Electoral Modernization is hard, but worth it!

As a long-time advocate for electoral modernization, I was happy to hear the commitment from the Justin Trudeau Liberals that they "are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system" (Liberal party website).  There is near consensus from those who have given voting systems much thought that First Past the Post (FPTP) doesn't work for votes where there are more than two choices.

While this is true, there are disagreements about what the best alternative would be.  It is useful to be aware of why there are disagreements, and why there is a need for compromise if we are ever to get away from the flawed system we have now.

Criteria for success

I've observed two common ways people evaluate voting systems:

Geographic Representation

The focus is that from each geographic region (riding, electoral district, etc) the candidate that can best represent the views and interests of that region is sent to parliament to represent them.

What matters is if the individual would represent their riding, regardless of any specific political affiliations (parties, etc) , their race, gender, etc.

Demographic Representation

The focus is on the makeup of the resulting parliament, and if it represents the diversity of all citizens regardless of their geographic region.  What matters is not the individuals that make up parliament or what riding they may be from, but their political affiliations (parties, etc), their race, gender, etc.

Compromise needed to move forward

One of the things you will hear from anyone interested in electoral reform is that with reform can come better decisions which take the diversity of citizens into consideration.  Like-minded individuals from across political affiliations are better able to work together for common goals.

While this is an ideal for electoral reformers, it isn't always represented in the way they advocate for their preferred voting system.

You will hear people focused on geographic representation talking about how proportional representation, a system often preferred by those focused on demographic representation, will harm democracy by allowing party hacks into parliament who are only accountable to political parties and not citizens.

You will hear people focused on demographic representation suggesting that any system that doesn't consider large geographic areas (multiple districts, province or country-wide) are inherently undemocratic.

We saw this in both the Ontario and BC referendums on electoral reform.   On the "no" side of each referendum were people who agreed that FPTP is a bad system, but were so unwilling to compromise on their preferred system that they fought against change.

My political story

I became political and started voting in the 1990's.  I quickly became involved in party politics, being a member of the Green Party for many of the years and the Progressive Conservative party in the late 1990's.

I joined the Progressive Conservative party in the late 1990's to support David Orchard as he spoke to the type of conservatism that I felt I belonged in.   While Joe Clark called us tourists in the party, I saw something very interesting in the 2000 election under Clark which was that the PC party platform was much closer to the Green Party platform than it was to the Canadian Alliance Party (what the Reform party had renamed itself at that point).  The elements in the PC party which didn't attract me had been attracted to the Alliance party.

I felt a great sadness when Peter MacKay broke his deal with David Orchard and instead agreed to "merge" the PC party with the Alliance party in 2003.  For many of us this was the unforgivable destruction of a political party, with Progressive Conservatives being spread outward: some joined the Conservative party, some the Liberals, some the Green Party (there was considerable growth at this time, especially with experienced organizers), some formed the Progressive Canadian party, and some disengaged from politics.

Already in the 1990's I was involved in electoral reform, at that time an advocate for Proportional Representation as I was active within political parties.  While I have no respect for dishonest politicians like Peter MacKay, the real villain in the destruction of the Progressive Conservative party was FPTP.  It was vote splitting between the PC party and the Reform party over a few elections that created the "unite the right" movement which eventually created a single Conservative party.  This did not in any way "unite the right", but created yet another big-tent party that had many of the same flaws that made conservatives dislike the Liberal party.

In the 2000's a few things happened to clarify my beliefs on electoral reform.  At the same time as the "unite the right" movement, I became heavily involved in Copyright policy. As I met MPs over that policy I started to realize that outside the high profile partisan issues often discussed in the media that the experiences and beliefs of the individual MPs were more important than their party affiliations. I saw backward facing views and progressive views from different MPs across all the political parties.

While I had been a strong supporter of PR in the past, I came to see that as a lesser system to one that would deliver better individual representatives from each riding.  I also came to the realization that the perfect was the enemy of the good, and that compromise was always needed to move forward positive political change.

