Category Archives: Society

Jan 28 2014
Leave a comment
Society, Technology

The Internet of Things’ nosy, new tech

DSC_0027

It is an indisputable fact of modern life that even the fiercest defender of personal privacy will trade the juiciest morsel of intel on himself for the latest item of cool consumer tech – as long as said tech is connected to the vast, remorseless Internet.

This is, in a nutshell, the essential dialectic of our human nature in the 21st century: our contradictory urges and impulses that find nearly perfect expression in the exquisitely instrumented age of greed.

In this context, I sometimes wonder who Ann Cavoukian thinks she’s reaching when she complains about the shadowy doings at Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), where spies toll the electronic highways and byways for tidbits about their fellow citizens.

“Technology allows our every move to be tracked, collected and catalogued by our governments,” Mr. Cavoukian, Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner writes in a commentary published yesterday in the Globe and Mail. “Yet, while our U.S. neighbours are debating the future of phone and Internet surveillance programs, our government is maintaining a wall of silence around the activities of (CSEC). This silence is putting our freedoms at risk.”

She is, of course, utterly correct, and I applaud her determination to tear back the veil that hides the snoops, creeps, plotters, conspirators, crooks, crackpots and incipient blackmailers from plain view.

Then again, what else would I say? I’m a hopeless paranoid who believes that former National Security Agency analyst, and latent whistleblower, Edward Snowdon is actually a red herring and that the truth – whilst still out there – is worse than you can possibly imagine.

Most people are more sanguine than I about the nakedness with which they comport themselves while the world tunes in and out, variously following the motions and transactions that comprise their quotidian existence. Indeed, members of my own family couldn’t care lees who’s been peeking at them through the drapes.

Says one: “My life is an open book – and a pretty boring one, at that.”

Says another: “Dude, sacrifices must be made. Ever think what you’d do without the Internet?”

To which I respond, “Don’t call me dude.”

In fact, I have often pondered what I’d do without the web. And, if I’m honest with myself, the story never ends well. Still, I wonder just how much Kool-Aid the so-called “Internet of Things” requires its true believers to quaff?

“With never-before seen tech breakthroughs and thousands of new products launched, innovation took center stage at the 2014 International CES (Consumer Electronics Association conference) in Las Vegas, Nevada.”

That was from the press release following the event – during which “3,200 exhibitors showcased their latest technologies and major tech breakthroughs, launching some 20,000 new products to capture the world’s attention” – earlier this month. Here’s what Karen Chupka, senior vice president of International CES and corporate business strategy, had to say:

“Technology of the future was widespread  at the 2014 CES where executives from every major industry came to see, touch, interact and do business at the world’s intersection for innovation. Amazing new products emerged in the areas of wireless, apps, automotive, digital health and fitness, 3D printing, startup tech and so much more. It was an incredible event that brought the global tech community together and successfully celebrated and showcased the amazing innovation that is a hallmark of our industry.”

Welcome, indeed, brave new world.

Common – nay, fundamentally crucial – to all such gadgets is their Internet connectivity. Everyday household appliances – once inert and dumb; now active and smart – will keep tabs on your habits, schedules and coming an goings in both real and digital worlds.

Leading the charge, naturally, is Google. The giant announced earlier this month that it would buy Nest Labs Inc. for a cool $3.2 billion in cash. Nest manufactures  thermostats and smoke alarms. But not just any thermostats and smoke alarms. In their effort to make you a more intelligent energy consumer, these ones talk to you through your Internet-enabled computer, and this, of course, raises the specter of spying.

For its part, the new venture has insisted that it would never tabuse its position by mishandling personal information that might come its way via its new “nests”.

But, really, if the choice is between privacy and cool, new tech for the vast, greedy marketplace, are Google’s assurances even necessary these days?

Tagged , , , , , ,
Jan 21 2014
Leave a comment
Culture, Economy, Society

Averting the world’s end, on trust

photo 4

As the word, “systemic”, appears not once but three times in the two-page Executive Summary of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Risks 2014 report, you get the distinct impression that this members-only club of the planet’s uberinfluencers is already planning for the apocalypse.

