Helping to run this information campaign has been an eye opener for me. I had thought that each of the parties were similar as far as having local candidates in each constituency able to run their own local campaigns.
The centralization is quite high: A number of NDP and Liberals have responded saying that party headquarters will be answering, with some NDP candidates indicating that it was against NDP policy for candidates to answer questionnaires.
As I wrote in the article " Candidates blindly endorsing party position", this is not an area of policy where there is consensus in any of the parties. For this reason the responses of candidates are more important than party responses, and yet some of the centralizing parties like the NDP and the Liberals discourage candidate responses.
Do you want a candidate who will be able to be informed and represent your views, or only one that will tow the party line?
It might be useful for you to let other people in the riding know about what the Heritage Minister and Heritage committee was working on. We have per-riding discussion forums on the Digital Copyright Canada site specifically to help people organize in their area.
First they pat themselves on the back for the tax on CDs which mean that all the FLOSS CDs we have had a tax that went to the major record labels. Next they want to tax educational institutions for their use of the royalty-free Internet (Yes, students reading SlashDot will have money going to the book publishers). Don't think for a moment that before too long they will put a tax on computers and the Internet itself in order to give handouts to CAAST (Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft) members like Microsoft.
So far the Bloc and the NDP have not had the party or any candidates reply, but given there is at least one reply for each of the other 3 major parties.
With the Green Party they are running a full slate of 308 candidates and is a very decentralized party. Given this it should be expected that they would have sent in the most replies. I was surprised to see the Conservative candidate reply before the Conservative party headquarters had sent out its reply.
The Liberals are acting predictably with a number of candidates just sending in copies of the reply the executive director of the party sent in.
The Bloc tends to not answer questions from outside of Quebec (they only run candidates in Quebec). Of the major parties it is the NDP that has surprised me by not sending in any replies yet.
I've been trying to get articles about the Digital-copyright.ca website onto SlashDot for a while now. Unfortunately my latest article advertising it got rejected.
In 2001 we had the help of EFF who sent out an announcement about Canada-DMCA-Opponents (which became Digital-copyright.ca ) and were able to generate approximately 650 of the 700 responses.
We have things that Canadians who care about this stuff can actually DO -- no armchair politics here, but the real stuff.
We have a petition for Users' Rights which people can sign and get all their friends to sign.
We have to sets of questions for candidates which can be asked of candidates in debates, via email, at the door when they come knocking
We have an election education website that includes per-riding discussion areas.
Please do what you can to try to get the message out. It would be great if we could get SlashDotted and get people active about this during the election.
The Canadian Government is about to be changed. This could me a change in trade negotiators, but probably not. They do get direction from parliament.
At the World Summit on the Information Society I read a few times that the Canadian government delegation was often in stealth-support of the extreme positions put forward by the USA. The USA positions included things like opposing inclusion of FLOSS, claiming it isn't "technological neutral" even though FLOSS is about methodology/policy and not technology.
Canadians should consider this when they vote later this month - what treaties will we be negotiating, signing and ratifying in the near future depends on how Canadians vote on June 28.
If you want to coordinate a response with fellow Internet/FLOSS/Creative Commons aware Canadians, consider the Digital Copyright Canada forum.
In 2001, with the help of the EFF, we were able to generate approximately 650 of the 700 written replies that the government received to their consultation. Our replies all opposed the DMCA being brought into Canada. Unfortunately parliament is not listening to us, and recent reports from parliamentary committees have directed government to immediately ratify the WIPO treaties that were implemented as the DMCA in the USA.
Rather than reacting, Canadians should be proactive and ensure that their candidates know where they stand on these issues. Both CIPPIC and the Digital Copyright Canada forum have questions for Candidates which can help you find out where they stand.
If you are one of those 40% of Canadians that don't vote, please consider protecting the Internet and FLOSS from bad government policy to be an important reason to get involved.
Slashdot Mirror
I am the webmaster of Digital Copyright Canada and have been working closely with the CIPPIC and PIAC before and during this campaign.