British Columbia electoral reform referendum, 2005

A BC citizens assembly chose a hybrid system to recommend to BC citizens.  All voters would make use of a ranked ballot.  In less populated rural areas where the districts would be large a single member would be elected, and areas with greater population multiple members would be elected from districts that would be much larger than previous districts.  They called this BC-STV.

While I wasn't in the province, I was a "yes" supporter that did whatever I could from home.

During the education campaign some advocates tried to reduce confusion by saying that this was an STV system that sometimes returned a single person per district and sometimes returned multiple people.   Unfortunately those who were non-compromising advocates for proportional representation disagreed with any use of single member districts and were quick to try to "correct" the language by saying it was instant runoff voting (IRV) which in their mind was no different than FPTP.  Some of these electoral reformers campaigned on the "no" side, even though for the vast majority of the population they were getting a proportional system (multi-member district).

In my opinion the BC Liberal government of the day rigged the election to fail by requiring a super-majority: 60% of votes cast, and a win in 60% of the districts.  While the initiative received 58% "yes" votes, the system was not modernized.   There was a second referendum in 2009 with the same rigged super-majority requirement, and with awareness of the referendum low few were aware of the question until they saw the ballot.  Given "no change" is an obvious answer when no time was given to the question, FPTP was kept.

Ontario electoral reform referendum, 2007

An Ontario citizens assembly chose a hybrid system different than BC for Ontario.  Ontario voters would cast two votes: one for the local representative of their choice, one for the party of their choice. 70% of the legislature would be allocated or riding representatives using the existing FPTP, and then 30% based on province-wide party votes with those MPPs coming from party lists.  This system is called Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP).

The Ontario Liberal government was accused of rigging the campaign by causing confusion on education.  Funding for education was promised, but not delivered (at all, or not in time).  There were also reports province wide of misinformation or uncertainty being spread by elections Ontario staff, such as claims in Northern Ontario that the existing over-representation they have would be abolished by MMP (There are more ridings in Northern Ontario provincially than there is federally, where most of the province has the same ridings provincially and federally).

While the appeal for supporters of Proportional Representation is obvious, the appeal for for those who were looking for geographic representation isn't.   On the surface the system retains the FPTP voting system for the vast majority of seats (IE: no improvement), and then allocates 30% of the legislature to "party hacks".

In Ontario I was still a strong advocate on the "yes" side, even though I was most interested in geographic representation and didn't want to retain FPTP for any seats.  While I didn't believe that MMP was a good system, and wished Ontario had proposed BC-STV, I strongly believed this was a major improvement over the existing pure-FPTP system.

• There were two ballot questions: Those who were only interested in parties could be encouraged to only vote for the party to influence the 30% of the seats, leaving the local riding to those focused on the local riding
• There would no longer be a "unite the X" movement in Ontario, as vote splitting would not impact the party vote (even though with FPTP being kept it would impact riding representation).
• I saw this as a "foot in the door" to further enhancements to democratic institutions.  Unlike those who believed that we only had only one chance to get it right, I felt that moving away from pure-FPTP allowed Ontario and Canadian citizens to become more informed on the benefits of electoral modernization generally.

Cancelling my Fair Vote Canada membership/donation

Since some time close to its founding in 2000 I had been a member of Fair Vote Canada, including having a $10/month automatic donation. In January 2013 I cancelled by membership and donation. I felt a need to distance myself from FVC for the sake of the electoral modernization movement in Canada.

While I believed they were agnostic to voting system alternatives to FPTP, it became clear that they had no interest in representing or even respecting those of us who believe in geographic representation.  In their mind any system that wasn't proportional wasn't democratic, and they were opposing municipal electoral reform movements such as 123 Ontario,  Merging and making larger wards in a municipality in order to have multi-member districts, or allowing political parties for some sort of MMP top-up is entirely inappropriate for municipal elections, making proportionality inappropriate.  Unfortunately FVC is so stuck on proportional representation that they ignore any other considerations and are unwilling to even discuss the harm that their proposals would cause.

This can be seen in some of the language.  The phrase "making every vote count" means ranked ballots for someone looking for geographic representation, and it means proportional representation (PR, MMP, STV only in multi-member districts) for those looking for demographic representation.