In previous risk assessments (released annually) the WEF has been content to merely list the various threats – financial, social, economic – that it thinks imperil the world’s fragile accommodations to national well-being.

This year, however, the Forum is determined to emphasize how these risks have become so well integrated that they pose a systemic danger to civilization, itself.

To be sure, it’s a little like watching a street prophet foretell the arrival of the four horsemen.

“Each risk considered in this report holds the potential for failure on a global scale; however, it is their interconnected nature that makes their negative implications so pronounced as together they can have an augmented effect,” said Jennifer Blanke, the WEF’s chief economist, in the news release that accompanied the report last week. “It is vitally important that stakeholders work together to address and adapt to the presence of global risks in our world today.”

The hit parade of hazards include, in no particular order of pernicious effect: income disparity, fiscal crises, monetary collapse and illiquidity (that means you New Brunswick). There’s also structurally high underemployment and joblessness, especially among the world’s youth.

There’s oil price shocks, critical infrastructure failures and currency devaluation.  Then there’s climate change: greater incidence of extreme weather events; greater incidence of natural catastrophes. There’s also greater incidence of man-made environmental catastrophes, such as oil spills nuclear meltdowns.

If that’s not enough to send you back beneath the covers, consider the failure of global governance models, political collapses, increasing corruption, a major escalation in organized crime and illicit trade, large-scale terrorist attacks, the deployment of weapons of mass destruction.

Wait, we’re nowhere near done.

There are food crises during which access to appropriate quantities and quality of nutrition becomes inadequate or unreliable.” There are pandemic outbreaks thanks to

“inadequate disease surveillance systems, failed international coordination and the lack of vaccine production capacity.” And there’s the “increasing burden of illness and long-term costs of treatment” which threaten “recent societal gains in life expectancy and quality while overburdening strained economies.”

Apart from growing income disparity, by which the WEF seems most troubled, the problem of the kids today hovers like a dark cloud. “Many young people face an uphill battle,” offers David Cole, the Group Chief Risk Officer of the Forum-affiliated Swiss Reinsurance Company. “As a result of the financial crisis and globalization, the younger generation in the mature markets struggle with ever fewer job opportunities and the need to support an aging population. While in the emerging markets there are more jobs to be had, the workforce does not yet possess the broad based skill-sets necessary to satisfy demand.”

Naturally, there’s a bunch more perils – including a nifty event the WEF rather provocatively dubs “cybergeddon”, in which “systemic failures of critical information infrastructure (CII) and networks negatively impact industrial production, public services and communications” – but why blunt the point with too much repetition?

We might as well face it folks. We are well and truly. . .um, you might say, fastened by means of a screw.

Or, maybe not. All good end-of-the-world myths contain escape clauses. And they all share the same qualities: an almost childlike faith in certain principles, the absence of which caused our headlong rush to perdition in the first place. The WEF’s creation/destruction story is no exception.

It wants us to put on our “longterm thinking” caps, get busy getting together for “collaborative multi-stakeholder action” that includes effective “global governance.”

Most crucially, though, its wants us to “trust”.

Trust, it says, “is necessary if stakeholders are to work together to tackle global risks, but trust is being undermined in some systemically important areas. For example, much of the younger generation lacks trust in traditional political institutions and leaders, while recent revelations about cyber espionage have undermined trust in the Internet in general and the governance of cyberspace in particular.”

Of course, restoring trust to a bitter, cynical world on the brink of collapse would be a neat trick, indeed.

One might even call it systemic.

Tagged ,
Jan 17 2014
Leave a comment
Society

Cheery news from World Economic Forum

Just when you though it was safe to go back in the water. . .Think again. . . The end is nigh!

Jan 13 2014
Leave a comment
Humour, Media, Society

Choosing our words carefully

Just go with the flow

Just go with the flow

On the theory that words actually do have power, each year various armchair lexicographers issue lists of those they fear have the power to corrupt tender, young minds. Naturally, each year, the rest of the phrase-coining world happily ignores the peeve merchants in their midst.

