Technology Issues Ignored in Canadian Elections

Jem Berkes writes "Today's Toronto Star has a good article on Canadian political parties' positions on important technology issues such as Copyright reform/WIPO, spam, and privacy. With the elections only a week away, it's surprising that these important issues have attracted little or no debate. The current Heritage Committee, for instance, has recommended that Canada ratify WIPO, and few citizens (let alone politicians) are even aware of this issue."

Comments

Surprising? I think not.

[ezraekman]

With the elections only a week away, it's surprising that these important issues have attracted little or no debate.

No it's not, and you go on to explain why:

The current Heritage Committee, for instance, has recommended that Canada ratify WIPO, and few citizens (let alone politicians) are even aware of this issue."

Unfortunately for our children, Joe Average sees that his friends and family are getting in trouble for what used to be expected of him to do, but doesn't ever make the connection. It's up to us to explain to our less paranoid friends and family exactly *why* things are headed in the wrong direction. Of course, it's somewhat difficult to do without sounding paranoid schizophrenic yourself, but do it anyway. At this point, it's our civic duty.

Re:Suprising?

[isolationism]

That's about the size of it. If one went by the headlines (I couldn't stay awake for 10 minutes of live debates if I tried) it sounds like the big ticket issues are exactly those: gay rights, foreign policy (particularly vis-a-vis America), and fund abuse/scandals.

Even when the levies were imposed some time ago on recordable media they went through without much more than a whisper, despite a good number of people protesting by writing their letters.

I doubt very much if there's going to be any serious discussion between the Liberals and Conservatives with respect to any kind of technology issues unless at least 80% of their prospective voters will understand it clearly or care enough to make a voting decision based on their position. Sure there are other parties that may have policies surrounding the issue -- but the grits seem to be neck and neck with the tories, and the other parties are barely given credit in the news as they are presumably expected to win no more than 7-10 seats between them.

Surprised much?

[BortQ]

Is it really that surprising that these issues haven't ben getting a lot of press?

Clearly us geeks care, but most of the populace do not. The situation is the exact same in the US, where most people on the street will have no fscking clue what the DMCA even is.

Re:Suprising?

[Russell McOrmond]

What I wrote when I helped launch the campaign was the following:

There are those who say that this election is about health care, taxes, education and other such priorities. The policy areas we wish to discuss on http://digital-copyright.ca such as Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks (PCTs) touch very deeply on these areas important to Canadians. You can't talk about health care without talking about pharmaceutical patents and research grants, and our alternative collaborative methods of innovation. You can't talk about taxes without talking about levies being applied to various media (such as blank CDs, and possibly the Internet itself in the future) being used to tax new creativity to fund the legacy content industries. You can't talk about education without talking about the worldwide collaborative creation of educational materials, and the importance of the royalty-free Internet to students able to research topics to a depth previously not possible.

I forgot to mention Chapter 1 of the Auditor General's report on Government on-line which represents far more government waste than Chapter 3 (sponsorship program) that people are upset about. We also hear people ranting about the gun registry, which was also a failed ICT project.

The issue isn't the importance of what we are trying to bring forward, but the lack of adequate media attention to educate people as to the connections between technology issues and all those things which they directly care about.

Re:There are bigger issues

[merdark]

Anyway, I'm sure there are equally strong opinions on the matter from the Conservative supporters.

Probably not. I bet most people voting conservative simply don't understand political issues at all. They probably think that the Conservatives are the old Progressive Conservatives, and are simply voting for them out of habit or due to the Liberal screw ups.