This is not to say that collaboration isn't possible at a provincial or federal level between those who have different criteria for success, but that it is increasingly important to ensure that politicians and citizens only starting their research realize that FVC does not represent everyone who believes in fair voting, electoral reform, or even "making every vote count".

Skeptical but optimistic about Liberal promise to rid us of FPTP

During the 2015 federal election I was campaigning against the Liberals via social media (Harper promoting Liberal Brand as: A vote for the Liberals is a vote for Harper, Why I don't consider what most call "strategic voting" to be strategic).  This was largely because of electoral reform.  Provincial Liberal governments had rigged referendum votes, and the Liberal party has generally been the only beneficiary of the vote splitting (and thus "strategic voting") feature of FPTP.

I was also disgusted by the self-called "unite the left" movement who seemed to want to destroy the left-leaning parties (more accurately, anyone not Conservative) the way the "unite the right" movement had already mangled the right-leaning parties.

This brings me to some of the more ludicrous claims from some of the PR supporters, as well as from the current Conservative party.

Claim: a ranked ballot in single member districts would benefit the Liberals the most (CPC, FVC)
Response:  While it is true that the Liberals are many peoples second or third choice, they are currently unfairly winning seats based on fear of vote splitting and people giving them their only ballot.

It is naive to believe that the political parties would remain the same under any type of electoral modernization as there would no longer be fear mongering around "vote splitting" to keep big-tent parties or "unite the X" movements together.  We would end up with more parties that would more closely represent the views of Canadians.  While there may still be a "Liberal" party with seats in the house, we may also have parties with seats in the house such as: Reform Party, Progressive Conservative, Wildrose, Green Party, Pirate Party, Canadian Labour Party, etc.

I believe that the Liberal party federally and provincially has the most to lose from ranked ballots. Obviously their coalition in BC would end and conservatives provincially would be able to vote for candidates that better represent their views (with their own party or parties).  People would be able to vote *for* something rather than against something.

Why would the Liberals propose such a system if it wouldn't specifically beneficial to their party?

It is the simplest modernization to explain to that majority of voters who haven't given voting systems much thought, and thus more likely to be supported by those fearful of change.  Nearly every other alternative requires the shape and size of ridings (multi-member districts) or the number of representatives in parliament to change (top-ups for MMP).  The simple change from FPTP to instant runoff would eradicate some of the worst flaws in FPTP without other harder to explain changes.

A ranked ballot changes a single "x" to being the same question but now with numbers -- as simple as 1 2 3.

Claim: ranked ballots in single member districts would be worse than FPTP (FVC supporters)
Response: This is an even more angry and emotionally driven version of the above, with the suggestion being that Alternate Vote (Instant Runoff, whatever name you want to use) would guarantee only a Liberal government could ever form.

This is a problem I've seen with too many electoral reform advocates: they have been so focused on how votes are counted that they start to believe this is the only change that would happen.

I've seen so much change in Canadian politics in the last 25 years that I've been politically active that has roots in the failings of FPTP (and I don't just mean changes to the parties on the right).  I know that under any type of electoral reform system that other changes would happen, and that it is simply not reasonable to believe that the political parties as we see them today would remain intact for long. While this may be a bad thing for those skulking in the back rooms of those parties who gain power from the fear that vote splitting offers, I consider the changes to the political landscape from any movement away from FPTP to be positive.

I've never been comfortable with the "how parliament would look if PR were in place" charts done after every election.  The presumption some incorrectly make is that people would vote the same regardless of voting system, and it is only how they are counted that would change.  I don't understand why anyone would believe this to be the case as there is no logic in it.  Those charts are a good tool to clearly demonstrate how flawed FPTP is, but are pretty useless for predicting what the makeup of parliament would be under any modernized electoral system.

Claim: electoral reform will ensure successive Liberal governments for years to come (CPC)
Response: Without vote splitting and the harm the "unite the right" movement had on the Canadian conservative movement, I wouldn't be surprised if most Federal governments would be a coalition of conservative parties.  I suspect the current Conservative party knows this and is far more concerned with keeping their coalition party intact (and keeping their supporters stifled) than in keeping the Liberals out of office.   Like the current big-tent Liberal party, it is most likely that the big-tent CPC party will be greatly diminished with any type of electoral modernization.

Claim: referendum the only legitimate way to reform the electoral system (CPC)
Response:  On the surface this sounds good, but doesn't hold up to any scrutiny.

• The fact the system can be changed with legislation is proof that fixing any flaws in the future will be equally easy to do.  A change to the electoral system made via simple legislation does not lock us in.
• Governments, even minority governments, make decisions all the time which are far harder to change. Trade agreements are an obvious example.  It is dishonest for the Conservative party to claim that the Liberals don't have a mandate to make comparatively minor changes to our voting system even though the Conservatives were actively negotiating the TPP during the election period when they should have been a caretaker government.  The TPP is a massive omnibus treaty where many (some say most) of the clauses have nothing to do with or even oppose what people might traditionally call a "free trade" agreement.

All the arguments I've heard on why a referendum is the only legitimate way to change the electoral system applies far more to trade and other multinational agreements than they do to the electoral system. I'll take those comments seriously only once I've seen passed irreversible legislation that states that Canada cannot ratify a trade agreement or treaty without a binding referendum.

I'm definitely on the "yes" side to saying that controversial policy such as we saw in CETA or the TPP should require a super-majority (60% of votes in 60% of the regions across Canada).

All evidence I've seen is that those who are pushing for a referendum have observed how previous referendums in Canada have been gamed, and they are using it as part of their campaign for the status quo.  There is nothing legitimate about this dishonesty.

Happy Canada Day

Today is a great day to not only think about what makes us proud to be Canadian, but also ways to make Canada even better in the future.   You owe it to yourself and fellow Canadians to give electoral reform some time in your thinking.  Please don't just blindly trust what some lobby group, political party, or individual like me has to say.  Learn about the alternatives and the countries that use them. Canada is one of 4 remaining democracies still using FPTP for federal elections, and it is well past time for us to grow out of that horse-and-buggy past.

Trans-Pacific Partnership would lock Canada into Harper's mistakes

The following is the text of a letter sent to our Prime Minister, my local MP, and a few key ministers.

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The Right Honourable Justin P. J. Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

Copies to:

David McGuinty, M.P., Ottawa South (my riding)

The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Minister of International Trade (asking for feedback on TPP)

The Honourable Navdeep Singh Bains,  Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (Non-owner locks on digital technology has great impact on this portfolio. Industry Minister listed as responsible for Copyright Act currently tainted with problematic policy)

The Honourable Kirsty Duncan,  Minister of Science (Support for problematic policy largely comes from science fiction belief of how technology works.  Policy needs scientific evidence based review)



Prime Minister Trudeau,

We met at your constituency office in July 2010, and you tweeted my summary of the meeting to your followers: https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status/19273983682

We discussed the then Harper Government copyright bill, with my emphasis being on the technological measures aspect of the Bill.   While I believe Harper made some serious mistakes in that part of the bill, I am writing you today to alert you to the fact that section article 18.68 of the Trans-Pacific Partnership would lock Canada into Harper's mistake.

When talking about technological measures, what people often call "digital locks", it is important to understand that there are two locks and not one.

A lock on copyrighted works, nearly always in the form of "encrypted media", cannot do much on its own. Contrary to the common science fiction belief, copyrighted works can not "come alive" and decide to do things (to be copied or not, to self destruct after rental period, etc).  What encrypted media can do is try to tie the decryption and use of the media to devices that are "authorized" by the copyright holder.  Rather than this being a copyright issue, this is a competition law issue (section 77 tied selling) which has all the economic and other harm that requires competition law.

The more critical issue is that, while there are legitimate business arrangements available, the only devices that ever get "authorized" are locked in a way that treats owners as an intruder.  In no other aspect of our lives do we allow third parties to lock owners out of their property, and this should be explicitly prohibited with digital technology.  Discussing copyright in this context is a distraction as the relevant issues include property rights, software transparency and software accountability.  When discussing this policy I would often mention privacy and other human rights infringing telecommunications equipment, medical devices, online banking and retail, and technology used for voting.  More recent issues to add to the list are driverless vehicles, drones, and the Volkswagen emissions scandal. There have been demonstrations of intruders remotely disabling a Jeep while it was on a highway.

Non-owner locks on devices also disallow owners installing software that would extend the useful life of hardware, allowing hardware vendors to force premature hardware upgrades, which has a great impact on the environment.

As more and more aspects of our lives, including basic issues such as transportation, communications, privacy and public safety, are intermediated by computers we must enact legislation that protects software transparency and accountability.  Technologies such as encrypted media abused to tie the ability to access creative works to non-owner locked devices must be legally prohibited, not legally protected as under Harper's bill C-11.  Non-owner locks on devices must be legally prohibited, as owners and others can't have unjustifiable barriers to doing independent software audits.

There is a shorter-term fix to Harper's mistake:  The WIPO treaties never required Canada to enact legislation against "access control" technological measures, but instead required "use control" where the prohibition against circumvention had a direct tie to copyright infringing activities.  This is as it was written in the Liberal Bill C-60, and must be the direction Canada moves.  Unfortunately the TPP calls for "access control" technological measures, which must be rejected.  Canada needs to be actively working with our trade partners to move away from any support for "access control" technological measures, aggressively rejecting claims from extremists who are opposed to (or deliberately oblivious to) technology ownership, software transparency and software accountability.

The technological measures section of the TPP is in addition to article 14.17 which opposes basic software transparency and accountability, and which Stewart Baker (first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the USA's Department of Homeland Security) also suggests is "a bad topic for a trade deal" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/11/06/cybersecurity-and-the-tpp/

The Harper government's promotion of the TPP was simplistic: Free trade is good, this is free trade, so therefore it is good.   The policies I oppose will reduce competition, increase barriers to trade, and reduce accountability for government procurement -- all policies which have no business being included in something alleging to be a "free trade" agreement.

I live in Ottawa South, and work on Wellington Street close to your parliamentary offices.  I can be made available to any minister, member of your caucus, or their staff, to discuss this issue further.

Russell McOrmond
[address removed]

Please share with your colleagues as this policy also has serious implications for other portfolios including Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Public Services and Procurement, Health, Transport, and National Defence.

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Note: I quote Stewart Baker in the introduction page for the Petition to protect Information Technology property rights

Why I don't consider what most call "strategic voting" to be strategic

When most people talk about voting strategically they mean voting for someone who they don't consider to be the most qualified candidate in order to keep someone they dislike the most out of power.

Being strategic to me would be to make voting decisions today that have a longer term goal in mind.  What most call "strategic voting" may superficially may feel like a consideration of the future, but I consider it to be short-term thinking.  Even if you only take the specific vote in front of you, you are voting for someone you consider to be a lesser candidate which means that the best case scenario for your strategy is a bad outcome.


Lets look at what we have seen in recent decades to see what some of the failures caused by some of these strategies.

After the Progressive Conservatives were reduced to two seats in the 1993 general elections, those who consider themselves to be conservative in some aspect of their political beliefs tried to regroup.  In the 1997 election the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties both ran, but of course under the antiquated First Past the Post electoral system they split votes from voters who might have more in common with either of those parties candidates than the candidate who won in their riding.  As is also typical of this disruptive electoral system, the PC party had nearly as many votes as the Reform party, but only ended up with 1/3 of the seats.

Rather than working with people across parties and non-partisans who wanted to modernize the electoral system, some conservatives decided to create a "united alternative" movement to create an alternative to the Liberal party who has predominantly been the beneficiary of this disruptive electoral system.  In the 2000 election the Reform party and some converts ran under the new name of the "Canadian Alliance", and they then progressed to what many consider to be a hostile takeover and eventual annexation of the federal Progressive Conservative party.  By the 2004 election the PC party was gone, with only the renamed "Canadian Alliance" now using the title "Conservative Party of Canada" remaining.


You might ask: who cares?  A party with "conservative" in the name, the Liberals and the NDP all existed prior to the 1993 election and do today.  The problem is that much was lost within the conservative movement when the new coalition party was created. There are noises about creating yet another "united alternative" with the only difference being it is from those who consider themselves to be from the left.  If we continue down this path, we will end up with Canada having a system as dysfunctional as that in the USA where fringe elements of society effectively define the two potential governing political parties where the vast majority of reasonable thinking moderates are ignored.

I consider the possibility of subjecting Canada to another "united alternative" movement to be worse than any electoral outcome.  One has been bad enough for Canada, and we should be looking for ways to gain sanity in our politics -- not make an already bad situation worse.


I personally felt the loss within the restructuring of conservatism in Canada.  I was not involved in politics until the 1990's while I at university.  Friends had introduced me to the NDP and Liberals, but I didn't see anything of myself in those parties.  I was introduced to the Green party by someone who articulated the vision of the German Green party, but in the Green Party I kept bumping up against what I felt were disenfranchised NDP supporters.

I became quite excited by the PC leadership race of David Orchard, and joined the PC party in 1998. Mr Orchard lost to Joe Clark who considered Mr Orchard and his supporters to be "tourists" in the party.  I didn't support Mr. Clark, didn't feel welcome in the PC party, and put my political support back behind the Green Party.  When I compared the 2000 platforms of the PC party under Clark and the Green Party there were enough similarities that I could easily have stayed with the PC party, an possibly even helped get a candidate elected in my riding.

What I saw in Clark's PC party, I see nearly the opposite in Harpers's "Conservative" party.

While there are many types of conservatism, and not all people who consider themselves conservative agree with each other, there are some core values that unite us.  One is a belief that the government should not intrude on the private lives of its citizens. On those rare occasions when some intrusion is necessary to protect life and property that this be done with full independent court oversight to monitor the government (often in the form of the police) to keep those intrusions to the minimum that is absolutely necessary.

You can see the feelings about this type of policy with the multi-election campaign about the "wasteful and ineffective long-gun registry". The Harper government eventually ended the campaign (err... registry) and included requirements that the police destroy all records from the registry.   This was one of those issues that could unite all types of conservatives, including those in urban settings who saw it as a "motherhood and apple pie" type issue that might not affect them, but just felt right.  It was treating private information from law abiding citizens in a way that it felt accusatory of those citizens.

Unfortunately what the Harper government did from a policy point of view was a dishonest slight of hand. While the data from the long-gun registry was kept in Canada and only available to law enforcement agencies, we have the Harper government ramming through Bill C-51 which shares a much broader amount of citizen's private information across many more government departments and "law" enforcement agencies. Coupled with Harper's massive push to cave in on the Trans-pacific partnership  (TPP), this boondoggle database about law abiding citizens can't even be guaranteed to be restricted to access regulated by Canadian law.  Add in Harper's disastrous economic policies based on gut feelings rather than evidence stifling Canada's high-tech sector, and we can pretty much guarantee even our health information will be stored only in foreign databases.

While Harpercrits (Harper devotees) claim the TPP is a "trade" agreement, trying to argue that past benefits from free trade will apply, it is really a reckless untested policy harmonization treaty that was authored at the request of a very few special interests at the expensive of the economy and the interests of citizens as a whole.



I will not be the only conservative minded person who feels this way about Steven Harpers failed and in most respects anti-conservative policies.   The problem is: under our current antiquated voting system, and with these big-tent parties ignoring the views of moderates, who are people to vote for?  Harpercrits can still drum up fear of the Liberals to effectively get votes from people who strongly disagree with them, thus freeing Harper to do anything he want no matter how opposed it is to core conservative values.

While I held my nose and voted for David McGuinty in my current riding of Ottawa South, their vote on Bill C-51 reminded me of all the things that I've always hated about the Liberals.  While Harper's big government manipulation of markets and intrusion in the private lives of law abiding citizens is out of place with a party calling themselves "Conservative", it is very consistent with the long-standing policies of the Liberal party. Bill C-51 is effectively the same intrusive thinking that went into the long-gun registry, only on massive amounts of steroids -- exponentially increased by the job, privacy and economy destroying TPP.

I still don't feel comfortable with the NDP on many levels (don't get me started about unions...), but under Tom Mulcair the party has shifted to the right a bit (some say they are to the right of the Liberals under Justin Trudeau).  They have also come out more strongly in favour of modernizing our electoral system, repealing Bill C-51, and rejecting the TPP : three core policies for me that I consider to have far more longer term implications than any single election.

So, what does strategic look like to me?   If the NDP were even on the map in Ottawa South, I  -- a past member of the Progressive Conservative party -- would have voted NDP.  Given this particular riding will be decided between the Liberals and the Harpercrits, I voted Green as there is no long-term strategically minded alternative to vote for.

Harper locking Canada into failed Clinton-era policy at root of software-based corruption

Most people have heard about the emissions scandal where Volkswagen was caught hiding the fact that they were deliberately breaking the law.  This specific issue is minor when compared to the inevitable fatalities which will result from vehicles that allow remote control, or medical devices where the person whose life is being maintained by the technology aren't allowed to independently audit what and whose instructions it is obeying.

Harper amended the rules for a caretaker government this election so that his minister can continue pushing forward controversial policy which would lock Canadian law to disallow the required transparency and accountability of the very rules which govern everything from transportation and communications to medical devices and in some cases elections.

While the "copyright" aspects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are being covered elsewhere, there are non-copyright aspects embedded in the leaked Intellectual Property Rights Chapter that regulate the general transparency and accountability of software.

Unlike the 1996 WIPO treaties which tie what are now called "use controls" to copyright infringing activities, article QQ.G.10: {Technological Protection Measures} of the TPP mandates legal protection of access controls.  The TPP is based on the USA's DMCA which is based on the failed Lehman report from 1995 during the Clinton administration. While Bill C-11 also protects access controls, this is a critical mistake by the Harper government that a future government will need to fix.  Harper is aggressively pushing Canada into the TPP which will require that a future government get permission from TPP "partners" to finally fix these problems.

Access controls are controversial for a number of important reasons:

• Access controls and other non-owner locks on software and hardware reduces the transparency and accountability of the rules that govern these devices.  Technology owners are disallowed from making their own independent software choices, as well as doing their own or having trusted third parties do software audits.
• Access controls applied to multimedia content (more commonly known as "encrypted media" outside of policy circles) are used to tie access to culture to specific brands of access technology, pretty much always technology where the hardware and software has non-owner locks to disable auditability.  This type of tied selling is known to be harmful to the economy (is included in most anti-trust or competition policy), but also impacts cultural rights embedded in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• These policies allegedly relating to "copyright" are being applied to technology which intermediates most aspects of our modern lives.  While there have been expensive court cases to create narrow exceptions for uses of devices unrelated to copyright, most businesses (and even fewer individuals) don't have the financial resources to fight court battles to protect basic property and other rights.  The harmful impacts to the economy go well beyond copyright related industries, and the harmful impacts extend to issues surrounding health and safety, privacy, and national security.
• There has been no credible evidence to the claim that these controls reduce copyright infringement, and considerable evidence to suggest they induce infringement
• Creators of cultural works are as dependent as audience are (if not more) on having control of their own technology, and thus these non-owner locks on technology harm creators' rights

The cost to taxpayors alone of Harper doubling-down on this failed policy cannot be understated.  As one small example, the Canadian Forces are hiring people to hack into vechicle control systems (See: Cyber Security of Automotive Systems (W7701-166085/A)) to do basic auditing, but given the illegitimate claims of exclusive rights this taxpayer funded audit will not likely be widely published. The only reason why taxpayers have to foot this bill, rather than the costs being distributed across other interested and skilled device owners is because of this Harper policy.

It is sad that Harper even promotes his reckless behavior during the election, trying to pull the wool over voters eyes by claiming the TPP is "trade" policy rather than the harmonization of non-trade related policies --- often untested policies, or where the policies were proven failures in countries where they were tested.

Harper suggests people should vote for him and his nominated candidates because of their record on the economy and on security. This policy is one example among many where Harpers record indicates failure.