Still, the good folks at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, fights on bravely to banish trite, nonsensical and overused terminology from the English language. Its 2014 Banished Word List includes: selfie, twerk, hashtag, twittersphere, mister mom, t-bone, and the suffixes “-ageddon” and “-pocalypse”.

As for “selfie”, Lawrence of Coventry, Connecticut, writes on the Banished Word List’s Facebook page, “People have taken pictures of themselves for almost as long as George Eastman’s company made film and cameras. Suddenly, with the advent of smartphones, snapping a ‘pic’ of one’s own image has acquired a vastly overused term that seems to pop up on almost every form of social media available to us. . .A self-snapped picture need not have a name all its own beyond ‘photograph’. It may only be a matter of time before photos of one’s self and a friend will become ‘dualies.’”

Please, Lawrence, don’t give the culture more ideas than it can handle.

Meanwhile, Lisa from New York quips, “Myselfie disparages the word because it’s too selfie-serving. But enough about me, how about yourselfie?”

Lisa also has a problem with “twerk”, that hip-thrust made famous by certain B-list celebrities with defiantly adolescent proclivities. She writes: “I twitch when I hear twerk, for to twerk proves one is a jerk – or is at least twitching like a jerk. Twerking has brought us to a new low in our lexicon.”

Perhaps not as low as has the incessant appending of end-of-the-world parts of speech to commonplace items and events.

“Come on down, we’re havin’ car-ageddon, wine-ageddon, budget-ageddon, a sale-ageddon, flower-ageddon, and so-on-and-so-forth-ageddon,” complains Michael of Haslett, Michigan. “None of these appear in the Book of Revelations.”

Indeed, adds Rob of Sellersville, Pennsylvania, “Every passing storm or event is tagged as ice-ageddon or snow-pocalypse. There’s a limited supply of. . .ageddons and. . .pocalypses; I believe it’s one, each. When running out of cashews becomes nut-ageddon, it’s time to re-evaluate your metaphors.”

It’s all well and it’s all good. Still, allow me to offer my own pet peeves which have not, to my knowledge, appeared on anyone else’s list thus far.

Is it my imagination, or is it getting a little crowded in here? According to a Wikipedia entry, “Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.”

This “process”, we are reliably informed, is deployed to render boring tasks more tolerable (a “many-hands-make-light-work” type of thing) and to raise money for business start-ups, charities, arts initiatives and just about anything else the human mind can conjure on any given day.

Fair enough. But isn’t this what people do, and have done for thousands of years, anyway? What was building ancient Egypt’s pyramids, or the cathedral at Rouen, but prime examples of “crowdsourcing”? Were those projects’ workforces so collegial, so “traditional”, that they did not qualify as “crowds” to be “sourced”?

Do we really need a new word for what is essentially that most ancient of humanity’s unique tricks: creating culture?

Or is it all about the way we feel and talk about the culture we create? In other words, do we get that the “meta-joke” really is on us?

Again, according to the experts (this time the online urban dictionary), “meta” is a prefix, “a term, especially in art, used to characterize something that is characteristically self-referential.”

These days, you can’t walk out the door without encountering some form of  meta-monster, but humour is especially vulnerable to attack: Knock knock. Who’s there? Really. Really who? Really can’t stand knock knock jokes.

If words do have power, let us hope, in this instance, it is not absolute.

Tagged , ,
Dec 29 2013
Leave a comment
Politics, Society

Looking for some late arriving holiday cheer

Bah, humbug. . .to creeping incivilities

Bah, humbug. . .to creeping incivilities

Perhaps it’s the ludicrously hard start (even for Canada) of winter this year. Or maybe it’s the fact that my wife and I will not be enjoying the company of our kids and grandkids for Christmas dinner (it’s the in-laws turns). But my mood, though not yet churlish, has become unusually susceptible to the creeping incivilities of others.

I have mused awhile about Canada’s Industry Minister James Moore, who told a journalist earlier this month that the federal government is not responsible for helping hungry kids. His exact words were: “Certainly, we want to make sure that kids go to school full-bellied, but is that always the government’s job to be there to serve people their breakfast? Is it my job to feed my neighbour’s child? I don’t think so.”

