail.


The notion that a party should be allowed to form government when one of their most visible and promoted economic policies is opposed by a majority of citizens makes no sense.  If the Conservatives want to form government, they must change themselves and become more palatable to the rest of Canadians. It wasn't that Justin Trudeau's Liberals won as there were many reasons to be disenfranchised by that leadership, but that the Andrew Scheer Conservatives lost.


I strongly believe that if the party and membership had put down their blinders, and had the rest of the country in mind, we would currently be talking about a strong Conservative majority under Prime Minister Michael Chong or Prime Minister Lisa Raitt.

I put Andrew Scheer as #8 and Maxime Bernier as #9 on my ballot. This was not because I thought either had a credible path to become PM, but because there was actually even worse options to put below them.

I will continue to vote in Conservative party leadership races whenever I see candidates I consider worthy of being Prime Minister.  I wonder if I will ever have someone in my local riding nominated by the Conservative party that is worthy of my vote.  That has yet to happen, and that remains the choice of the party executive and membership.

2020 Green Party of Canada leadership race

With Elizabeth May stepping down, the Green Party of Canada will start a leadership race starting in the new year and ending in an election at the fall 2020 convention in Prince Edward Island.

While I am currently not a partisan, I plan to re-join the party to participate in the leadership vote, just as I did for the Conservative party leadership to show support for Michael Chong.

I don't know who the leadership candidates will be yet, but given I have history with the Greens I suspect I will have strong preferences.  I haven't received details yet, but I hope they will be using a modern voting system for the leadership that actually allows preferences.

I first learned about the Green Party some short time prior to the 1995 provincial election, directly from the then provincial leader Frank de Jong who also lived in Ottawa at the time.  He understood the international context of the party, and explained to me in numerous personal conversations the principles behind what is now called the Global Greens charter.

• Participatory Democracy
• Nonviolence
• Social justice
• Sustainability
• Respect for Diversity
• Ecological Wisdom

(The 10 key values of the GPO at the time are available on the Wayback engine).

Like Frank, I consider myself "socially progressive, fiscally conservative, and environmentally aware" (See historical leader profile).  Ignoring some odd problems surrounding a free speech issue, we pretty much always got along and I shared many values with Frank.

I offered my technical skills to the party and hosted websites, as well as participated in policy and other conventions.  While I was asked several times, I never put my name on a ballot as I am uni-lingual English and believe this isn't appropriate for a candidate running in Ottawa.  Several of my friends did put their name forward in Ottawa area ridings.

In the 1990's there wasn't a separation between provincial and federal parties, and the Ontario party organizers essentially organized the federal party within Ontario.  When there was federal elections in 1997 and 2000 we participated from Ottawa, but I didn't quite see myself in what I heard from Joan Russow.  She didn't seem to mirror the values I had understood the greens to stand for, but being a partisan at the time I didn't question whether the federal party had to have the same underlying values that made me interested in the Green Party of Ontario within Ottawa.

Then Copyright Happened. 

(See: Introduction to the Canada DMCA Opponents forum.  This forum later became digital-copyright.ca )

As technology property rights is very important to me, I discussed this area of policy across party lines and started to meet members of parliament. I came to realize I had as much in common with some of those MPs as I did with some of my fellow Green Party members.  There were MPs in the same parties I had strong disagreements with, and there were strong disagreements within the Green Party.  My experiences from this area of policy made me realize that party affiliation was not an important determination of what policy persons and politicians I could work with and those I could not.

That brings me to today.  When I vote, I vote for the person who can best represent my values.  Provincially that is sometimes a person nominated by the Green Party, and sometimes not.  Federally I have felt that David McGuinty is the most (lower-case) green thinking candidate in the district I moved to in 2003, and I vote for him despite having absolutely no trust in the Liberal Party of Canada (or its various leaders other than Stéphane Dion).

While the leader is only one person among many, they set the tone and help recruit like-minded candidates.  As much as Elizabeth May has repeated current green party policy that she is only the primary spokesperson of the party, not in control of it (and can't whip votes), she has put a major stamp on the party and what candidates will run.

I don't know how things will change.  Federally I obviously supported Chris Bradshaw as he was a close personal friend before and after his interm leadership roll.  I never got to know Jim Harris I was spending far more time on technology law than party politics during his time.  I was happy to see the organization grow, partly as organizers and supporters of the historical federal Progressive Conservative party went different ways with the merger/takeover of the PC party by the Reform/Alliance party.


I've not had personal conversations with Elizabeth May, and have mixed feelings about the policies she puts forward even if I am far more supportive than I was of Joan Russow.  I expressed some of these concerns in a posting during the election.

That said, I am very grateful for Elizabeth May's ongoing work with the greens and for her constituents in public life.

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My hope for the future leader:

• I want someone with a science background.  While Elizabeth was very strong on climate and environmental issues, I found she (and whoever she was using as advisers) lacked a STEM background whenever other technology or technology law issues came forward.
• I want someone who understands and believes in the principles behind the Global Greens charter.  While I have a stronger connection to the historical 10 key values of the Ontario party (which included Grassroots Democracy, Decentralization, Community-based Economics, Personal and Global Responsibility, and Gender Equality/Feminism), these are all values that the short-form 6 values of the global greens should be understood to include.
• I want someone who recognizes the need for parliamentary and democratic reform, but helps articulate and promotes reforms that are consistent with green values and not those which temporarily appear politically expedient. I think Elizabeth's participation in the electoral reform committee was a major missed opportunity.  Joining the NDP with their promotion of the Ghallagher index, which only promotes the centralizing interests of party executives, is inconsistent with green principles.  It is also inconsistent with the parliamentary reforms Elizabeth has personally spoke about for decades.  Expressing some of those personal and global green principles might have enabled rather than blocked electoral reform.
• I want someone who can articulately and calmly explain what makes the green principles different that those of all other parties, and not to mimic the other parties because they are perceived as being historically successful.