Helping to run this information campaign has been an eye opener for me. I had thought that each of the parties were similar as far as having local candidates in each constituency able to run their own local campaigns.
The centralization is quite high: A number of NDP and Liberals have responded saying that party headquarters will be answering, with some NDP candidates indicating that it was against NDP policy for candidates to answer questionnaires.
As I wrote in the article " Candidates blindly endorsing party position", this is not an area of policy where there is consensus in any of the parties. For this reason the responses of candidates are more important than party responses, and yet some of the centralizing parties like the NDP and the Liberals discourage candidate responses.
Do you want a candidate who will be able to be informed and represent your views, or only one that will tow the party line?
It might be useful for you to let other people in the riding know about what the Heritage Minister and Heritage committee was working on. We have per-riding discussion forums on the Digital Copyright Canada site specifically to help people organize in their area.
First they pat themselves on the back for the tax on CDs which mean that all the FLOSS CDs we have had a tax that went to the major record labels. Next they want to tax educational institutions for their use of the royalty-free Internet (Yes, students reading SlashDot will have money going to the book publishers). Don't think for a moment that before too long they will put a tax on computers and the Internet itself in order to give handouts to CAAST (Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft) members like Microsoft.
Conservative Party
Liberal Party
Green Party
So far the Bloc and the NDP have not had the party or any candidates reply, but given there is at least one reply for each of the other 3 major parties.
With the Green Party they are running a full slate of 308 candidates and is a very decentralized party. Given this it should be expected that they would have sent in the most replies. I was surprised to see the Conservative candidate reply before the Conservative party headquarters had sent out its reply.
The Liberals are acting predictably with a number of candidates just sending in copies of the reply the executive director of the party sent in.
The Bloc tends to not answer questions from outside of Quebec (they only run candidates in Quebec). Of the major parties it is the NDP that has surprised me by not sending in any replies yet.
In 2001 we had the help of EFF who sent out an announcement about Canada-DMCA-Opponents (which became Digital-copyright.ca ) and were able to generate approximately 650 of the 700 responses.
We have things that Canadians who care about this stuff can actually DO -- no armchair politics here, but the real stuff.
We have a petition for Users' Rights which people can sign and get all their friends to sign.
We have to sets of questions for candidates which can be asked of candidates in debates, via email, at the door when they come knocking
We have an election education website that includes per-riding discussion areas.
Please do what you can to try to get the message out. It would be great if we could get SlashDotted and get people active about this during the election.
The Canadian Government is about to be changed. This could me a change in trade negotiators, but probably not. They do get direction from parliament.
At the World Summit on the Information Society I read a few times that the Canadian government delegation was often in stealth-support of the extreme positions put forward by the USA. The USA positions included things like opposing inclusion of FLOSS, claiming it isn't "technological neutral" even though FLOSS is about methodology/policy and not technology.
Canadians should consider this when they vote later this month - what treaties will we be negotiating, signing and ratifying in the near future depends on how Canadians vote on June 28.
If you want to coordinate a response with fellow Internet/FLOSS/Creative Commons aware Canadians, consider the Digital Copyright Canada forum.
The Digital Copyright Canada forum and the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) are working to make Internet, Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and digital copyright issues during the current election.
In 2001, with the help of the EFF, we were able to generate approximately 650 of the 700 written replies that the government received to their consultation. Our replies all opposed the DMCA being brought into Canada. Unfortunately parliament is not listening to us, and recent reports from parliamentary committees have directed government to immediately ratify the WIPO treaties that were implemented as the DMCA in the USA.
Rather than reacting, Canadians should be proactive and ensure that their candidates know where they stand on these issues. Both CIPPIC and the Digital Copyright Canada forum have questions for Candidates which can help you find out where they stand.
If you are one of those 40% of Canadians that don't vote, please consider protecting the Internet and FLOSS from bad government policy to be an important reason to get involved.