Quite right, Mr. Moore. In other, more famous, words the sentiment persists: “Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses; are they still in operation? Those who are badly off must go there. If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

To be fair to Mr. Moore, he did apologize (then again, so did Scrooge, after a fashion). The industry minister allowed that he chose his words poorly and that he deeply regretted his insensitivity. Indeed, he said, “all levels of government, all members of our society, have a responsibility to be compassionate and care for those in need. While more work is needed, I know the cause of fighting poverty is not helped by comments like those I made.”

Still, the question at the base of this unfortunate fracas has found expression in other venues. Specifically, “How obliged are the authorities to save us from ourselves?”

Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente (who makes a productive habit of ticking off her readers) really wants to know. The question, she wrote last week, “is at the heart of many public policy debates, including the new one over whether to expand the CPP. If you are a semi-upper-middle-class person who hasn’t saved for your retirement, then you’re in for a shock. The question is whether the government should cushion that shock by forcing you (and everyone else) to save more. My personal view is no – especially because it would mean extra taxes on the young, who’ve already been screwed enough. The government has a duty to save you from outright poverty, but after that, you’re on your own.”

So, that’s the choice? Penury or plentitude? No middle ground for a middle class that hasn’t been able to save for its retirement thanks at least partly to government fiscal mismanagement? Nope, because as Ms. Wente declares, “Sadly, minimalism in government has gone out of fashion. Today, it’s the maternalists who rule. They believe that people are like children who, if left unattended, will spend all their allowance and leave the spinach on their plate. Since the people can’t be trusted to act in their own best interests, the authorities must nag and nudge and regulate us into doing so.”

Authorities, presumably, like Canada’s Justice Minister Peter MacKay who insists that judges across Canada stop screwing around with the victim surcharge process during sentencing.

Currently, convicted parties must pay $100 for each summary offence and $200 for each indictable one. According to a CTV item last week, “Ontario Court Justice Colin Westman does not believe courts should impose the ‘victim services surcharge’ on impoverished or mentally ill criminals. ‘It’s unrealistic,’ Justice Westman says. ‘So if it’s not unrealistic, aren’t you bringing disrespect on this court by imposing things that either aren’t going to be enforced or can’t be enforced?”

Maybe, but Mr. MacKay – playing his “father knows best” routine – says do it anyway. “Judges cannot ignore the role of the Crown in passing legislation in our democratically elected Parliament of Canada,” he told the Globe and Mail. “Therefore, they are there like everybody else to respect the law, not flout it. . .A $100 or $200 surcharge is out of proportion to the rehabilitation and the respect that needs to occur in a justice system? I just fundamentally disagree with that. We believe as a government that giving victims a real role and respect within our justice system includes the victim fine surcharge.”

What can a victim of a crime can do with an extra hundred bucks-or-so? Save it for a rainy day. Increasingly, it looks like he (and the rest of us) will need it.

Tagged , ,
Dec 29 2013
Leave a comment
Economy, Society

Sweetening the CPP is long overdue

DSC_0180

It’s always disheartening, though lamentably predictable, when politicians, who ought to know better, adopt the talking points of a vested interest to justify the clearly unjustifiable.

So, when Canada’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says that “now is not the time for CPP payroll tax increases”, as he did earlier this month following a meeting with his provincial counterparts in Meech Lake, P.Q., he is merely lifting a line from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) playbook, to wit:

“CPP/QPP increases would mean a significant premium hike for working Canadians and even more serious impacts for the economy. . .Higher labour costs, with no increase in productivity, would lead to job losses or reduced hours for many workers over the first ten years of a CPP increase, and wages would go down by 1.5 per cent. Many Canadians would go without work for years. Some might escape unscathed, but everyone would be at risk.”

This dire warning appears on the organization’s web site, where “research” clearly indicates that most Canadians don’t want to pay higher premiums because, simply, they can’t afford the ones they are facing right now.