I don't expect the federal leader to be "socially progressive, fiscally conservative, and environmentally aware", but if the federal Greens have a leader closer to the above then they may again attract candidates (and grow a caucus) that can include some of these people.   Diversity is a value and potential strength of the Greens, but only if the executive allows that diversity to exist within the party.

Western Alien Nation

While researchers noticed the trends relating to greenhouses and the possible impacts on climate in the 1970's, it wasn't until the 1990's that computer modelling allowed a consensus position to form:  greenhouse gases were deeply involved in most climate changes and human-caused emissions were bringing discernible global warming.

It was in the 1990's that I took notice, and recognized that artificially cheap energy was always going to be far more costly than the promoters advertised.  This is the case for fossil fuel based energy, as well as nuclear.  The only viable future was one in which the full costs of energy was paid by the consumer, preferably with costs included directly by the producer with minimal or no exceptions.  The goal is energy efficiency, and not continuously switching between false claims of "too cheap to meter".



Due to the undue influence of the energy sector on the federal government, there has been considerable delay in doing anything.  It has been painful to watch decade after decade of politicians pretending there was no problem.

The best time to have started diversifying the western economy was in the 1990's, but successive provincial and federal governments did nothing.  This was especially true of self-called "conservative" governments who stuck their head in the (tar)sand and pretended that there was no problem.

I find it sad that the same "conservative" politicians are now talking about #Wexit, a western exit from the Canadian federation, largely due to their own failure to act on well established science.  It is understood that the Canadian economy as a whole will be impacted by a decline in one region, but angry talk of separation seems only to be dishonest politicians trying to deflect from decades of their own ineptitude.


If we want nation-building projects, it should be in the form of national publicly managed high-speed rail and (structurally separated) high-speed communications.  Increasing pipeline capacity for export markets only delays the inevitable downturn as ongoing fossil fuel (ab)use as an energy source is no longer tolerated.  The longer the delay, the higher the costs to Canadians.

Federal Election 2019: Left-wing parties and leadership

I've commented on the political right and center, and will offer some personal comments on the federal Canadian left.

As I mentioned with the first posting, I don't vote along party lines.  My vote for a candidate nominated by a party, or even a financial contribution to a candidate, is not in any way an endorsement of the party.  I believe nearly every party has great candidates (some of which I hope become or remain MPs), and they also have horrible candidates (who I hope don't get re-elected or elected).  Party affiliation alone doesn't mean anything to me.

New Democratic Party

I have donated hundreds of dollars to NDP nominated candidates because I wanted them to continue to sit in parliament, and I have donated to the campaign of an NDP nominated candidate who was the most likely candidate to oust a bad candidate (who happened to be nominated by the Liberals).

Of the parties long-term parties that nominate candidates where I live (PC which morphed into Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Green), the party I felt least likely to have an affinity with is the NDP. I have my own beliefs, and don't want to feel judged as being either "with us" or "against us" as I've often felt when discussing politics with lifelong NDP supporters. It has always felt I needed to agree with them on every policy in order to work with them on any, and there were so many policy ideas they expressed which I believed were simply unworkable even when I thought their goals were in line with my own.


There is a video called "Lefty Boot Camp" made by Australian ABC Comedy that sums up the feeling I've all too often had when getting into political discussions with strong NDP supporters.





When Jack Layton became leader in 2003 he helped reshape the party to give it focus on areas of policy that more Canadians could join with. Under his direction and leadership we saw a historic high in the May 2011 election with the "Orange crush" that was partly due to huge support in Quebec. The "Orange Crush" was largely mirrored by a collapse in support for the Bloc Québécois in Quebec, clearly suggesting that the NDP and the Bloc were competing for many of the same voters.

After Jack Layton's death, the leadership moved to Thomas Mulcair. Many suggest the loss of seats in Quebec, and much of the gains the NDP had under Layton, was due to Mulcair's views on the niqab. Quebec started its movement towards a stronger separation of church and state, and Quebeckers were getting increasingly frustrated by the angry slurs being thrown at them from outside. As suggested in the video above, calling someone a "racist" who don't think they are racist (and there is no evidence they are racist) isn't going to change their mind, but it is going to make them dismiss or otherwise distrust you.

The party membership gave Mulcair a non-confidence vote for a variety of possible reasons: low seat turnout (which was largely due to opposing Quebeckers on secularism), opposing Alberta's oil industry (apparently the NDP brand matters more than anything else, and the fact Alberta had an NDP provincial government was supposed to flip the entire country), and a promise to balance the budget (which is one of the things which made the party seem more legitimate in the 2015 election).

The election of a leader who wears an opposition to Quebec's secularism on his head, and the fact that NDP devotees will shout "racist" any time someone brings up the entirely separate issue of religion, has put the NDP back into their pre-Layton position. I fully expect the continued fall of the NDP in Quebec will be seen in the form of a rise of the Bloc in Quebec.

Secularism

I believe in a strong separation of church and state (See: Freethought), and believe we need less religion in politics rather than more.

Due to my adoptive ties to India (see photograph of my wife and I ), I am very concerned about influence of religion on politics, with partition being one historical result.  Ongoing Hindu and Sikh nationalism (and the related battles, including terrorism - Air India Flight 182 comes to mind from a Canadian perspective) continuing to have harmful impacts.

I disagree with the suggestion that to be inclusive of religious views we need to bring religion beyond a persons private life and community, and bring religion into government.  I consider it insensitive of people with strong religious views to have them seek assistance from a theoretically secular government, and be confronted with a person prominently displaying symbols from a differing religion that has historically (or currently) been at war with the citizen's own religious community.

I consider religion to be a foreign political influence, and the display of religious symbols seems to put that government representative in a visible conflict of interest with the secular government they should be representing.

