Category Archives: Society

Aug 24 2013
Leave a comment
Politics, Society

Common sense up in smoke?

DSC_0052

Those who argue that marijuana should be legalized, though tightly regulated, because the prohibitions against its use don’t work are only half-right. It all depends on one’s definition of the word, “work”.

If we acknowledge that the law contorts the evidence that cannabis is safer than either tobacco or alcohol, that it succeeds in making criminals out of otherwise peaceable citizens, that it reinforces crusty stereotypes about shiftless stoners, and that it costs Canada’s judicial system millions of dollars a year that could be spent in more productive ways, then we must also acknowledge that the law works marvelously well to utterly ill effect.

Just ask any cop.

This week, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) passed a resolution that would give officers the discretion to levy fines for simple holding (pending, of course, federal approval).

The text of the ruling reads, in part, “The CACP believes it is necessary to expand the range of enforcement options available to law enforcement personnel in order to more effectively and efficiently address the unlawful possession of cannabis. The current process of sending all possession of cannabis cases pursuant to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) to criminal court is placing a significant burden on the entire Justice System from an economic and resource utilization perspective.”

According to CACP President Chief Constable Jim Chu in the accompanying news release, “It must be recognized. . .that under the current legislation the only enforcement option for police, when confronted with possession of cannabis, is either to turn a blind eye or lay charges. The latter ensues a lengthy and difficult process which, if proven guilty, results in a criminal conviction and criminal record.”

The Association stops short of calling for decriminalization. (In fact, it goes out of its way to support the legal status quo). Nevertheless, its declaration reflects what is increasingly becoming mainstream opinion about the drug in law enforcement, medical and even political arenas.

“As four former attorneys-general of British Columbia, we were the province’s chief prosecutors and held responsibility for overseeing the criminal justice system,” Ujjal Dosanjh, Colin Gabelmann, Graeme Bowbrick and Geoff Plant wrote in a commentary for The Globe and Mail earlier this year. “We know the burden imposed on B.C.’s policing and justice system by the enforcement of marijuana prohibition and the role that prohibition itself plays in driving organized crime.”

Indeed, they added, “Under marijuana prohibition, violent criminals are provided a protected market that enables them to target our youth and grow rich while vast resources are directed to ineffective law enforcement tactics. Meanwhile, Canada’s criminal justice system is overextended and in desperate need of repair.”

The solution, they insisted, is to regulate the “cannabis market”, which could, they claim, “provide government with billions of dollars in tax and licensing revenues over the next five years. These dollars are in addition to the enormous cost savings that could accrue from ending the futile cat and mouse game between marijuana users and the police.”

None of which would matter one iota if marijuana were the resident force of social evil that conservative ideologues claim. But the preponderance of evidence is, at best, inconclusive. Several recent studies have suggested correlations between mental illness in young people and cannabis use. Others conclude that the more likely causes of psychological disease are genetic and socio-economic, and that it is virtually impossible to select these factors out of the equation.

As long as the law prohibits marijuana use, we, as responsible citizens, are obliged to obey. Certainly, legal channels should never, under any circumstances, facilitate the drug’s availability to minors.

But in a responsive democracy, laws that confound common sense and good governance must be questioned. Especially when they work exceedingly well to achieve everything except that for which they are intended.

It’s not for nothing, perhaps, that health authorities in both Canada and the United States – where weed is also broadly illegal – report that pot smoking is up by several orders of magnitude since the turn of the decade.

Tagged , , ,
Aug 14 2013
Leave a comment
Communications, Society

I spy with my digital eye

DSC_0133

It is, perhaps, amusing to discover that a city with more than three million closed circuit television cameras pointing in every direction where people gather and gambol can still get riled up over antiquated notions of privacy.

Of course, that’s London, England, for you – always wanting to have its tea and drink it, too. Frankly, advertising executive Kaveh Memari doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. So what if his company has installed digital technology in trash cans that “reads” people’s smartphone signals? As he exuberantly told The Associate Press the other day, “We will cookie the street.”

No you won’t declares the City of London Corp., which has ordered Mr. Memari to cut it out. A press release from the municipal authority is unequivocal: “The collection of data from phones and devices carried by people passing sophisticated waste bins in Square Mile streets should stop immediately. . .A spokesman said, ‘We have already asked the firm concerned to stop this data collection immediately and we have also taken the issue to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Irrespective of what’s technically possible, anything that happens like this on the streets needs to be done carefully, with the backing of an informed public.’”

The statement continued: “The bombproof waste and recycling bins, which also carry TV screens with public information, were installed as a way of re-introducing waste bins to City streets. ‘This latest development was precipitate and clearly needs much more thought – in the meantime data collection, even if it is anonymised, needs to stop,’ added the spokesman.”

What a party-pooper. And he’s not the only one. The New York Times reported last month that shoppers were none to happy to find that fashion retailer Nordstrom was spying on them with “new technology that allowed it to track customers’ movements by following the Wi-Fi signals from their smartphones. ‘We did hear some complaints,’ said Tara Darrow, a spokeswoman for the store. Nordstrom ended the experiment in May, she said, in part because of the comments.”

In fact, reported The Times, “Nordstrom’s experiment is part of a movement by retailers to gather data about in-store shoppers’ behaviour and moods, using video surveillance and signals from their cellphones and apps to learn information as varied as their sex, how many minutes they spend in the candy aisle and how long they look at merchandise before buying it.

“All sorts of retailers – including national chains, like Family Dollar, Cabela’s and Mothercare, a British company, and specialty stores like Benetton and Warby Parker – are testing these technologies and using them to decide on matters like changing store layouts and offering customized coupons.”

Now, back to London where the civil liberties group, Big Brother Watch, is so incensed its spokesman Nick Pickles told The Associated Press that “questions need to be asked about how such a blatant attack on people’s privacy was able to occur.”

On the other hand, just try and bar Internet access to an iconic work of English literature, and the subject of privacy assumes an altogether different complexion.

“In the latest development of over-zealous internet filtering, the British Library has blocked access to Shakespeare’s Hamlet because of its ‘violent content’,” declares a recent Big Brother Watch blog post. “We have repeatedly warned that there is a fundamental issue with filtering legal content based on a subjective moral view, often made by a third party and not the person operating the network. Does the British Library really think that the content of Hamlet is so violent to justify access being blocked to one of the most famous plays of all time?”

This is the paradox of our digital times. People want and expect all the world’s information to flow seamlessly into their desktop computers and mobile devices, just as long as none of that information pertains to them.

We may nurture the illusion of privacy by turning off our cell phones. Until, of course, we see the closed circuit television camera point straight at our furrowed brow.

Tagged , , , ,
Aug 13 2013
Leave a comment
Demographics, Economy, Society

All the data that’s not fit to print

DSC_0153

Can the irony be any more succulent?

Mere days before Statistics Canada took the extraordinary decision to sit on the final batch of data stemming from its 2011 voluntary survey because, it said, the numbers don’t accurately reflect current conditions, the 1921 Census of Canada went public, showing what life was like, in authentic detail, for citizens nearly a century ago.

That’s great for fans of family trees and downright awful for anyone else who seeks to obtain a faithful picture of our present times – though some might yet extrapolate from the form and fit of great-grandma’s bloomers the spending habits of the modern, smartphone-addicted tween demographic.

Still, StatsCan insists the problem with the 2011 data had little, or nothing, to do with the controversial shift to an optional household survey, from a mandatory nose count of the population, three years ago.

Indeed, Marc Hamel, a census manager, told The Globe and Mail  this week, “We were in the final stages and some of the results seemed odd, a bit. When we went back to the data-processing steps, we discovered that one of the steps was not applied correctly. . .It is unfortunate that it was in the late stages. But it’s lucky we found it before it was released.”

The actual statement on the numbers-crunching agency’s website is a marvel of circumspection: “The release of the third and final set of data from the 2011 National Household Survey is postponed to September 11, 2013. The release focuses on income, earnings, housing and shelter costs. Statistics Canada found issues in data processing that need to be addressed prior to release. All the data previously released from the National Household Survey are not affected.”

I guess we’ll just have to take its word on that. It’s not as if the agency has any real context for assessing the verisimilitude of the results from the voluntary questionnaire. Apart from the fact that the household survey boasts a much lower response rate than the census (according to the Globe piece, it’s 68.6 per cent versus 93.5 per cent), the new system is still in its infancy.

But why is any of this necessary?

For decades, Canada led the developed world in the quality, comprehensiveness and accuracy of its census data. The numbers served a useful, and often crucial, purpose when legislators sought to craft and implement social and economic policies. The findings materially contributed to health, education and infrastructure programming.

In a 2010 letter to Tony Clement, who was the Minister responsible for Statistics Canada, the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA) argued that “Long‐form data are used by businesses, provinces and municipalities, economists, urban and community researchers, policy analysts, sociologists, and other scholars in the humanities and social sciences (including geographers and historians).

“Religious and ethnic groups are also users. They all rely on the mandatory long form census for solidly representative and accurate data – especially when data are disaggregated to community or minority‐group levels. Whatever the unit of analysis, an accurate statistical portrait of the population – one that allows for cross‐tabulation – is required.This cannot be provided by the voluntary NHS because bias – due to the under‐representation of specific groups – is likely. Aboriginal people, recent immigrants, low‐income families, and perhaps even busy professionals may fail to respond.”

A subsequent CSA blog post rather archly observed, “If the minister responsible for Statistics Canada is to be believed, the long-form census was eliminated so that upright citizens would no longer be threatened with jail time for failure to complete and return a census form that asked intrusive personal questions. A more convincing reason is that we have a government that not only says ‘Don’t bother me with the facts!’ but also wants to ensure that no one else has access to the facts.”

Without facts, of course, we are left with assumptions, suppositions and, in the words of American commentator George F. Will, “factoids” plucked “from the ether.” As he wrote in a piece that appeared recently in The National Post, “implausible and utterly unsubstantiated claims flourish when there is indifference to information.”

How odd that such sentiments should belong to one of the continent’s more notable conservatives.

You might even say, it’s ironic.

Tagged ,
Aug 09 2013
Leave a comment
Society

Just shut up and drive, already!

DSC_0025

They’re called “hobo cops”. Impersonating homeless people, they hang around busy intersections in cities from Ottawa to Chilliwack, waiting to pounce on the burgeoning population of distracted drivers.

In Edmonton, last month – just before Ontario police announced a 30-day crack-down on idiots who text and drive – one cop dressed in shorts and a blue hoodie held a handmade, box-cardboard sign that might have read, “I’m down on my luck and could use a few dollars. Won’t you help?”

In fact, it declared, “Hello, I am a police officer, if you are on your cellphone right now, you are about to get a ticket.”

Busted, sucker. I like the sound of that. It’s a shame that more people in Moncton don’t agree with me. These days, the Hub City could use a whole brigade of hobo cops.

This community’s love affair with the internal combustion engine famously borders on the fanatical. It boasts (if that is the right word) one of the highest per capita car ownership rates in Canada, as well as one of the highest per capita number of Tim Hortons coffee shops. (That’s not as much of a non sequitur as you might think).

Moncton is also the site, every summer, of The Atlantic Nationals Automotive Extravaganza, which bills itself as “Canada’s largest auto event and Canada’s ‘most fun’ car show. For four days, upwards of 2,000 cars and tens of thousands of spectators will turn the city of Moncton into a hot rod and classic car paradise.”

Now, add to the mix Moncton’s progressive attitude towards mobile communications technology. The downtown is one continuous Wi-Fi zone, free to all with 3G capabilities. I am not aware of any research on the subject, but I would bet my wife’s HTC super phone that the international Intelligent Communities Forum’s 2009 seventh pick for smartest city in the world is also home to one of the highest per capita ownership rates for cellular devices in the country.

Anyone see a problem? Anyone, at all?

Not long ago, I was sitting at a stop in the downtown waiting for the light. When it turned, I fumbled with the gas pedal and hesitated. I’m glad I did, for apparently out of nowhere a imbecile in a maroon sedan barreled through his red light, texting to God knows who from God knows where.

One hour later, I was on foot at a crosswalk, waiting for break in the traffic. It arrived. . . sort of. I was halfway to the other side, when a cretin behind the wheel of a yellow convertible zoomed passed the stopped cars to the right of him and through the pedestrian lane, mere inches from my toe tips. He was gabbing merrily away into the electronic ether.

Once upon a time, I could safely count on one, maybe two, potentially life-threatening altercations with cars in any given month. Now, not a day passes when I forget to count my lucky stars: Today, thank the Lord, I did not get creamed.

And, in the words of Alissa Sklar – a Ph.D. who ran risk(within)reason, a Montreal consultancy project focused on teens, technology and risky behaviours, in 2011 – “it’s only going to get worse.”

Says one of her blog posts from that year: “According to the Canadian Automobile Association texting recently overtook impaired driving as the No. 1 safety concern among drivers. And since 95 per cent of Canadians between 14 and 17 send or receive text messages (according to a poll quoted in the Globe and Mail), this is a problem that is only likely to grow. . .An experiment conducted by students in three Canadian studies involved standing on busy intersections at rush hour and counting drivers simultaneously engaged in distracting activities. They counted a total of 802 distractions in one hour, with 199 taking place in Toronto, 314 in Montreal, and 289 in Moncton.Texting while driving ranked third in the total number of distractions (after eating/drinking and talking to passengers).”

Which raises the question: Why is there never a hobo cop around when you need one?

Tagged ,
Aug 07 2013
Leave a comment
Government, Society

Nudge, nudge: George Orwell is watching

DSC_0042

My telecom provider and I were texting each other one gorgeous, summer day a few weeks ago. It had sent me a reminder to pay my bill, which wasn’t actually overdue. I told it to quit bugging me. I did this even though I knew I wouldn’t get a reply from a faceless robot; somehow, the exercise appealed to my sense of mischief.

But a part of me wonders whether my communique found its way to a secret data bank, buried beneath a glacier in Finland, there to be used against me at some future date. I mean, isn’t it true that not one scrap of information nowadays is ever really lost? Isn’t that what we are told, over and over again?

Now we learn, courtesy of the Globe and Mail’s Bill Curry, that some government’s know all about using our personal information to mould us into good, little, bills-paying, law-abiding citizens.

“Canada is looking into (the) growing field of behavioural economics,” he writes. “Finance Canada documents obtained by The Globe and Mail through Access to Information show Michael Horgan, the deputy minister of Finance Canada, was recently briefed on the activities of (a) three-year-old British team, which has attracted interest from governments around the world. . .It’s known as the ‘nudge unit,’ because its mission is to ‘nudge’ citizens into acting the way the government wishes they would.”

Mr. Curry reports that the special bureau was “pioneered in Britain, (and) officially tagged with the 1984ish name Behavioural Insights Team – about a dozen policy wonks, mostly economists, who employ psychological research to subtly persuade people to pay their taxes on time, get off unemployment or insulate their attic. The goal: To make consumers act in their own best interests – and save the government loads of money.”

I’m all for governments saving money. But I’m also just a tad perturbed by the moral implications of this practice. For their part, officials at Canada’s Department of Finance concede that there is something big-brotherly about the whole thing, though they are sure that “transparency” will obviate any risk of ethical transgressions.

Uh-huh. . .How, exactly, would that work? By informing citizens that, henceforth, the long arm of the law will by “urging” them to fulfill their various obligations to the state through incessant, subtle, electronically communicated “pokes”? Hey, we may not like it. We may think it’s creepy. But, at least, they’re being “transparent” about it.

The fact is society can’t function without its various nudges. Arguably, society is nothing except one giant system of disparate persuading and coercing and kvetching and schmoozing.

Apple reminds me that it’s August. Shouldn’t I be thinking about a new iPad for autumn? Rogers wonders whether I’ve properly assessed my data and cable needs. Shouldn’t I reconsider my monthly package? Scholar’s Choice knows I’m a grandparent. Do I know about their fantastic discounts for folks in my purchasing demographic?

We nudge (sometimes, shoving) our kids to be kinder or more disciplined. We urge our educators to be more efficient and empathetic. Our courts call corporations “people”, hoping, perhaps, that they will not behave like the soulless, vacant entities that, in fact, they are. We nudge them to embrace the better angels of their various ventures in capitalism.

Does any of this work? Sometimes. Nothing’s perfect. And that’s the point: nothing should ever be perfect.

On the other hand, Government, by its very nature, is all about perfectibility. And when it says it wants people to “behave” accordingly, it’s not selling a product or a service or even an idea. It’s pushing an ideal of human conformation that simply makes its institutional life easier. That’s just one or two steps away from totalitarianism.

If George Orwell were still alive, he might say: “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”

That is from his masterwork 1984, which is, in increasingly sinister ways, beginning to resonate in 2013.

Tagged , ,
Jul 27 2013
2 Comments
Environment, Municipal Affairs, Society

Catching Moncton’s “chocolate wave”

Resurgo is action in latin. And that's a dead language. Get 'er done boys and girls

My father, the esteemed writer Harry Bruce, once allowed that while the construction of a causeway, in 1968, through the Petitcodiac River was not “the most monumental blunder in the history of atrocities mankind has inflicted on the environment,” it was, nonetheless, amongst the dumbest.

“By blocking the bore, the causeway forced it back on itself, and the silt that once hurtled upriver settled in the lower reaches of the Petitcodiac,” he wrote in 1995, in a piece for the Montreal Gazette. “It created a huge plain of greasy mud, and turned the river into a sluggish, unnavigable joke. The Tidal Bore deteriorated until the locals called it the Total Bore.”

He noted, pointedly: “American humorist, Erma Bombeck, drove across North America with her family to see what they expected to be a thrilling natural phenomenon. When they reached Moncton, she wrote, ‘A trickle of brown water, barely visible, slowly edged its way up the river toward us with all the excitement of a stopped-up toilet. . .I retained more water than that. . .It was a long time before anyone spoke. About 5,000 miles to be exact.’”

Ms. Bombeck didn’t live long enough to see what became of the river and its bore. But had she been one of the estimated 30,000 happy gawkers, who gathered along the Petty’s banks the other day, she would have sung an altogether different tune as a three-foot high wall of water, bearing a clutch of professional surfers from around the world, coursed upstream. One of them, a bright, young fellow from California, called it a “chocolate wave”. And it was.

Experts had predicted that, following the causeway gates’ permanent opening three years ago, decades might pass before anyone noticed any appreciable change in the river. The experts were wrong, though they weren’t complaining.

Last month, when the first of the new “super bores” arrived, Global News reported, “This is biggest one of the year. Daniel LeBlanc with Petitcodiac Riverkeeper, says it is only going to get more impressive in the coming years. ‘There’s no question that the reason we have a beautiful bore is because of the restoration of the river, (he said).’”

There’s also no question about the fact that nature, when left alone, can be remarkably self-correcting – a certain comfort at a time when the Province is struggling with the environmental implications of onshore oil and gas development.

For Moncton, at any rate, the return of the bore fairly drips with the sort of symbolism that city officials might otherwise pay good money to manufacture. The community’s motto is “resurgo”. What better way to illustrate the efficacious effects of sound planning (in the river’s case, the decision to allow its water to flow freely), than a resurgent tide?

What a stunningly marvelous backdrop to the statistics we routinely deploy to persuade newcomers to settle here: The fact that Moncton’s population growth rate since 2006 is 9.7 per cent, making it the fifth-fastest growing Census Metropolitan Area in the country; the fact that Westmorland County has typically attracted at least three times as many people every year than any other county in New Brunswick; and the fact that, since 1990, the city has added more than 25,000 jobs to its workforce.

The bore is, of course, a creature of moon and tide, of gravity and specific density. But it is also a testament to change, to renewal, to possibility. Its return to its past glory is a handshake with the future – a future we write with every decision, every move we make today. What else do we imagine for ourselves? What will be the shape of our community 10 or 20 years from now?

The Petitcodiac’s restoration is not yet complete. The “monumental blunder” still stares at us, waiting grimly to be replaced by a partial bridge. Meanwhile, the tidal bore rushes in from the sea, roaring at us to greet all the days the will come with courage, conviction and, most of all, sheer, untrammelled delight.

Tagged , ,
Jul 27 2013
Leave a comment
Culture, Society

Following the herd straight to Hades

DSC_0042

The human race sinks to the lowest level of turpitude not when its members defy the standards of what is thought to be acceptable behavior, but, more often, when they obey them.

Nothing in history has caused greater depravity, deeper injury, than doing one’s duty without question.

The latest evidence that this is axiomatically true comes to us by way of one Ian Mosby, a historian of food and nutrition and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Guelph. While investigating health policy in Canada, he uncovered documents which showed that in the years following the Second World War, federal government officials conducted experiments on aboriginal children to ascertain their nutritional needs. In effect, they deliberately starved their subjects.

The abstract of his research paper makes for some chilling reading:

“Between 1942 and 1952, some of Canada’s leading nutrition experts, in cooperation with various federal departments, conducted an unprecedented series of nutritional studies of Aboriginal communities and residential schools. The most ambitious and perhaps best known of these was the 1947-1948 James Bay Survey of the Attawapiskat and Rupert’s House Cree First Nations. Less well known were two separate long-term studies that went so far as to include controlled experiments conducted, apparently without the subjects’ informed consent or knowledge, on malnourished Aboriginal populations in Northern Manitoba and, later, in six Indian residential schools.

Dr. Mosby explains that the point of his examination is “in part to provide a narrative record of a largely unexamined episode of exploitation and neglect by the Canadian government. At the same time, it situates these studies within the context of broader federal policies governing the lives of Aboriginal peoples, a shifting Canadian consensus concerning the science of nutrition, and changing attitudes towards the ethics of biomedical experimentation on human beings during a period that encompassed, among other things, the establishment of the Nuremberg Code of experimental research ethics.”

The news has quite properly stunned the current office holders in Ottawa, who assure themselves that nothing like this could happen today. After all, we are so much more enlightened, so much more evolved than our forebears.

But are we?

All it takes is one goon with a truly bad idea and the authority to enforce it and watch the herd mentality take shape. The rationalizations pour like rain in a thunderstorm: It’s all for a good cause; the ends justify the means; you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs; everybody’s doing it, so it must be right; I was just following orders.

Following orders was what senior Nazi officials claimed they were doing when they sent millions of Jews to their death. In a famous string of experiments in the 1960s,  American psychologist Stanley Milgram sought to test the limits of obedience among “average” people – those who were not infused with ideological hatred or political fanaticism. He enlisted 40 men to administer electric shocks to test subjects.

“Each participant took the role of a ‘teacher’ who would then deliver a shock to the ‘student’ every time an incorrect answer was produced,” writes Kendra Cherry in the Psychology section of About.com. “While the participant believed that he was delivering real shocks to the student, the student was actually a confederate in the experiment who was simply pretending to be shocked.

“As the experiment progressed, the participant would hear the learner plead to be released or even complain about a heart condition. Once the 300-volt level had been reached, the learner banged on the wall and demanded to be released. Beyond this point, the learner became completely silent and refused to answer any more questions. The experimenter then instructed the participant to treat this silence as an incorrect response and deliver a further shock.”

Dr. Milgram had expected that less than three per cent of participants would agree to deliver the maximum voltage. But, on the authority of the experimenter, closer to 65 per cent of them did, even though they had every reason to believe they were inflicting serious injury, or worse.

As the German political thinker Hannah Arendt observed in 1963, evil is banal, and blind obedience can make unwitting monsters of us all.

Tagged , , ,
Jul 16 2013
Leave a comment
Economy, Society

Facing down service with a scowl

A petrified bloom. . .

The annals of lousy customer service grow longer with each day that passes in this, and every other, country that manufactures careless, disinterested workers in ballooning proportions. Rudeness, it seems, is the preferred posture.

A friend, who shall remain nameless, recounts his recent experience with an airline ticket agent who, when asked a simple question, barked: “Why, exactly, is that my problem? Get back in line!” The friend was so incensed, he wrote a letter to the head of the company. He called it “therapy,” but he’s not holding his breath till redress arrives.

My strategy for dealing with such instances – increasing, as they are – of surliness is more direct. “Don’t give me any of your lip, counter help,” I’m apt to blurt, before taking my business elsewhere. But I grew up on the mean streets of major cities, where we all talked that way.

My real problem is not crumbling decorum as much as it is creeping ignorance among those I pay to do a job I’m not qualified to undertake myself. In these situations, courtesy, though desirable, is less important than competence, which is a perishable commodity in these not especially best of times.

A couple of years ago, Toronto Star business writer Ellen Roseman posted a column on the subject to the CBC’s website. “Dave Carroll, a Halifax musician, wrote a song about the damage to his guitar on a United Airlines flight to Chicago,” she reported. “After posting it on YouTube, he became a symbol of a worldwide protest against poor customer service.”

She continued: “‘United Breaks Guitars’ is now a trilogy of videos. . .While Carroll did get a compensation offer from the airline, he turned it down. His goal is to make big corporations reconsider how they treat ordinary people.”

Indeed, she observed, “Airlines are notorious for bureaucratic handling of customer claims, but they’re not alone. Telecommunications firms – such as Bell, Rogers and Telus – often make you spend time on the phone waiting to speak to a human being. Communication is not their strong suit. . .Banks used to let you speak to branch staff, but now you’re connected to a call centre. One bank, TD Canada Trust, uses call centres in India. And Sears Canada has replaced a call centre in Saskatchewan with one in the Philippines.”

Others merely scratch their heads. “Why (doesn’t a company’s) associates understand that their job is dependent on whether or not I spend my money with the business who writes their check?” wondered an administrative officer and public relations manager at an American home improvement franchise in a post some time ago to eLocal.com. “In the past, I would have blamed this on the teenager behind the counter who was forced to be there by their parents. This isn’t the case anymore. These people are grown men and women, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, grandparents even.”

In our case, my wife and I have endured a litany of screw-ups by allegedly skilled tradespeople who have worked on our rambling, old home in the west end of Moncton.  There’s the “new” driveway that was graded, helpfully, to conduct water against the foundation, rather than away from it. There are the custom-built kitchen drawers that stick whenever the humidity rises above 60 per cent because they don’t fit the box for which they were designed.

Still, despite all of this, some, small light does shine.

Last week, we took delivery of a brand, new natural gas furnace and air conditioner. The fuel company and the energy distributor worked together like beautifully choreographed ballet dancers – efficiently, knowledgeably and courteously. They answered our questions promptly and convincingly. They didn’t try to oversell us or pull  the wool over our once-jaded eyes.

We emerged from the experience with a renewed appreciation for the dignity of work and for those who remain committed to their own self-respect. All of which proves, if nothing else, that if customer service is an endangered species, it’s not dead yet.

Tagged
Jul 16 2013
Leave a comment
Politics, Society

My softening sentiment toward the monarchy

queen-rubbish-big_2232121k

We are not, in my my family, mindlessly wedded to the notion of constitutional monarchy. The reason may have something to do with a latent strain of Scottish republicanism that I detect, especially on those occasions when we discuss the gathering independence movement among our ancestral tribesmen.

Still, I have noticed that some of the members of my extended households – as fine and as highly tuned as their intellects are – revert to an atavistic state of hero worship whenever they pass a copy of HELLO! Canada on a newsstand. The  comments invariably devolve into versions of vacant fashion statements.

“Doesn’t Kate look marvellous in her condition? Why, she’s eight months pregnant, and you wouldn’t know it.”

“It’s too bad Wills is losing his hair at such a young age. In every other respect he’s the picture of youthful kingship.”

“My, how good the Queen looks. She just keeps going and going.

This little item in a recent edition of HELLO! literally commandeered one relative’s attention for a good 10 minutes:

“They might be an unlikely pair, but Prince Charles and Cara Delevingne got on famously as they chatted in the grounds of Clarence House. The 20-year-old model clearly found Charles to be a hilarious host, and laughed heartily as she spent time with the amiable royal. Cara was among the guests at a ball thrown by Charles and his wife Camilla in support of the conservation charity The Elephant Family on Tuesday evening.”

Even I have found myself softening, in recent years, to the British Royals. I was once an ardent republican – the sort who inveighed loudly and frequently against their irrelevance, cost and annoying tendency to dominate the summertime headlines. Who cared which garden party which aristocrat at the top of the food chain attended to the delight of genteel supplicants foaming at their mouths to obtain their audiences?

Nowadays, I’m more likely to roll my eyes at the people who insist the monarchist  institution and tradition in Canada present a clear and present threat to their liberty. People, like the ones now involved in legal action against the federal government, which requires them to swear an oath of fealty to the Queen before their landed immigrant status can be transmuted to full citizenship.

As the Globe and Mail reported last week, “A small group of landed immigrants with republican views who have refused Canadian citizenship because the ceremony involves swearing an oath to the Queen will be in a Toronto courtroom. . .facing off with the federal government in an attempt to have this citizenship requirement declared unconstitutional.”

“The court fight is the latest chapter in more than 20 years of failed legal challenges to the citizenship oath spearheaded by Trinidadian-born Toronto activist and lawyer Charles Roach, who died last year at 79, never having become a Canadian citizen. Mr. Roach. . .refused to swear the oath and become a citizen because he believed the Queen was a symbol of imperialism and because of injustices done to his ancestors in the name of the British monarchy.”

Fair enough, I suppose. But, as the Globe pointed out, it’s an uphill battle.

Polls taken last year showed Canadian support for the monarchy was actually rising. A Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey found that 51 per cent people thought that maintaining a connection to the British Crown was a good thing. That was six points better than the results from a poll in 2009.

Some, such as Quebec historian Jocelyn Letourneau, have observed that the Harper government has deliberately raised the profile of the Royals in this country. “The restoration of royal symbols (central to British heritage in Canada as a constitutional monarchy) and the importance given to the War of 1812 (presented as a pivotal moment of resistance to American invasion and the preservation of the country’s distinctiveness) are not the expression of a foolish plan on the part of a disconnected government,” he wrote in a Globe commentary recently. “These initiatives are contributing to the reconstruction of Canadian identity at a time when the country is looking for a new symbolic basis for its current reality.”

Perhaps, but it’s just possible that the Royals represent certain virtues that have all but vanished from the political landscape in Canada. Their popularity may have to do with the simple fact that they, alone, give no offence.

Tagged , , ,
Jul 11 2013
Leave a comment
Culture, Society

The chickens have left home to roost

Bogland: Where hipsters meet their natural enemies

Bogland: Where hipsters meet their natural enemies

According to Tumblr, the blog-cum-social networking platform, “hipsters” belong to a “subculture of men and women typically in their 20s and 30s” who “value independent thinking, counter-culture” and “progressive politics.”

To others, including Toronto Star staff reporter Alex Ballingall, the (mostly) “city dwellers” are “urbane” and “non-conformist. . .yet people seem reluctant  to identify themselves” as hipsters, per se. (Something about the uncoolness of being seen to be a member of a visible demographic, I suppose).

Still, says one Kayla Rocca – an urban people gazer in downtown TO – you really can’t miss ‘em. “You can spot a hipster from a mile away,” she told Mr. Ballingall for his piece this week. In fact, the reporter noted, she listed the “telltale signs from her bench in Trinity Bellwoods Park: tattoos, cut-off shirts, skinny jeans, vintage apparel, beards, bicycles, thick-rimmed glasses (prescription optional) and an affinity for obscure music and independent movies. . .’They strive to be different, and yet they’re a cohesive group,’ added Rocca’s friend, Angie Ruffilli. ‘And they’re never athletic,’ she laughed.”

That, alone, may explain a strange, but gathering phenomenon, underway in major and minor American and Canadian cities from Santa Fe to Montreal. Hipsters are abandoning their live chickens by the hundreds, maybe even the thousands.

Naturally, at this point, some background will be in order.

The hipster practice of keeping egg-laying hens in their urban backyards (at least among those who own backyards; though that does seem counterintuitively establishmentarian of them) has been gathering steam for some time. They’ve loved the message it sends to the world: See how environmentally sensitive, whole-earthy and animal friendly I am?

Meanwhile, increasingly, jurisdictions across the continent have either relaxed or clarified their rules for maintaining livestock (actually, just fowl) within their city limits. (In fact, Moncton ran a pilot program a couple a years ago; a permanent decision is expected sometime this year).

But a funny thing happened on their way to the chicken coup: The whole business got to be just too damn arduous for the aforementioned, athletically disinclined sub-group. “It’s a lot of work,” writes Globe and Mail reporter Amber Daugherty, who was presumably tipped off to the story by an item on NBC’s website. “Before you know it, you’re sweating tying to clean and feed those animals and you really didn’t consider that if you want to go away someone else has to take care of them.”

Ms. Daugherty notes that in Minneapolis last year, people deposited 500 birds at the doorsteps of various animal shelters. That was up from 50 in 2001. What’s more, she writes, “The trend is being seen in Canada. . .Sayara Thurston of the Humane Society International Canada, who is based in Montreal, said chickens are being dropped off at the SPCA in Montreal every week. . .’A chicken is a pet like any other and they need to be cared for throughout their lives, which people need to take into consideration if they’re thinking of adopting some chickens into their home,’ she said.”

That people are not taking such matters into consideration has got other people, like Mary Britton Clouse, clucking mad, especially at “hipster farmers”. The proprietor of the Minneapolis-based Chicken Run Rescue let it rip in an interview with NBC: “It’s the stupid foodies. . .We’re just sick to death of it. . .People don’t know what they’re doing. And you’ve got this whole culture of people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing teaching every other idiot out there.”

Never a truer word was spoken about. . .well, really, anything these days.

We generally don’t know what the hell we’re doing about politics, energy, the environment, climate change, banks, income inequality and, now, animal husbandry. But, in the words of Ms. Britton Clouse, that doesn’t stop us from “teaching every other idiot out there.”

About a month ago, Saint John became the first city in the Maritimes to legalize the keeping of backyard chickens (under strict conditions). As for the keeping of hipsters there, the jury remains sequestered.

Tagged
← Older posts
Newer posts →