Instead, an Angus Reid Global survey says “they believe that government should control spending and reduce taxes to allow more savings. Moreover, many feel that new incentives and voluntary measures to save through existing and new retirement savings tools including the CPP/QPP are the next most effective solutions. Immediate CPP/QPP mandatory increases impose adverse effects: about half of working Canadians express that such increases would reduce their ability to spend on essential goods and services such as food and housing while close to three in four business owners would face increased pressure to freeze or cut workers’ salaries.”

I am not prepared to concede that “most Canadians” actually feel this way, but even if they do, this doesn’t mean that they are right.

As a Globe and Mail editorial, entitled “Flaherty to savers: You’re on your own with CPP as it stands”, admirably pointed out a couple of weeks ago, “The CPP is not a welfare program, or an income-redistribution program. It’s not paid for by taxes. It’s a defined-benefit pension plan, and how much you get out of the program is based on how much you put in. It’s actuarially sound, independently run and low-cost. It’s one of the world’s best-run retirement safety nets. But the maximum pension for a lifetime of contributions is just $12,000.”

Clearly, that is not enough for most working Canadians. By “most”, I am not referring to the rich or lucky few who stand to pull one of those gilded public pensions that assorted bargaining units have been loathe to see watered down.

Nor am I talking about the impoverished, who must subsist on various forms state-supplied handouts and subsidies.

I am looking straight into the worried eyes of those who populate the once sturdy middle class in this country.

The sad fact is Canadians with steady incomes don’t save enough for their retirements. They haven’t in some time. Pundits of quasi-Libertarian bent and their right-wing fellow travelers in political office adoring placing the blame for this conditions squarely at the feet of the non-savers. They’re spendthrifts or layabouts or, simply, poorly advised about their options .

The truth, however, is complex, involving many factors that are out of an individual’s control, not the least of which was the disastrous implosion of financial markets a few years back – a calamity that destroyed trillions of dollars in personal assets, including those held in retirement portfolios, all over the world.

Nothing, of course, will rebuild these funds. But even a small expansion of the CPP – which is a far less risky savings instrument than just about every other option –  will buffer the financial shock of a lower living standard in retirement.

What’s more, it will cost far less now to sweeten the CPP than it will to prop up droves of aging Canadians who will fall into poverty and endure all of its associated evils: ill health, hunger homelessness.

Tagged , , , ,
Dec 16 2013
Leave a comment
Government, Politics, Society

New Brunswick gets it right on drug plan

Maybe it, like health, will recover

Maybe it, like health, will recover

Three years ago, David Alward made catastrophic drug coverage one of the linchpins of his election campaign. The other was capping the Harmonized Sales Tax at 13 per cent. Thus began, perhaps, the premier’s complicated relationship with what economists term “inputs and outputs.”

Specifically, one actually needs to raise revenue before one increases spending or one tends to go broke pretty darn quickly.

Most householders in New Brunswick get this simple arithmetic. A $500-million annual deficit and a $11-billion long-term debt against the province’s accounts suggest that our elected lawmakers are not as perspicacious as the people they represent.

Still, every so often, a case can be made for a spending program in the absence of a new and ready source of revenue to cover its costs – especially when the administration of such a program will likely prevent the state’s extensive financial hemorrhaging in the future.

Indeed, such a case can be made for the Tory government’s comprehensive drug plan, announced last week, and its specific codicils for catastrophic prescription coverage. Apart from opposition Liberals in the legislature, most interested groups in the province seem sanguine about what they observe in the fine print, which splits the cost of the $50-million (per annum) plan almost evenly between consumers and the Province.

“We’re pleased to see this happening – it’s a moment in history for New Brunswick health care,” Anne McTiernan, CEO of the Canadian Cancer Society in New Brunswick, told the Telegraph-Journal last week. “It will make a huge difference on a go-forward basis for New Brunswickers. It will address both the financial barriers for people accessing important drugs.”

Added Barbara MacKinnon, president and CEO of the New Brunswick Lung Association, for the same piece: “This is an excellent plan. Although it is going to cost, it is really going to keep people out of the hospital. . .If you can get the right diagnosis, the right prescription drug plan, then you are not going to have a stroke.”