While I believe there is some hypocrisy in Quebec on religious symbols within government, given the ongoing Christian religious symbols even within their flag, I believe that they are headed in a more progressive direction.  There is no attempt to ban any religious beliefs, but there is a ban on promoting that religion through prominent religions symbols while that person should be clearly representing the secular government.  I wish there was as forceful removal of ostentatious Christian symbols from Quebec government, but what they are doing is better than what many other Canadian political leaders are suggesting.

I believe that to have a more healthy and inclusive society that is not constantly at war with itself we need less religion in politics, not more.

It should be obvious that the NDP membership, with their current leader as visible spokesperson, disagree with my views on secularism.

Democratic Deficit

I believe in participatory democracy, which is why I've considered it my duty to participate as a citizen including by being a witness at parliamentary committees (and an observer of easily hundreds of hours of parliamentary work).   Things work well when parliamentarians leave their "team jerseys" (party affiliation) at the door and work together as people.  The best committees can be observed when this happens, and the worst can be seen when hyper-partisan MPs repeat party talking points at each other.

My experience with many NDP MPs and supporters is that they are hyper-partisan.  I've heard many suggest that an MP that had been nominated by the NDP should be barred from crossing the floor.  This suggests that these elected members are expected to put party first, and the interests of the citizens in their constituencies later (if at all).  They see the party and the interests of the party as their constituency, not the people in the ridings.  This could be seen at the convention that ousted Tom Mulcair, where the fact that there was a NDP branded government in Alberta made party brand more important than policies that NDP candidates and supporters had been fighting for for years.

In any discussion on electoral reform the NDP pushed forward party lists, believing that all that mattered was that an interchangeable NDP nominated candidate won.  I have a hard time seeing this desire to draw a circle around every NDP supporter in Canada, regardless of where they live, to be any more than gerrymandering on steroids. I consider this attitude to be one that can only increase the democracy deficit, with more MPs having a stronger allegiances to their party brand than any policy or democratic principles.



I have many more things I've felt over the years about the NDP and its leadership, but they become examples of the same themes that could be seen on secularism and democracy.  The attack-pamphlets I've seen from the NDP aimed at the Greens, deliberately misrepresenting the Green's support for participatory democracy, shows how little the NDP is interested in working together with anyone not part of their party after an election.

Bloc Québécois

The Bloc has felt similar to the NDP in many ways, except in their case it is their belief that their interpretation of what Quebeckers wants that is their focus rather than the NDP with their party brand focus.

I understand why the Bloc exist, and consider it very unfortunate.  What unites the provinces has never been as simple as the more top-down federal parties have tried to suggest.  I don't believe it is helpful when "federal" leadership (often representing views of a minority of Canadians, focused inward on their parties) attacks Quebeckers for their beliefs.  The more some suggest that Quebeckers are somehow less Canadian because they have different beliefs, the more the Bloc will continue to exist.

I find it disturbing how much the other party leaders have been campaigning for the Bloc in this election, by constantly bringing up Bill 21.  I don't see how this is helpful to the unity of Canada to be so actively promoting the idea that a majority of Quebeckers don't fit into some other Canadian's idea of what it is to be Canadian.  I also suspect that if asked without the uncalled for angry name-calling, a majority of other Canadians would support the idea of moving forward with Canadian federal secularism.

Federal Election 2019: politically center parties and leadership

I posted earlier on the right-wing parties and leadership, and will continue my thoughts on the central parties and leadership.

Justin Trudeau, and the Liberal party of Canada

Rina Sen, Russell McOrmond, and Justin Trudeau (July 18, 2010)

I met Justin Trudeau in 2010 at his constituency office, before he became leader of the Liberal party.  I felt quite optimistic from that meeting, and at the time thought his stance on bringing young people into politics would be positive.

When he became Prime Minister after the 2015 election, he likely came in with the most optimistic feelings about him, and the most political capital of any Canadian Prime Minister.

He and his closest advisors then burned through that political capital as if it was worthless, and the Liberal party is back in a campaign where the best they have to offer is that they aren't the Conservatives.

I have come to think that Justin Trudeau took his self-granted "Minister of Youth" title more seriously than the "Prime Minister of Canada" title he was granted by being the leader of the party that won the most seats.  There were so many decisions he made that seemed to exhibit the naivety of someone with no political experience, rather than the son of a past Prime Minister who was given a privileged position for learning how real national and international politics works.

A few top-of-mind examples of Justin's personal or government mistakes:

Brown Face

For reasons that might be obvious from the photograph above that included my wife Rina, I have had the opportunity to speak to many people with darker skin about their feelings on "brown face".  They do not see it at all like Blackface which has a long history of non-black performers presenting a caricature of a black person that was insulting.  Context matters, and the same context simply doesn't exist with cosplay that includes other skin colors (that exist with humans or purely fictional).

Justin, as he embraced some of the youth and social media culture, seemed to be a willing participant in call-out culture (also known as outrage culture) that pretends that reality is so black-and-white, that context never matters, and often that facts don't matter.   While I don't think it is appropriate to be considering Justin to be racist because he cosplayed characters that happened to be non-white, I don't feel bad that the Minister of Youth is being attacked by a social-media style call-out youth culture.

SNC-Lavalin

Context matters.  While there was generally support during consultations towards the creation of a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) in Canada, it was very inappropriate to bury the policy in a budget bill and then use it in the context of company that seemed to be strategically important for the Liberal Party.  Every time Justin said, "I'm not going to apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs", he is admitting wrongdoing as protecting jobs is not a legitimate justification for use of a DPA.

While this wrongdoing seems to play well in Quebec, it plays poorly in the rest of the country.  Like the Conservative party's focus on Alberta energy sector jobs at the expense of the rest of Canada and Canada's global reputation, this is an inability to see the bigger picture and Canada's best interests rather than narrow provincial or riding-specific interests.