In fact, this plan is not likely to financially hobble anyone – not the province which is, arguably, already on skid row, or individuals whose premiums have been scaled to their incomes.

According to the Department of Health, “For individuals earning a gross income of $26,360 or less and families earning a gross income of $49,389 or less, the premium will be approximately $67 per month per adult ($800 per year). For individuals earning a gross income between $26,361 and $50,000 and families earning a gross income of between $49,390 and $75,000, the premium will be approximately $117 per month per adult ($1,400 per year). For individuals earning a gross income between $50,001 and $75,000 and families earning a gross income of between $75,001 and $100,000, the premium will be $133 per month per adult ($1,600 per year). For individuals earning a gross income of more than $75,001 and families earning a gross income of more than $100,001, the premium will be $167 per month per adult ($2,000 per year).”

Meanwhile, “Children 18 and younger will not pay premiums but a parent will have to be enrolled in the plan.  All plan members will be required to pay a 30-per-cent co-pay at the pharmacy up to $30 per prescription.”

There’s even a bone or two tossed to the approximately 80 per cent of New Brusnwickers who hold private drug coverage, to wit: “From May 1, 2014, to March 31, 2015, some New Brunswickers who have private drug plans but still incur high drug costs or need access to a drug covered under the new plan but not through their private plan may join the New Brunswick Drug Plan.”

After that, the province mandates that all private group drug plans “must be at least as comprehensive as the New Brunswick Drug Plan.” That means they must provide comparable coverage in terms of prescriptions and costs.

It has taken three years to craft a program that make sense. But, as Health Minister Ted Flemming points out, if it’s the right plan, it’s worth the wait.

Tagged , , , , ,
Dec 09 2013
Leave a comment
Politics, Society

Reflections on a great man’s passing

img-20120908-00211

The English language cannot proffer one more, fresh superlative to encapsulate the extraordinary character and near-mythic stature of the now-departed Nelson Mandela.

That’s why the words, ‘courage’, ‘human’, ‘giant’, ‘wisdom’, ‘achievement’, ‘justice’, ‘dignity’ and ‘freedom’ have framed an oddly collegial plagiarism-free zone fixed to the front pages of every major newspaper in the world since the great man’s death, at the age of 95, last week.

“What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human,” Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, said of his predecessor. “We saw in him what we seek in ourselves. Fellow South Africans, Nelson Mandela brought us together and it is together that we will bid him farewell.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called him “a giant for justice and a down-to-earth human inspiration. Many around the world were greatly influenced by his selfless struggle for human dignity, equality and freedom. He touched our lives in deeply personal ways.”

Said UK Prime Minister David Cameron: “A great light has gone out in the world.” Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama – never at a loss for words in such a circumstance (indeed, any circumstances) – bloviated, “He no longer belongs to us; he belongs to the ages. He took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice.”

It fell to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to remind the world that it has “lost one of its great moral leaders and statesmen” and that this nation, which conferred honorary citizenship on Mr. Mandela in 2001, grieves with global community today.

The tributes, both heartfelt and fulsome, are, course, justified. By example and political fiat, South Africa’s first black president led his country out of the darkness that was apartheid.

But it says something about the malleability of the human mind that such  sentiments were not universally shared. Shall we forget the ritual abuse much of the western world once heaped on this now venerated freedom-fighter whose reputation rivals Gandhi’s and Mother Theresa’s?

Reporting for The Independent, back in 1996, Anthony Bevins and Michael Streeter culled the official House of Commons record (Hansard) in the UK and revealed a patchwork of decidedly imprudent remarks about the then-imprisoned political activist.

So said MP John Carlisle, prior to a screening of the Free Nelson Mandela concert in 1990: “This hero worship is very much misplaced.”

Three years prior to that, then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opined authoritatively, “The African National Congress (Mr. Mandela’s party) is a typical terrorist organisation. . .Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land.”

Meanwhile, in the mid 1990s, MP Terry Dicks wondered, “How much longer will the Prime Minister allow herself to be kicked in the face by this black terrorist?” His colleague, MP Teddy Taylor asserted, “Nelson Mandela should be shot.”