Climate Crisis Policy

One second they declare a #ClimateEmergency and the next second they say yes to expand a pipeline.

This is shameful.
But of course this is not only in Canada, we can unfortunately see the same pattern everywhere...https://t.co/zVbWXnLBSQ

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) June 19, 2019

In Justin's attempt to be all things to everyone, he is failing everyone.

I see no future where Canada isn't failing in its international obligations on the climate crisis that involves continuing to subsidize and privilege the energy sector. While there can be some debate about what percentage of climate change is man-made, there can be no debate that the economy is 100% man-made. This imagining of an economy built on top of artificially "cheap" energy has always been in conflict with the natural sciences, even if some people have kept their eyes closed most of their lives.

If the purpose of purchasing the pipeline is to nationalize this distribution system, then that might make sense. Having inter-provincial and cross-state distribution of energy treated as if it is only the jurisdiction of a single province or the private sector never made sense. I have, however, seen no signs that this is the intention. In fact, it is hard to determine what the intentions are as there has been no clarity.


The same inexperience was exhibited with the carbon tax. The only way a carbon tax policy works is if it is a revenue neutral shift away from personal income tax, allowing citizens to make more efficient choices with their money. It is the policy that must be revenue neutral, in that any carbon tax collected must be transferred 100% to reducing personal income tax. 

Typical of what I've seen with Justin, he included a series of tax expenditures which meant that the policy was not revenue neutral.  Personal income taxpayers are effectively funding the separate (and in many ways incompatible) government programs embedded in the tax expenditures. By including separate government programs it also gave legitimacy to the claims from the Conservatives that this was an increase in taxes, even though it is clearly false to claim that a carbon tax is a tax on everything when compared to personal income taxes.

Electoral Reform

This was so badly botched, and so widely misunderstood, that I posting a separate article.

Elizabeth May, and the Green Party of Canada

The Global Greens is the partnership of the world's environmental movements, Green Parties, NGOs, Foundations, Think Tanks, Institutes and Individuals working cooperatively to implement the Global Greens Charter.  The Green Party of Canada has adopted that charter as core to its values, and includes Participatory Democracy, Nonviolence, Social justice, Sustainability, Respect for Diversity, and Ecological Wisdom.

Participatory Democracy, and the role of leader

Consistent with the principle of Participatory Democracy, the leader of the Green Party is "the public face and principal spokesperson of the Party".  The leader is not the CEO of a corporation that is able to dictate to MPs or candidates as if they are employees, as is all too commonly done in other parties. The federal leader also has no influence over provincial green parties, and should never try to speak on their behalf.

Helping Canadians to understand these core values seems like it would be a primary job of "the public face and principal spokesperson of the Party".  For better or for worse, however, most of Elizabeth May's political experience has been outside of the party.  This has meant that she is able to speak to the mainstream (largely national) media which wants to talk as if Canada is having a presidential election, even though the leader is intended to be one candidate among many, one MP among many.

This has allowed confusion to be spread by some of the more authoritarian parties like the NDP whose leader is claiming that the Greens would open debates on abortion and national-unity, simply because the Global Greens believe in participatory democracy which would discourage (some suggest outright prohibit) whipping elected members of parliament.

Lacking evidence based decision making in technology law

All too consistent with other parties, the platform includes bold statements which should be matters of debate within a parliament with adequate time to study.  I can point to technology law issues such as the so-called "right to be forgotten" which is alleged to be a matter of privacy, when it is more about protecting people from uncomfortable legally published facts.  I'm as uncomfortable with the "right to be forgotten" as book burning because what the books says are uncomfortable to an individual, group or government.

Questions around 5G should be a matter of spectrum policy, and whether private corporations should be granted exclusivity with digital technology, and if we need structural separation for wireless and wired digital communication.  There are vague references in the platform about weather forecasting and security, which suggest a reaction to foreign media reports.  What questions a committee is asked to study is important, as poor questions will often get poor answers.

The platform also suggests "Netflix and other foreign internet broadcasters are subject to Canadian Content (CanCon)", even though Netflix and similar digital native content distribution services are not broadcast.  When discussing the post digital conversion world, it is broadcasters like CBC/etc who are "foreign", and yet the Greens want to increase subsidies to this analog-era entity rather than shift funding to Canadian creators.

Analog-era media companies have spun a narrative that digital native companies are evil, and should somehow be crippled through analog-era regulation.  The effect being to ensure that Canada never successfully gains any benefits from the digital transition (with OSI model layered structural separation leading to greater competition and innovation being one).  This includes the "scary Google search and Microsoft Bing" attitude that is behind the "right to be forgotten".

Technology policy could have a positive impact on climate change, such as moving compute intensive activities north where cooling the computers wouldn't be as energy intensive.  Extremely cheap communications networks to bring the results quickly back to users on energy efficient displays from is critical to this efficiency.  Allowing analog-era vertically integrated media companies like Bell, Telus and Rogers to run the lower level communications infrastructure is a major barrier to this energy efficiency, so analog-era regulation of digital-era communications technology is even harmful to the climate. Computing as an industry is currently in the same order-of-magnitude as the airline industry.

Elizabeth May wishes people to focus on the science and not blindly block change when looking for solutions to climate change and other environmental issues, but appears to not be following her own advise when it comes to how to regulate modern information and communications technology.

Electoral reform

The policy which I find in most conflict with the Global Greens charter is the support for party lists  for electoral reform,. Party lists put the focus on the party bureaucracy and away from participatory democracy.  I suspect I know where this is rooted as many Canadian greens learned from the German Greens, which due to a specific problem in German history adopted an electoral system (mixed member proportional) to solve a specific problem.  I had hoped that the Canadian federal and provincial parties would learn to understand the inconsistency between support for party lists and participatory democracy, but was very disappointed by Elizabeth May's performance in the electoral reform committee.    If she had brought the Global Greens values into that committee, the compromise between the groups that want electoral reform (Some who want party lists, and some who reject party lists) might have become more obvious.  Unfortunately this is not what happened.

What did Justin Trudeau and the 2015 Liberal platform team do wrong on electoral reform

While partisans from opposition parties and supportive multi-partisan interest groups have their own take on what went wrong with electoral reform after the 2015 election, I'll offer a non-partisan take on what Justin Trudeau did wrong.

Platforms are increasingly decided by an inner-circle within the bureaucracy of a political party, in close consultation with the party leader and executive. They increasingly even ignore or contradict party policy voted on by members. It is therefore appropriate to focus blame for failures on those few individuals, rather than all candidates or elected members with that party affiliation.

We should start with a reminder of what was included in the 2015 Liberal platform

We will make every vote count.

We are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system. 

We will convene an all-party Parliamentary committee to review a wide variety of reforms, such as ranked ballots, proportional representation, mandatory voting, and online voting. 

This committee will deliver its recommendations to Parliament. Within 18 months of forming government, we will introduce legislation to enact electoral reform.

Lets parse what Justin Trudeau and his platform team did wrong with each component:

We will make every vote count.

This is a loaded term that means different, and often incompatible, things to different people.  The platform team were either unaware of the complexities of electoral reform, or were trying to deceive people into believing that it was their meaning that the platform was using.

We are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system. 

If this commitment was strong, then other steps would not have been carried out in a way that would have predictably lead to failure.

We will convene an all-party Parliamentary committee to review a wide variety of reforms, such as ranked ballots, proportional representation, mandatory voting, and online voting.

If the commitment was to have 2015 be the last federal election under FPTP, then why convene a committee that is constituted differently than any other parliamentary committee?  Convening a committee to study a variety of reforms, including a variety of things that a proportional system can be proportional to, should not start by forming a committee that is proportional to alleged support for political parties.

The idea that elections and parliament should be focused only on political parties, with no consideration for any other demographic trait of potential representatives, is itself controversial.  Misunderstandings and misrepresentations about these very different criteria for success is behind why reform is so hard in Canada.

An unbiased study would have found that the three most common things different people are focused on when voting in parliamentary elections are:

1. Those whose focus is on what party forms government. For them the choice is between the top two parties representing two visions, with there being little or no interest in other parties or the individual people who are candidates in the election.
2. Those whose focus is on what parties have seats in parliament. For them the choice is between the likely less than 10 parties who have sufficient support to gain seats, and they also have little or no interest in the specific individuals who are candidates in the election.
3. Those who want the people with the most voter support to act as representatives. For them party affiliation is one demographic trait among many, and want to be able to include other criteria in their decision of which people (plural) they believe could represent them.

Each group has different features of systems they believe is ideal

1. For this group, First Past The Post is the ideal system, as the single vote plurality encourages people to vote for one of the top two parties - otherwise the vote will split or be quickly exhausted.
2. For this group party lists are seen as ideal (some claim necessary), as the single party vote requires people to vote narrowly along party lines and thus makes any vote for a party count equally.
3. For this group any ballot that forces people to vote narrowly along party lines via party lists, or gives certain voters an unequal vote because they vote along party lines, moves us further away from making every vote count.  This group will reject any system which includes party lists or groups different candidates together along party lines.  They don't want their vote for one person to transfer to another person they didn't vote for. They might feel being forced to make a single choice among 10 options country-wide isn't much different than a choice between 2. This group also doesn't believe that there is only "one right answer" to a question with more than two options, so will want to either rank their choices or mark multiple choices they approve of. They will want their ballot to not be exhausted quickly and have no influence, so will want their ballot to be able to transfer beyond a small number of candidates (for instance via multi-member districts or similar).

This committee will deliver its recommendations to Parliament.

Between June 21, 2016 and November 28, 2016 the Special Committee on Electoral Reform carried out the study.  This was 6 months of study, with a final report being tabled in December which is 13 months after the government was formed.

A proper study would have determined the complexities of the different positions, recognized there was no consensus, and suggested a way to move forward that had a majority of support. Unfortunately by putting the focus on parties this biased the study towards parties and their interests, as can be seen by a number of the recommendations.

• The NDP and Elizabeth May were in group 2, and forced a criteria for success (a low Gallagher index) that group 2 wants, but that group 1 and group 3 both reject as being invalid (or even counterproductive, as it seeks to optimize for what some in group 3 consider harmful hyper-partisanship)
• The Conservative members wanted to embarrass the Liberals at any cost, and ensure that the Liberals couldn't fulfill their campaign promise.  As the opposition was granted a majority of the members on committee, it was trivial to orchestrate this by requiring a referendum.  Any time Canadians have been given a referendum on the Gallagher index it has failed, so these two criteria together guaranteed failure.
• The Liberals on the committee presented a Supplemental Report of the Liberal Members of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform which confirmed the complexity of reform and the invalidity of the Gallagher index as a criteria for success.  In doing so they essentially contradicted the authors of the 2015 Liberal platform as the platform suggested the issue could have a satisfactory resolution before the next election.  The Liberal caucus members admitting in their minority report that the platform team was wrong was the most surprising aspect of the report.

It was not surprising that the government response rejected recommendations 1, 2 and 12 relating to the Gallagher index (noting that testimony did not lead to that recommendation) with 12 also including the referendum.

Within 18 months of forming government, we will introduce legislation to enact electoral reform.

I will repeat where I started: "The platform team were either unaware of the complexities of electoral reform, or were trying to deceive people into believing that it was their meaning that the platform was using."

The ERRE committee work happened at a predictable pace, and left only 5 months to introduce and pass legislation.

As the 10 independent Electoral Boundaries Commissions could not complete a process to change boundaries within 5 months, or even necessarily before the next election, the quickly introduced legislation would need to work with the existing boundaries.   While that would satisfy the first and third group as they don't want districts redrawn, this would have been rejected by the group who want party lists or other systems which propose redrawing electoral boundaries.

As the second group often believe that systems based on ranked ballots in multi-member districts (STV) are "proportional" a compromise was possible. Unfortunately that was never offered by the opposition.  In fact the opposition and interest groups from group 2 continued to promote the idea that ranked ballot systems could be "improved" in the future by adding "top-up" party lists to better meet their Gallagher index criteria for success, making it impossible to have a reasonable discussion about any compromise.

With no compromise offered, and confusion continually generated by one of the groups ignoring the interests of other voters, reform was impossible in such a short time-frame.

The complexity of moving forward with reform should have been understood, and any promise of enacting legislation in a short time period should have started with stating the criteria for success and not falsely claiming that legislation would easily follow from some non-existent consensus on success criteria.

Today is Software Freedom Day. Thank you Richard Stallman

Saturday 21 September 2019 is Software Freedom Day.

I would like to thank Richard Stallman for his leadership in bringing Software Freedom from a simple logical idea to the reality Free Software is within the software ecosystem today.

I am saddened by his recent resignations.  In his words it was "over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations".

RMS has characterized himself as "borderline autistic". I believe that while I am near that border, he exhibits far more traits.  My only hope is that we will eventually have a future where the celebration of diversity includes neurodiversity, and there will no longer be so much anger from some communities directed toward us.

The ages of adulthood

While the 18to8 campaign might be seen as humorous by some, there are reasons to be giving serious thought to the variety of ages that younger people are allowed to join adulthood.

A few examples:

• On 1 May 2008, the age of consent in Canada was raised from 14 to 16.
• In Ontario you can apply for a G drivers license at 16.
• Voting age is 18
• Drinking age is 19 in most of Canada, 18 in Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec

There is a huge benefit to society for young people to feel involved and responsible in decisions about their lives, so being involved in politics early seems obvious.  Of all these activities, the age one can vote should be lowest.

I don't understand the logic of increasing the age of consent from 14, and it seems quite arbitrary. At least there are some closeness in age exceptions, but this suggest there are predatory issues against younger people that should be made more general rather than this odd fixation some people have on genital sex. A 20+ year old person scamming a 14 year old out of money should also be considered a more serious offence.

The difference I find the least logical is having the drinking age be higher than the driving age.  While mistakes such as excessive drinking can be harmful to the health of the individual over the long term, mistakes during driving can be harmful (even immediately fatal) to far more people.  The idea that people have a drivers license when they are first learning how to limit themselves with alcohol seems like a very bad idea.  Logically these ages should be reversed.

Of all the ages the oldest should be for driving, so if 16 makes sense for driving then age of consent, voting and drinking age should all be lower (14 or below).  Of course, it is entirely possible that driving at 16 doesn't make sense.

Federal Election 2019: Right-wing parties and leadership

Personally I vote based on which person can best represent me in parliament.  While their party affiliation might make it harder for them to do that, my voting for them should never be misinterpreted as an endorsement of their party.  Having participated in and monitored committees and monitoring parliament over the years, I've observed that party affiliation is a poor indicator of where an MP stands on the policy proposals that I will be advocating around.

At the dissolution of the 42nd parliament, there were 6 parties which had at least 1 MP associated with them (The CCF is not a registered political party, so Erin Weir makes that 9 independents).  I'm going to divide the parties into pairs of parties on the right, middle, and left in the political spectrum.

Right-wing parties and leadership

Those of us who participated in the 2017 Conservative Leadership election will already have formed their opinion on Andrew Scheer who won that election, and Maxime Bernier who was in close second place.  We were asked to rank the candidates, and I researched all the candidates as I intended to rank the maximum 10 of the 14 candidates.  Andrew Sheer was 8th on my ballot, and Maxime Bernier was 9th.

Having received 49.05% on Round 13 of the Instant Runoff Voting system to Andrew Sheer's 50.95%, Mr. Bernier did the childish thing and (took his ball and went home.. err) formed his own party: The People's Party of Canada.  (I'm aware of there is a bit more that happened, but the narrow loss of the leadership race was the spark).


Neither of these candidates were people I was endorsing, or could stomach as Prime Minister.  I only believed there were still worse options in the 14 candidates.

While I'm a fiscal conservative, I'm also socially liberal and can't stomach socially conservative ideas. While I respected Andrew Sheer's work as Speaker of the House of Commons, a big part of his leadership campaign was to attempt to unite all forms of conservatism.  This was an explicit invitation for Conservatives who felt left out of the Canadian conservative movement under Stephen Harper who refused to allow social conservative issues to be brought forward by MPs.

Whether or not people feel that Andrew Sheer is himself socially conservative (pick your own *ist word) doesn't really matter, as he strongly wanted to bring social conservatives into the Conservative party.  I believe he has been successful, and we should expect the party to be quite different than it was under Harper -- which was also very different than the Progressive Conservative party before the Conservative party was formed.

I'm not convinced Andrew Sheer is a fiscal conservative.  One of the things that you will notice with a far-left fiscal liberal is the believe that the ability-to-pay should be the primary or only criteria for determining how taxes should be paid.  A more centrist or fiscal conservative will be more likely to use tax policy applied to specific goods or activities to be a mechanism to reduce government expenses or otherwise enact government policy.  Consumers purchasing less of these goods or carrying out those activities would in effect also be reducing their own taxes.

Andrew Scheer’s Climate Plan claims it is about technology and not taxes, but any subsidy either reduces fiscal capacity (at a time when the government will be called upon more to deal with the outcomes of the climate crisis), or have to be made up elsewhere: likely in income taxes which are focused on the ability-to-pay and don't help reduce government expenses.

The plan recognizes that the climate crisis is a global issue where we should be helping beyond our boarders, but then provides a so-called "green patent credit" which incentivizes patenting green technologies.  This will only make these technologies more expensive for those majority-world countries that will need cheap green technology the most.  A plan that actually wanted to have a positive global impact would fund patent-free research that could then be cheaply harnessed globally.

If I take Andrew Scheer at his word, his policies are only counterproductive to their intended goal making him an ineffectual leader.  If I am more cynical I could believe that Andrew Scheer disagrees with the vast majority of evidence of the impacts of the climate crisis, and human influence on it.

This could also only be only about jobs in strategic Conservative ridings, and that as leader he is willing to risk the Canadian economy and embarrass Canada on the international stage to theoretically protect a few jobs for partisan purposes.  If this sounds familiar, it should as this is the type of scandalous behavior the Conservatives are hypocritically using to attack the Justin Trudeau Liberals.

These are only a few examples of why I consider Andrew Sheer to be a social conservative, fiscal liberal - the opposite type of conservative than I am.


As much as I dislike Andrew Scheer, I ranked Maxime Bernier lower.  While I disagree with much of what Mr. Scheer believes in, I could at least tell where he stood.  Mr. Bernier seems to have no grounded political philosophy and will twist with the political winds around him (populist squeaky wheels and all).  He claims to be a libertarian, but when I was watching him closely as Minister of Industry I saw considerable evidence to the contrary -- and that he was willing to further perpetuate big-government manipulation of marketplaces, including in telecommunications.

Mr Bernier wishes to debate about what percentage of climate change is man-made.   While it might be legitimate for scientists to haggle over the exact percentage, there is no room for debating that the economy is 100% man-made.  It seems ludicrous to me that we would not make our economy more efficient and resilient, such as by reducing cost externalization and subsidies that benefit the energy sector,  regardless of the exact percentage of climate change that is man made.

Anyone that doesn't take the inevitable impacts of the climate crisis seriously, and isn't willing to make minor adjustments to the 100% man-made economy to minimize the harm to humanity (including to the economy), is not worth taking seriously.

Importance of GOSSIP and David Graham (MP for Laurentides—Labelle)

(Photo from recent GOSLING gathering copied from tweet by Mike Gifford.  Mike is sitting beside MP David Graham in the top-right, and I'm sitting beside John Hall on the bottom-right)


In May of 2002 I was one of the co-founders of what became known as GOSLING (Getting Open Source Logic INto Governments).  While many participants were focused on how the government creates/distributes and uses FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software), my primary concern was in how the government regulated software.

Starting in the summer of 2001 when the government launched the consultations towards that copyright section 92 report until copyright bill C-11 passed in 2012, I spent a considerable amount of time talking to parliamentarians, attending all committee meetings studying the bill, and giving public talks on copyright focused on the regulation of software and hardware.

During that time I fairly regularly had people come up to me and ask if they could financially support me, or if I would ever consider running for office so that they would have a representative in parliament.

Having members of our community in parliament would be towards GOSSIP (Getting Open Source and Standards Into Parliament).


We currently have a situation far better than me trying to get elected, which is someone from the FLOSS technology community who is fluently bilingual, a much better public speaker, and has  an intimate understanding of parliamentary process from prior experience: David Graham (follow him on Twitter)

Shortly after his election he was written about on SlashDot, referencing a video of him talking tech in committee.  With OpenParliament.ca it is possible to subscribe to get an email notice whenever he speaks in parliament, and I've been following his house and committee participation closely over the years.

If you were wondering why the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology report on copyright was so much better than what we've seen in other committees (Industry or Heritage, including in previous years), you only need to notice David's name as an active participant in that study.

For the partisans who support other parties, please note that I'm not endorsing any particular party.  The backward-facing report from Heritage committee is just as much a Liberal party report as the report from Industry as the party makeup of the committees are the same.  My experience has been in this area of policy that there are greater differences between the views of people on Heritage committee and those on Industry committee than between the political parties.

I am strongly endorsing David Graham, and hope that other non-partisans like myself or partisans from the FLOSS community will endorse and help ensure David is re-elected in the October federal election.  Even if you don't live in his riding there are other ways to help.

Please consider donating (Ensure riding is set to Laurentides—Labelle) before and during the election campaign.

Misinformation/corruption with the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review

The following is a letter to my MP.

David McGuinty, my MP for Ottawa South,

I find the processes involving analog-era communications companies to be very problematic.  This latest note from Mr Geist is only an example.

Super-Secret Submissions: Corus and SaskTel Block Disclosure of Their BTLR Submissions Claiming Prejudice to Their Competitive Position

Submissions to the government should be proactively disclosed during the process, so errors and/or misinformation from lobbiests can be corrected by the public.  The government should not be allowing submissions to be claimed proprietary, except when specific proprietary information is required by regulatory agency -- never for a consultation process.

I say analog-era as many of these vertically integrated companies are structured the way they are due to limitations with analog communications technology.  Analog communications technology required that a wire or part of spectrum be dedicated to an application.  With digital technology the OSI layered approach upon which nearly all digital communications technology is modelled allows for deployment and regulation much like highways: neutral infrastructure upon which a broad set of uses can be built.

The Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review should be looking at ways to sunset analog-era policy and replace with digital-era policy, not privilege the submissions from analog-era companies who have been misleading governments on this area of policy for decades.

We don't have road infrastructure vertically  integrated with UPS, Ford, Wall Mart or Pizza Hut - so why in 2019 do we still have digital communications infrastructure vertically integrated with analog-era phone, cable, and broadcast companies like Bell, Telus, Rogers, Corus or SaskTel?

See also: http://mcormond.blogspot.com/2017/12/osi-model.html

[Note: I always include my address and postal code in letters, as it allows staffers to look up the postal code and confirm I'm a constituent].

This letter can be treated as public, and shared.

Here's how to (legally) watch Game of Thrones live in Canada

On April 12, 2019, Chandler Walter wrote Here's how to (legally) watch Game of Thrones live in Canada.

I've not been shy over the years stating that I believe that Bell Canada is the largest contributory copyright infringer in Canada.  By blocking or making extremely inconvenient legal options for accessing streaming content in Canada, Bell's business practices have induced far more infringement than ISOHunt or any other the other alleged copyright villains ever have. You can abuse exclusive licenses to force audiences back in time to legacy cable television, or you can provide people legitimate options to pay for streaming content, but you can't do both.

This final season is the first year I'll be watching Game of Thrones when it is released, as this is the first year that Bell Canada has allowed Canadians to do so legally.  While Bell's Crave streaming service is inferior to all of the digital native streaming services like Netflix, Google YouTube/Play, or Amazon Prime video, it is at least legal streaming of content that Bell and it's analog-media partners have otherwise been blocking.

This year I gave up trying to watch the Arrow-verse (Arrow, Flash, Legends, Supergirl) as it is released, as I got tired of fighting with Canadian broadcasters.  While this is great scripted television made in Vancouver, I'll  wait until these show are available on digital native services.

While in the past it was legitimate to say "content is king", in the digital era of abundance this is now "convenience is king".  If Canadian producers want to have viewers and get paid, they need to make things convenient for people to access and pay.  Given how long they wish to delay the inevitable, that means not offering exclusive licensing deals to analog-era broadcasters or BDUs (cable companies).

Imperialism of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Whether it is SNC-Lavalin, CGI Inc, BCE Inc. (which owns Bell Canada) , or CBC, there is always a lot of flag-waving from lobbiests and defenders when these corporation are doing or saying things that corporations with different addresses of their headquarters would never get away with.

CBC President Catherine Tait's attempt to flag-wave recently went as far as to claim digital native companies were imperalists.

The problem with her analogy is that when it comes to post-convergence digital communications policy, it is representatives of analog-era companies like the CBC that are the foreign entities. Protecting the interests of Canadians from this imperalism is why I have called for a shift of funding away from the CBC to Canadian creators.


We need to put the policies which the CBC and Bell promote in a proper context.

Taxing Internet connectivity, or digital media distribution companies, to subsidize analog-era broadcasting is about as legitimate as putting a tax on salt in India.  While it is obvious why the foreign interests want natives to subsidize them, it should be recognized immediately as wrong.

Modern media distribution companies like Amazon and Netflix started with distribution of physical media: books in the case of Amazon (quickly moving to digital distribution with CD's and DVDs), and DVD's in the case of Netflix.  At that point nobody suggested that these content distribution companies should be subject to broadcast policy.  It is still the case that nobody suggests that Walmart, Costco, Best Buy, or the hundreds of other companies involved in the distribution of digital content on physical media should be thought of as if they had anything in common with broadcasters.

As these digital native content distributors added online distribution to their offerings, nothing changed that has anything to do with broadcasting and yet the analog-era broadcasters have been on the offensieve against digital natives for as long as Internet bandwidth has been sufficient to stream video.

You might ask why we haven't had digital native companies that are also headquartered in Canada.  To understand why this hasn't happened you only need to look at decades of successful flag-waving misdirection campaigns from the analog-era broadcasters and BDUs (cable/satellite/etc companies).  In 2002 they convinced parliament to pass a bill that would disallow a "new media retransmitter" the same exceptions to copyright which enable analog-era cable companies to exist.  If  iCraveTV and JumpTV had instead been appropriately embraced as the innovators that Canada desprarately needed, we would have had domestic new media companies long before Netflix launched in 2008.  Other than the additional bandwidth that currently exists today, what iCraveTV and JumpTV attempted to offer with their IPTV service wasn't technologically different to Bell Fibe TV.  What was different is that Bell is constantly able to get away with activities which would be considered illegal if other companies did it.


When Bell and the CBC make any complaints about Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Google (Play/YouTube) in Canada, we need to remember that it was the imperalist lobbying from Bell and CBC which blocked Canadian digital native companies from forming.   If we are to facilitate Canadian companies in this marketplace we need to provide assurances and incentives to protect digital natives from the imperalist broadcasters and BDUs.

I can only hope that blindly protecting the activities of Bell and CBC will eventually be as politically toxic as blindly protecting SNC-Lavalin has become.

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Addendum:
Feels like Timothy Denton's Blog is relevant.

There appears to be an SNC-Lavalin-style relationship of telcos to government that needs further exploring and, if necessary, expunging.

Re: Bell Media and BBC Worldwide North America Sign Exclusive Multi-Platform Deal for DOCTOR WHO

The following was sent to the contacts listed on the Bell Media press release from 2016.

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Ever since this deal it has been harder to legally stream Doctor Who in Canada. While space.ca previously offered episodes, it is now locked down and requires login via a legacy cable package. While Crave is mentioned for previous seasons after they were taken off of Netflix, a Crave subscription (even the add-on package) doesn't enable legal streaming of new episodes.

Bell finally folded HBO Canada into Crave to make that content available for legal streaming, and clearly it needs to do the same with SPACE rather than driving people away from legal streaming options.


I have been paying for the full seasons of Doctor Who through Google Play. Episodes are often late and in the case of the latest episode from New Years it didn't show up at all. I found the Google Play option on my own, and Space has been unwilling to even disclose this legal streaming option when asked multiple times. All legal options for Canadians should be advertised clearly on the space.ca website!


With the exclusive license comes a responsibility for Bell to protect Doctor Who copyright in Canada. You have been doing a horrible job and have been inducing infringement.


See also: https://mcormond.blogspot.com/2016/10/bell-has-no-class.html