Even today, as Prime Minister Harper insists that the African statesman’s   “enduring legacy for his country, and the world, is the example he set through his own ‘long walk to freedom’ and that “with grace and humility, he modeled how peoples can transform their own times and in doing so, their own lives,” at least one member of his own party begs to differ.

According to a CBC report last week, “Conservative MP Rob Anders is clinging to his criticism of Nelson Mandela, remaining opposed to the man credited with bringing down South Africa’s apartheid system. . .Anders was the only MP to oppose giving the former South African president honorary Canadian citizenship in 2001. He denied the House unanimous consent for a motion on the matter, but MPs later voted and passed it anyway.”

Mr. Anders referred reporters to a Freedom Centre blog post by David Horowitz, who wrote last week, “if a leader should be judged by his works, the country Mandela left behind is an indictment of his political career, not an achievement worthy of praise – let alone the unhinged adoration he is currently receiving across the political spectrum.”

Of course, a good deal of the Nelson Mandela legend was his ability and determination to transform himself – regardless of both the accolades and criticisms that dogged his every move – into a crucial agent of change for millions of his countrymen and women.

That, perhaps, is the most important superlative to remember.

Tagged , , , , ,
Dec 03 2013
1 Comment
Economy, Education, Society

Stupid is what stupid does

DSC_0027

John Manley, the former federal cabinet minister and current president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, does not overstate the problem of falling math scores in this country by likening it to a national emergency.

In fact, he’s utterly correct when he tells The Globe and Mail, “we need skills, we need knowledge-workers to really improve our prosperity and build our society (because) having the skills becomes a very important element to attracting investment and creating jobs.”

But apart from sounding the alarm bell (again), there’s not much he or anyone else is doing about what is clearly becoming a structurally deficient system of public education – one that routinely emphasizes social integration over actual learning.

These days, schools are virtual trauma centers. Teachers are overwhelmed patching up kids who are injured by exposure to all the rank perfidies this linked-in, hooked-up, texting, sexting world has to offer, 24 hours a day, every day. They’re too busy wondering whether little Johnny had a bagel or bupkis for breakfast.

The stark fact is that, relative to their peers in other developed countries, Canadian children are falling behind in every subject that matters to a so-called knowledge-loving global marketplace, especially math.

The most recent results are in and they are not encouraging. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Canadian 15-year-olds plunged to 13th place, overall, in the global rankings of math proficiency. That was down from 10th in 2009 and seventh in 2006. If this trend holds up, three years from now, Vanuatu will be wiping the floor with us.

Why is this troubling?

“Nearly all adults, not just those with technical or scientific careers, now need to have adequate proficiency in mathematics – as well as reading and science – for personal fulfillment, employment and full participation in society,” the PISA executive summary states. “Literacy in mathematics . . .is not an attribute that an individual has or does not have; rather, it is a skill that can be acquired and used, to a greater or lesser extent, throughout a lifetime.”

Despite these rather obvious facts, however, we continue to enlist teachers with liberal arts backgrounds to instruct their charges on functions, fractions and decimals, because, we have been told, actual expertise scares kids silly. Indeed, the problem, many experts say, is cultural.

“Parents with school-aged children will be familiar with the rhetoric surrounding math education today,” observed Anna Stokke, an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Winnipeg, in a piece she penned for The Globe in October. (The good professor is also co-founder of the non-profit organization Archimedes Math Schools and of WISE Math).

“Children are to discover their own techniques, pencil and paper math and extended practice are kept at a minimum and conventional math techniques are discouraged in favour of using objects like blocks and fraction strips. Teachers are told to encourage children to create their own math questions instead of assigning prescribed problems. It is argued that children will then feel successful even if their math skills are lacking. Much time is devoted to projects intended to keep children engaged in math, such as building gardens or creating posters that list examples of uses of math. Parents are told that these teaching methods have been well researched and will benefit their children in the long run.”

That’s the theory, at any rate. But if this approach works, then why, asks Prof. Stokke “are parents across Canada concerned about their children being unable to carry out the simplest mathematical calculations? Why are business owners, tradespeople, university and college professors and scientists concerned about the lack of skills in high school graduates? Why could only 28 per cent of eighth graders in one of our highest performing province – Alberta – correctly subtract two simple fractions on the 2011 international TIMSS exam, compared with 86 per cent in Korea?”

John Manley shrewdly alludes to Canada’s natural resource sector as key to the country’s competitiveness. It “pays the rent,” he says, “but that just keeps us in the house.”

What will keep us in the global game of productivity and innovation are strategic investments in that other, far more necessary, natural resource: the human intellect.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Dec 03 2013
Leave a comment
Culture, Economy, Oil and Gas, Society

Cautionary tales from the oil rush

 

What goes up...well, you know

What goes up…well, you know

Forgotten somewhere behind the picket lines in rural New Brunswick, amid the gloomy certitudes about the oil and gas industry’s power to corrupt the environment, lies a more visceral byproduct of resource extraction: crimes not against nature, but humanity.

Canada’s violent offence rate is so low these days, few people associate lawlessness with mining and drilling operations anymore. History, of course, is replete with tales of banditry, thuggery and worse from the front lines and frontiers of assorted gold rushes and oil booms in North America.

There are, as Robert Service (the Arctic’s unofficial poet laureate) once wrote famously, “strange things done in the midnight sun, by the men who moil for gold.” Indeed, “the Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold.” Over the past year, however, such literary apocrypha has become reality in the border territories between western and Canada and the United States.

A New York Times piece, published on Sunday, describes recent disappearances and murders in the high plains of Montana and North Dakota. “Stories like these, once rare, have become as common as drilling rigs in rural towns at the heart of one of the nation’s richest oil booms,” the article reported. “Crime has soared as thousands of workers and rivers of cash have flowed into towns, straining police departments and shattering residents’ sense of safety.”

That observation echoed an earlier Times story in which “Christina Knapp and a friend were drinking shots at a bar in a nearby town several weeks ago when a table of about five men called them over and made an offer. They would pay the women $3,000 to strip naked and serve them beer at their house while they watched mixed martial arts fights on television. Ms. Knapp, 22, declined, but the men kept raising the offer, reaching $7,000. . .Prosecutors and the police note an increase in crimes against women, including domestic and sexual assaults.”

Regarding Canada, a piece in the Regina Leader-Post last April explained, “As the oil belt in southern Saskatchewan, North Dakota and Montana expands, police are grappling to deal with a resulting increase in crime. In our province, that means more traffic crime – specifically, more aggressive and impaired driving charges, as well as more fatal accidents. To address crime trends that have come about as a result of a population increase in the oilfield area, members of the Saskatchewan RCMP from the enforcement, intelligence and border security sections are in the midst of a two-day summit with their U.S. counterparts in Glasgow, Montana.”

Meanwhile, a story published on theatlanticcities.com last month observes that “in 2005, the Williston Police Department in Williston, North Dakota, received 3,796 calls for service. By 2009, the number of yearly calls had almost doubled, to 6,089. In 2011, the most recent year for which data is available, the Williston P.D. received 15,954 calls for service. . .The police department in nearby Watford City received 41 service calls in 2006. In 2011 they received 3,938. That’s life in an energy boomtown.”

Ask a dozen sociologists about the reasons for the phenomenon, and you’re likely to get a dozen different answers. But it seems clear that the word “boomtown” says it all: the uncontrolled explosion of opportunity generates unpredictable consequences – including roving bands of assorted misfits and bad guys – catching institutions, infrastructure and law enforcement off guard.

Here, in New Brunswick, of course, we don’t know much about any of this. The safety and serenity of our bucolic environs has as much to do with the fact that we export our criminals, as well as our law-abiding sons and daughters, out west.

But should the glint in Premier Alward’s eye – and that in those of at least 100 other political and business leaders in this province – ever manifest itself as a pipeline from Alberta into Saint John and/or a commercially viable, environmentally benign, shale gas industry proffering jobs and income, galore, we may want to remind ourselves about the social costs of overnight success.

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →