The Editor,
Globe and Mail
Sir,
There's a mine at the head of Buttle Lake in Strathcona Park on
Vancouver Island. For years it had permission to drop its tailings into
the lake, which in addition to being part of a hydro reservoir is
Campbell River's municipal watershed.
For years this seemed a relatively benign solution; promoters of the
mine said there was and would be no effect on the water.
And then testing started to show an alarming increase in heavy metals in
our water supply.
That was when the mine built a proper tailings pond and system. The
problem began to diminish gradually until nowadays we don't think much
about it any longer.
Want to bet that's what the people living downstream of the Mount Polley
Mine tailing pond disaster are looking at in their future unless the
tailings are recovered and cleaned up?
(That's most of British Columbia's population, by the way.)
Sincerely,
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Thursday, July 10, 2014
To the Class of '84
Dear Class of '84:
You'll forgive me if I don't remember very many of you individually or those I do, very clearly. It's been a while!
That said, your class embodies one of the favourite memories of my teaching career.
Here's why:
I arrived at Robron, after 10 years at Carihi, when you were in Grade 11 and the school was still undergoing some construction. I applied to come, largely because of Kieran O'Neill and Jim Beck, the Principal and Vice-Principal, in spite of the prevailing teacher gossip that Robron was an under-resourced construction disaster.
I still consider them among the best I ever worked with in my 35-year career.
Anyway, back to why you became one of my favourite graduating classes ever:
Some of you may remember the spate of racist incidents in the Rockland area in the late '70s. Those attitudes were in evidence at Robron as well, and the staff decided to tackle any racism that existed head-on. Obviously, the success of the program depended on your class, the school leaders, taking on the message that racism was unacceptable and would not be tolerated at Robron.
Which is what you did; your class was the first in Campbell River to feature students of East-Indian descent among its leaders in both sports and academics.
The consequence of the direction set by your class was that by the time my own children graduated from Robron in the '90s, racism was no longer either socially acceptable at Robron or a significant issue.
Perhaps even more importantly, your teachers applied the lessons we learned from you at Robron in other schools and in other districts.
Which makes your class kind of famous, indirectly!
Have a great reunion!
Justus Havelaar
You'll forgive me if I don't remember very many of you individually or those I do, very clearly. It's been a while!
That said, your class embodies one of the favourite memories of my teaching career.
Here's why:
I arrived at Robron, after 10 years at Carihi, when you were in Grade 11 and the school was still undergoing some construction. I applied to come, largely because of Kieran O'Neill and Jim Beck, the Principal and Vice-Principal, in spite of the prevailing teacher gossip that Robron was an under-resourced construction disaster.
I still consider them among the best I ever worked with in my 35-year career.
Anyway, back to why you became one of my favourite graduating classes ever:
Some of you may remember the spate of racist incidents in the Rockland area in the late '70s. Those attitudes were in evidence at Robron as well, and the staff decided to tackle any racism that existed head-on. Obviously, the success of the program depended on your class, the school leaders, taking on the message that racism was unacceptable and would not be tolerated at Robron.
Which is what you did; your class was the first in Campbell River to feature students of East-Indian descent among its leaders in both sports and academics.
The consequence of the direction set by your class was that by the time my own children graduated from Robron in the '90s, racism was no longer either socially acceptable at Robron or a significant issue.
Perhaps even more importantly, your teachers applied the lessons we learned from you at Robron in other schools and in other districts.
Which makes your class kind of famous, indirectly!
Have a great reunion!
Justus Havelaar
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Power for BC: Site C vs gas
It almost pains me to say it, but on May 12 Vaughn Palmer (the Vancouver Sun's compliant provincial politics columnist) wrote a useful column that probably deserves more attention than it got from the commentariat.
In it he talks about one of the several significant questions posed by the just-released report of the “Joint Review Panel” tasked with evaluating BC Hydro's proposed Site C hydro project on the Peace River. Essentially, that question is: Why are Hydro and the Province determined to go ahead with the (present estimate) $7.9 billion dam option in a province experiencing a glut of natural gas which could easily be used to generate an equivalent amount of electricity for much less cost?
Here's his lede:
Among the more provocative passages in the report from the joint review panel on Site C are those challenging the B.C. Liberal government’s weirdly hypocritical attitude toward the use of natural gas to generate electricity.
And later, getting to the heart of the matter:
“Why, for example, was it permissible to produce, compress, send by pipeline, liquefy, and ship B.C. natural gas as LNG to Asia, where it would be burned, thus adding to the global GHG burden, while burning it here would at least save the enormous costs of liquefaction and transportation?” was how the panel framed the key question in its report released last week.
“This artificial limit was seen as especially galling in face of the (2012 cabinet decision) allowing the LNG developers to use as much gas as they wanted.”
Unlike many the critics of the dam option, I'm not very opposed to a third dam on the Peace. We've driven that valley many times, and have seen the signs pointing out the potential water levels of the reservoir. It's obvious there would be forest cover and agricultural land lost. But most of the land is already cleared, and most of the agriculture presently consists of hay fields. Besides, there's apparently so much potential agricultural land available in the area, outside the valley, that Bill 24, presently before the legislature, proposes to alienate large chunks of it as well in the service of industry, development, and natural gas extraction.
Besides, the Peace River itself is already far from natural.
But $7.9 billion is serious money. Given the overruns that inevitably happen to the large public projects in this province, it's almost certainly an impossibly-low estimate. Most of us would have to be convinced that there's a good case to be made before we collectively embark on it; the enormous economic activity that would result from building it only makes sense if the power can subsequently be sold at a price we and our economy can support.
That case hasn't been made by either the government or BC Hydro.
When the Campbell government started touting it, Hydro was going to sell the power from Site C to Americans, who, the government claimed, were sufficiently desperate to pay high prices for it.
More recently, and particularly during the first year of Christy Clark's tenure, that plan morphed into Site C powering the LNG revolution that was about to overtake us and pay for everything.
Now those markets are off the table. Apparently we'll need the power, but for what is far from clear.
However, let's assume we will need it. According to sections of the Joint Review Panel's report quoted by Palmer, one or more natural gas-powered generating plants would be both much less expensive to build and would produce significantly cheaper power. I'm going to suggest we could even absorb the cost of CO2 capture and sequestration, and still beat the Site C price for power!
Thus the only advantage Site C appears to have is a much longer lifespan: 100 years compared to 30. But who knows what our power needs will be in 30 years, never mind 100?
So that seems a dubious benefit; let's not do it. Let's let BC Hydro build a few gas plants, as and where needed instead.
In it he talks about one of the several significant questions posed by the just-released report of the “Joint Review Panel” tasked with evaluating BC Hydro's proposed Site C hydro project on the Peace River. Essentially, that question is: Why are Hydro and the Province determined to go ahead with the (present estimate) $7.9 billion dam option in a province experiencing a glut of natural gas which could easily be used to generate an equivalent amount of electricity for much less cost?
Here's his lede:
Among the more provocative passages in the report from the joint review panel on Site C are those challenging the B.C. Liberal government’s weirdly hypocritical attitude toward the use of natural gas to generate electricity.
And later, getting to the heart of the matter:
“Why, for example, was it permissible to produce, compress, send by pipeline, liquefy, and ship B.C. natural gas as LNG to Asia, where it would be burned, thus adding to the global GHG burden, while burning it here would at least save the enormous costs of liquefaction and transportation?” was how the panel framed the key question in its report released last week.
“This artificial limit was seen as especially galling in face of the (2012 cabinet decision) allowing the LNG developers to use as much gas as they wanted.”
Unlike many the critics of the dam option, I'm not very opposed to a third dam on the Peace. We've driven that valley many times, and have seen the signs pointing out the potential water levels of the reservoir. It's obvious there would be forest cover and agricultural land lost. But most of the land is already cleared, and most of the agriculture presently consists of hay fields. Besides, there's apparently so much potential agricultural land available in the area, outside the valley, that Bill 24, presently before the legislature, proposes to alienate large chunks of it as well in the service of industry, development, and natural gas extraction.
Besides, the Peace River itself is already far from natural.
But $7.9 billion is serious money. Given the overruns that inevitably happen to the large public projects in this province, it's almost certainly an impossibly-low estimate. Most of us would have to be convinced that there's a good case to be made before we collectively embark on it; the enormous economic activity that would result from building it only makes sense if the power can subsequently be sold at a price we and our economy can support.
That case hasn't been made by either the government or BC Hydro.
When the Campbell government started touting it, Hydro was going to sell the power from Site C to Americans, who, the government claimed, were sufficiently desperate to pay high prices for it.
More recently, and particularly during the first year of Christy Clark's tenure, that plan morphed into Site C powering the LNG revolution that was about to overtake us and pay for everything.
Now those markets are off the table. Apparently we'll need the power, but for what is far from clear.
However, let's assume we will need it. According to sections of the Joint Review Panel's report quoted by Palmer, one or more natural gas-powered generating plants would be both much less expensive to build and would produce significantly cheaper power. I'm going to suggest we could even absorb the cost of CO2 capture and sequestration, and still beat the Site C price for power!
Thus the only advantage Site C appears to have is a much longer lifespan: 100 years compared to 30. But who knows what our power needs will be in 30 years, never mind 100?
So that seems a dubious benefit; let's not do it. Let's let BC Hydro build a few gas plants, as and where needed instead.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
What's in a name
Last Friday, April 25, a local paper, the Courier-Islander, gave us a glimpse of what we can expect from the new owners when it published an editorial I'm pretty sure wasn't written in-house.
As is my wont when I find I'm somewhat offended by something political, I wrote a letter to the editor:
Dear Sir,
As a subscriber to your newspaper since the 1970's, it is extremely disappointing to see a piece of rather obvious Conservative propaganda masquerading as Friday's editorial (The Fair Elections Act. Is it fair or unfair?)
Especially as the government that introduced the Act has now climbed down from most of the contentious provisions so energetically defended in that editorial.
Today that letter was published, along with two others in the same vein.
This afternoon J showed up. He wanted to talk about "your letter", and why, as a Campbell River lawyer who signs himself W.J. Havelaar he couldn't be associated with it.
Fair enough, although as I pointed out, the contents of the letter pretty clearly demonstrate that he couldn't have written it.
Anyway, I agreed to write another letter:
Dear Sir,
My son, W.J. (Jay) Havelaar, wants me to point out that there are four W.J. Havelaars presently extant, and that he's not the one who has subscribed to your paper since the 1970's, so he's not the one who wrote the letter complaining about the "editorial" that appeared in the April 25th edition of the Courier-Islander.
Yours very sincerely,
W.J. (Justus) Havelaar
That should clear things up!
(Though I doubt they'll publish it.)
As is my wont when I find I'm somewhat offended by something political, I wrote a letter to the editor:
Dear Sir,
As a subscriber to your newspaper since the 1970's, it is extremely disappointing to see a piece of rather obvious Conservative propaganda masquerading as Friday's editorial (The Fair Elections Act. Is it fair or unfair?)
Especially as the government that introduced the Act has now climbed down from most of the contentious provisions so energetically defended in that editorial.
Today that letter was published, along with two others in the same vein.
This afternoon J showed up. He wanted to talk about "your letter", and why, as a Campbell River lawyer who signs himself W.J. Havelaar he couldn't be associated with it.
Fair enough, although as I pointed out, the contents of the letter pretty clearly demonstrate that he couldn't have written it.
Anyway, I agreed to write another letter:
Dear Sir,
My son, W.J. (Jay) Havelaar, wants me to point out that there are four W.J. Havelaars presently extant, and that he's not the one who has subscribed to your paper since the 1970's, so he's not the one who wrote the letter complaining about the "editorial" that appeared in the April 25th edition of the Courier-Islander.
Yours very sincerely,
W.J. (Justus) Havelaar
That should clear things up!
(Though I doubt they'll publish it.)
Friday, April 25, 2014
This lead from today's Globe illustrates...
...why it is apparently so difficult to have a rational discussion on
the issue:
Ontario’s law society has refused to accredit a new law school at a faith-based university over a policy prohibiting same-sex intimacy that some say is discriminatory.
Not to mention that that a significant part of it is just plain wrong.
Maybe not as wrong as the headline, however: Law Society rejects school over gay policy
Happily, the rest of the story is more nuanced.
That said, cheers from this corner for the Ontario Benchers!
(I tried to link to the article, but it appears to have been changed. Maybe someone read it and drew the same conclusions I did!)
April 26:
Since I posted this, the Nova Scotia Bar has essentially agreed with the Ontario Bar. It's quite possible the BC Bar will reverse its decision as well, if the membership gets to vote.
Mike asked me to expand on my position. I replied:
I thought the Supremes were wrong in the BCTF vs TWU case, and I think the Ontario Benchers are right in this case.
My complaint with the Globe lead and headine is that it doesn't help to describe the case as pitting the interests of same-sex advocates against the interests of religious fundamentalists, no matter how passionate the argument on either side. They're both, in their own way, correct, and I have no problem with each making his case.
However, the TWU covenant is clearly discriminatory: that's its raison d'etre. It discriminates against all adults who are in relationships that are not traditional man-woman marriage.
Normally this kind of discrimination of no great import, but these activities and relationships are, in Canada, not only legal but have the implicit blessing of the state in that they're recognized in various laws.
When such discrimination is a condition of entering or remaining in a professional faculty, one (education and law being two examples) which has strict anti-discrimination bylaws written into its professional college rules, a line has been crossed.
I should have added that the practice of law is, like teaching, a social service, a part of what makes our society work. Any person who has been sheltered in a cocoon of like-minded individuals his or her entire academic life is not, in my opinion -- no matter how professionally competent -- well prepared to confront the realities of that society, and is thus not well-prepared to fully discharge his or her duties to that society.
I believe I could give examples observed during my teaching career.
Ontario’s law society has refused to accredit a new law school at a faith-based university over a policy prohibiting same-sex intimacy that some say is discriminatory.
Not to mention that that a significant part of it is just plain wrong.
Maybe not as wrong as the headline, however: Law Society rejects school over gay policy
Happily, the rest of the story is more nuanced.
That said, cheers from this corner for the Ontario Benchers!
(I tried to link to the article, but it appears to have been changed. Maybe someone read it and drew the same conclusions I did!)
April 26:
Since I posted this, the Nova Scotia Bar has essentially agreed with the Ontario Bar. It's quite possible the BC Bar will reverse its decision as well, if the membership gets to vote.
Mike asked me to expand on my position. I replied:
I thought the Supremes were wrong in the BCTF vs TWU case, and I think the Ontario Benchers are right in this case.
My complaint with the Globe lead and headine is that it doesn't help to describe the case as pitting the interests of same-sex advocates against the interests of religious fundamentalists, no matter how passionate the argument on either side. They're both, in their own way, correct, and I have no problem with each making his case.
However, the TWU covenant is clearly discriminatory: that's its raison d'etre. It discriminates against all adults who are in relationships that are not traditional man-woman marriage.
Normally this kind of discrimination of no great import, but these activities and relationships are, in Canada, not only legal but have the implicit blessing of the state in that they're recognized in various laws.
When such discrimination is a condition of entering or remaining in a professional faculty, one (education and law being two examples) which has strict anti-discrimination bylaws written into its professional college rules, a line has been crossed.
I should have added that the practice of law is, like teaching, a social service, a part of what makes our society work. Any person who has been sheltered in a cocoon of like-minded individuals his or her entire academic life is not, in my opinion -- no matter how professionally competent -- well prepared to confront the realities of that society, and is thus not well-prepared to fully discharge his or her duties to that society.
I believe I could give examples observed during my teaching career.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
A cautionary iTunes tale (perhaps usefully illustrative)
About a year ago Bruce alerted me to the existence of the Audioengine W3 Wireless Audio Adaptor, conceptually the very thing I'd been looking for. The price was right, so I found a seller in Ontario and bought one.
The W3 consists of two parts: one you plug into a USB port on your computer, the other is connected to the amplifier of your stereo system. It turns your computer into an excellent, high-fidelity, wireless music server.
To get our extensive CD collection into the (160 gig) small iMac in a “lossless” format (ALAC, a proprietary Apple format) I bought a 1TB external drive, connected iTunes to it, and started processing CDs. I was at the time not very familiar with iTunes, but did know that it functioned with “playlists”, so reasoned that if I turned every CD into a playlist and identified each playlist with the number in the catalogue I've been keeping forever, I'd have the equivalent of our entire CD library literally at my fingertips.
And that's actually how it turned out.
Better yet, Sandy's iPad and iPhone could be made to control the entire system remotely, which is spectacular and even useful... but that's not what this post is about.
What it is about is how I managed to screw up a perfectly competent, functioning system, and what I discovered while restoring it. (Which, as you will see, I haven't completed yet, and won't, for weeks.)
The saga started when I was assembling some music files that I wanted to send. I'd noticed iTunes had an export function, so I thought: why not get iTunes to export those files?
Having done that, I discovered that I'd actually exported the playlists rather than the music, but before I'd properly processed this fact, I'd managed to corrupt the file. Still don't know how.
I cursed myself for not getting around to backing up the iMac's files, especially as Time Machine makes this dead simple, and all our other computers are backed up.
However, that meant re-doing the entire playlist file, a significant undertaking.
Next day I was already into the “B”s when I thought I should probably attach an external hard drive and fire up Time Machine.
Unfortunately, there are only 3 USB ports on the iMac, and all of them were in use.
Fortunately, we have a powered USB desktop hub, with 4 extra ports.
Unfortunately, it popped out of the computer's port while I was fiddling with the back of the computer, plugging and unplugging, while the iTunes external drive was attached.
That drive subsequently disappeared from its place on the desktop.
Disk Utility revealed that the drive was corrupted, and needed re-formatting.
You cannot reformat without erasing the contents, and for obvious reasons I did not want to process nearly 500 gigs worth of music files over again.
Annoying, but no particular problem, I thought: the music files were backed up on our system's Network Attached Storage, a small server available to all our computers.
I checked: while that NAS had many music files on it (and works quite well as a music server, but has limitations) in total it contained fewer than 300 gig, whereas the defective drive used 465 gig.
Clearly, there was something wrong, and I wasn't prepared to risk losing even more files.
Time to try the Mac's Disk Utility's “recover” function: 5 hours later my latent suspicions were confirmed; all that was recovered was the defective disk, so no joy.
I decided I had to buy a recovery program for Mac.
Once installed, it ground away for over 12 hours -- happily mostly at night -- but did recover the music files.
So I reformatted the original music disk, got the computer to copy the recovered files onto it, and 5 hours later reconnected it to iTunes, then added the files to its library.
I started on re-creating the playlists, and instantly discovered that, according to the iTunes library, I now had two copies of every track, one functional and the other not. While that information didn't take up much room, it would make creating every playlist a nightmare.
So I trashed all the iTunes files (except for those recordings bought from the iTunes store, which appear automatically) and started over, connecting the disk to iTunes, then adding the files on it to the library.
And that's where I am at present. Time Machine is going to spend the next few hours backing everything up, and then I get to create some playlists...
The W3 consists of two parts: one you plug into a USB port on your computer, the other is connected to the amplifier of your stereo system. It turns your computer into an excellent, high-fidelity, wireless music server.
To get our extensive CD collection into the (160 gig) small iMac in a “lossless” format (ALAC, a proprietary Apple format) I bought a 1TB external drive, connected iTunes to it, and started processing CDs. I was at the time not very familiar with iTunes, but did know that it functioned with “playlists”, so reasoned that if I turned every CD into a playlist and identified each playlist with the number in the catalogue I've been keeping forever, I'd have the equivalent of our entire CD library literally at my fingertips.
And that's actually how it turned out.
Better yet, Sandy's iPad and iPhone could be made to control the entire system remotely, which is spectacular and even useful... but that's not what this post is about.
What it is about is how I managed to screw up a perfectly competent, functioning system, and what I discovered while restoring it. (Which, as you will see, I haven't completed yet, and won't, for weeks.)
The saga started when I was assembling some music files that I wanted to send. I'd noticed iTunes had an export function, so I thought: why not get iTunes to export those files?
Having done that, I discovered that I'd actually exported the playlists rather than the music, but before I'd properly processed this fact, I'd managed to corrupt the file. Still don't know how.
I cursed myself for not getting around to backing up the iMac's files, especially as Time Machine makes this dead simple, and all our other computers are backed up.
However, that meant re-doing the entire playlist file, a significant undertaking.
Next day I was already into the “B”s when I thought I should probably attach an external hard drive and fire up Time Machine.
Unfortunately, there are only 3 USB ports on the iMac, and all of them were in use.
Fortunately, we have a powered USB desktop hub, with 4 extra ports.
Unfortunately, it popped out of the computer's port while I was fiddling with the back of the computer, plugging and unplugging, while the iTunes external drive was attached.
That drive subsequently disappeared from its place on the desktop.
Disk Utility revealed that the drive was corrupted, and needed re-formatting.
You cannot reformat without erasing the contents, and for obvious reasons I did not want to process nearly 500 gigs worth of music files over again.
Annoying, but no particular problem, I thought: the music files were backed up on our system's Network Attached Storage, a small server available to all our computers.
I checked: while that NAS had many music files on it (and works quite well as a music server, but has limitations) in total it contained fewer than 300 gig, whereas the defective drive used 465 gig.
Clearly, there was something wrong, and I wasn't prepared to risk losing even more files.
Time to try the Mac's Disk Utility's “recover” function: 5 hours later my latent suspicions were confirmed; all that was recovered was the defective disk, so no joy.
I decided I had to buy a recovery program for Mac.
Once installed, it ground away for over 12 hours -- happily mostly at night -- but did recover the music files.
So I reformatted the original music disk, got the computer to copy the recovered files onto it, and 5 hours later reconnected it to iTunes, then added the files to its library.
I started on re-creating the playlists, and instantly discovered that, according to the iTunes library, I now had two copies of every track, one functional and the other not. While that information didn't take up much room, it would make creating every playlist a nightmare.
So I trashed all the iTunes files (except for those recordings bought from the iTunes store, which appear automatically) and started over, connecting the disk to iTunes, then adding the files on it to the library.
And that's where I am at present. Time Machine is going to spend the next few hours backing everything up, and then I get to create some playlists...
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Senate of Canada: an incremental improvement
The Senate of Canada needs to be abolished. Of this I have no doubt.
Furthermore, that is the long-held position of the NDP, one of the principal reasons I support that party.
But the NDP has an Achilles' heel on this subject: no senators plus, to paraphrase Otto von Bismark's tested observation, “politics is the art of the possible.”
Those two facts should make party spokesmen and commentators pause before ripping the Liberals and Justin Trudeau for removing 32 Liberal-appointed senators from the Liberal caucus.
Here's why:
NDPers spouting the party line that the Liberal initiative doesn't address the real issue are not incorrect, but do overlook the fact that, given the requirements of Canada's Constitution, we're unlikely to see the end of the Senate in our lifetime. Getting the agreement of seven provinces representing at least 50% of the population is simply too steep a mountain to climb, and short of revolution, there are no other options.
So abolition simply isn't going to happen, at least, not in any foreseeable future, not even with a majority NDP government. (I love Thomas Mulcair's assertion that, as prime Minister, he wouldn't appoint a single senator. But does anyone believe the NDP would be in power long enough to empty the Senate?)
This implies that, if we are to be relevant on this issue, we need to put some water in our wine and think reformation instead.
Of course Conservatives are also talking reformation, but their favourite reform involves an elected Senate, which would not only perpetuate an already dysfunctional institution, but also give it added legitimacy. It might even prove to be effective, thus giving the Reformers who morphed into the Conservatives two of their three “E”s.
But why would anyone support a Senate with real power and legitimacy in which the Atlantic provinces would have more seats than the entire western half of the country?
I trust the NDP to oppose an elected Senate even more vigorously than it opposes what we have.
(Odds are they won't have to: the Supreme Court is likely to point out that such a change would require a change in the Constitution, which makes an elected Senate just as unlikely as an abolished Senate.)
Which leaves what the Liberals have just done.
Their shot at reform is unlikely to make much immediate difference and is not without its problems. Removing Liberal senators from caucus doesn't stop them from being Liberals or voting as their Liberal brethern in the House do. Nor does it stop them from being unelected. It doesn't even stop them from forming their own Liberal caucus in the Senate. But it does cut the ties between the Liberal Party leader's office and the Senate, and I don't see how any New Democrat could argue that's a bad thing, especially given the relationship between our Prime Minister's office and the Senate.
Besides, if Trudeau really does get to institute his proposal of changing how Senators are chosen, over time the Senate's partisanship really will be diminished.
Again, I don't see why that's not an improvement over what we have presently.
Even if it's far from the ideal.
Frankly, I'd be more impressed with my party if its spokesmen weren't so blinded by Justin Trudeau's rise in the polls that they can't acknowledge an impressive, if incremental, first step.
Furthermore, that is the long-held position of the NDP, one of the principal reasons I support that party.
But the NDP has an Achilles' heel on this subject: no senators plus, to paraphrase Otto von Bismark's tested observation, “politics is the art of the possible.”
Those two facts should make party spokesmen and commentators pause before ripping the Liberals and Justin Trudeau for removing 32 Liberal-appointed senators from the Liberal caucus.
Here's why:
NDPers spouting the party line that the Liberal initiative doesn't address the real issue are not incorrect, but do overlook the fact that, given the requirements of Canada's Constitution, we're unlikely to see the end of the Senate in our lifetime. Getting the agreement of seven provinces representing at least 50% of the population is simply too steep a mountain to climb, and short of revolution, there are no other options.
So abolition simply isn't going to happen, at least, not in any foreseeable future, not even with a majority NDP government. (I love Thomas Mulcair's assertion that, as prime Minister, he wouldn't appoint a single senator. But does anyone believe the NDP would be in power long enough to empty the Senate?)
This implies that, if we are to be relevant on this issue, we need to put some water in our wine and think reformation instead.
Of course Conservatives are also talking reformation, but their favourite reform involves an elected Senate, which would not only perpetuate an already dysfunctional institution, but also give it added legitimacy. It might even prove to be effective, thus giving the Reformers who morphed into the Conservatives two of their three “E”s.
But why would anyone support a Senate with real power and legitimacy in which the Atlantic provinces would have more seats than the entire western half of the country?
I trust the NDP to oppose an elected Senate even more vigorously than it opposes what we have.
(Odds are they won't have to: the Supreme Court is likely to point out that such a change would require a change in the Constitution, which makes an elected Senate just as unlikely as an abolished Senate.)
Which leaves what the Liberals have just done.
Their shot at reform is unlikely to make much immediate difference and is not without its problems. Removing Liberal senators from caucus doesn't stop them from being Liberals or voting as their Liberal brethern in the House do. Nor does it stop them from being unelected. It doesn't even stop them from forming their own Liberal caucus in the Senate. But it does cut the ties between the Liberal Party leader's office and the Senate, and I don't see how any New Democrat could argue that's a bad thing, especially given the relationship between our Prime Minister's office and the Senate.
Besides, if Trudeau really does get to institute his proposal of changing how Senators are chosen, over time the Senate's partisanship really will be diminished.
Again, I don't see why that's not an improvement over what we have presently.
Even if it's far from the ideal.
Frankly, I'd be more impressed with my party if its spokesmen weren't so blinded by Justin Trudeau's rise in the polls that they can't acknowledge an impressive, if incremental, first step.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Warning: potentially boring...
...at least, unless you're one of those fortunate people who have the time to spend hours (and sometimes days!) messing with computers.
As I am.
Anyway, on to the latest computer saga, revealed through (a somewhat modifed) email correspondence with a friend who is also my Linux guru:
I have a DVD that I wish to duplicate for several complex reasons involving the fact that we have too many computers featuring too many operating systems at our house.
So I go looking for K9copy, which I've always used before, and find it unavailable in any of the Linux repositories. I subsequently find it online, but then discover I will have to "compile" the file, which is well beyond what I think I'm able to do.
On reading the on-line forums, I discover that K3b will also serve, but there's a problem: the resulting .iso file is 7.7 gig, and my blank disks are 4.7, which is of course why K9copy (which shrinks as it extracts and then writes files) has been so useful in the past.
I suppose I could shrink the file using DVD95, but that has created problems in the past and I'd still have to write the resulting file to a blank DVD.
Clearly, I'm meant to not copy DVDs.
On the other hand, today one can purchase two 16-gig flash drives for a mere $20, tax included.
I send, and carry on, expecting to just drop the .iso files onto the virtual flash drive now mounted on my desktop. And the saga continues in the next email, an hour or so later..:
I'd forgotten that FAT32 files (which is how most usb flash drives are initially formatted) max out at 4 gig. So I reformatted one drive to NTFS, which Linux will format and Mac will read. However, according to Dr. Google, Mac won't write to it.
So I thought I'd format the other on the Mac. Disk Utility offered several versions of "Mac OS extended (journalled)". I know from past experience that doesn't work in Linux. It also offered something called ex-FAT, which, again according to Dr. Google, does. Except that this requires installing a new repository in Linux, and when I tried to do that, my terminal assured me that such a repository could not be found.
Apparently it is possible to shut off journalling in Mac OS, but I don't know what the consequences would be so I'm not going there.
In any case, I do have the two .iso files installed on Sandy's iMac, and I do have them on a 16 Gig NTFS-formatted drive.
And I learned a bunch of stuff, some of it even useful.
That email had just been sent when I received:
Interesting. Back on 2013-04-27, in reply to my question about whether you could play (with VLC) .iso files made with K9Copy, you wrote:
Damn. So I've been here before, and had forgotten the particulars.
Oh well, as I mentioned, USB flash drives have come down in price phenomenally, so I really no longer need to make DVDs for this purpose.
As I am.
Anyway, on to the latest computer saga, revealed through (a somewhat modifed) email correspondence with a friend who is also my Linux guru:
I have a DVD that I wish to duplicate for several complex reasons involving the fact that we have too many computers featuring too many operating systems at our house.
So I go looking for K9copy, which I've always used before, and find it unavailable in any of the Linux repositories. I subsequently find it online, but then discover I will have to "compile" the file, which is well beyond what I think I'm able to do.
On reading the on-line forums, I discover that K3b will also serve, but there's a problem: the resulting .iso file is 7.7 gig, and my blank disks are 4.7, which is of course why K9copy (which shrinks as it extracts and then writes files) has been so useful in the past.
I suppose I could shrink the file using DVD95, but that has created problems in the past and I'd still have to write the resulting file to a blank DVD.
Clearly, I'm meant to not copy DVDs.
On the other hand, today one can purchase two 16-gig flash drives for a mere $20, tax included.
I send, and carry on, expecting to just drop the .iso files onto the virtual flash drive now mounted on my desktop. And the saga continues in the next email, an hour or so later..:
I'd forgotten that FAT32 files (which is how most usb flash drives are initially formatted) max out at 4 gig. So I reformatted one drive to NTFS, which Linux will format and Mac will read. However, according to Dr. Google, Mac won't write to it.
So I thought I'd format the other on the Mac. Disk Utility offered several versions of "Mac OS extended (journalled)". I know from past experience that doesn't work in Linux. It also offered something called ex-FAT, which, again according to Dr. Google, does. Except that this requires installing a new repository in Linux, and when I tried to do that, my terminal assured me that such a repository could not be found.
Apparently it is possible to shut off journalling in Mac OS, but I don't know what the consequences would be so I'm not going there.
In any case, I do have the two .iso files installed on Sandy's iMac, and I do have them on a 16 Gig NTFS-formatted drive.
And I learned a bunch of stuff, some of it even useful.
That email had just been sent when I received:
Interesting. Back on 2013-04-27, in reply to my question about whether you could play (with VLC) .iso files made with K9Copy, you wrote:
K9copy seems to have disappeared from the repositories. So I used K3bTo which I replied:
to create the iso, then DVD95 converter to create a burnable file,
then DiskCreator to burn the disk, which the VLC Media Player played
without issue. I'd prefer K9copy, but there you are.
Damn. So I've been here before, and had forgotten the particulars.
Oh well, as I mentioned, USB flash drives have come down in price phenomenally, so I really no longer need to make DVDs for this purpose.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Letter to Honourable John Duncan
Dear Mr Duncan,
As a long-time BC Coast MP, and as a member of the Cabinet charged with deciding whether to permit Enbridge's plans to ship dilbit from Kitimat by enormous tanker to proceed, you are uniquely qualified to educate your fellow MPs on the subject.
I therefore ask you, on behalf of your electors, to speak up for us, our interests, and the coast where we are privileged to live.
As you well know, this issue crosses party lines for those of us living on the BC coast: we know that oil tankers in the unusually-hazardous waters of Hecate Strait and the Douglas Channel are potentially a recipe for the destruction of our way of life and economy, not to even mention the semi-pristine environment we currently enjoy.
You have undoubtedly seen the Jack Knox column in today's Times-Colonist. I draw your attention particularly to a portion of it where he nails the issue:
As a long-time BC Coast MP, and as a member of the Cabinet charged with deciding whether to permit Enbridge's plans to ship dilbit from Kitimat by enormous tanker to proceed, you are uniquely qualified to educate your fellow MPs on the subject.
I therefore ask you, on behalf of your electors, to speak up for us, our interests, and the coast where we are privileged to live.
As you well know, this issue crosses party lines for those of us living on the BC coast: we know that oil tankers in the unusually-hazardous waters of Hecate Strait and the Douglas Channel are potentially a recipe for the destruction of our way of life and economy, not to even mention the semi-pristine environment we currently enjoy.
You have undoubtedly seen the Jack Knox column in today's Times-Colonist. I draw your attention particularly to a portion of it where he nails the issue:
Here
in B.C. — at least on the coast — the tale is told differently, and it
has little to do with wanting more money or being anti-industry or
anti-oil; most of us drive cars and know we need to get the fuel from
somewhere. Nor is the story about global warming, or whether or not the
oilsands are dirty, or even about the pipelines themselves. It’s about
what happens to the oil after it hits salt water.
Simply put, people fear that adding 220 supertankers a year to the snotty waters of B.C.’s inner coast would be rolling the dice on another Exxon Valdez.
I urge you, as a person of influence in your government and as our MP, to make representations on this issue to the MPs from other parts of Canada who may not understand the depth of our opposition to Enbridge's plans, and to truly represent us, as you have promised to do so often in the past.
Yours very sincerely,
Simply put, people fear that adding 220 supertankers a year to the snotty waters of B.C.’s inner coast would be rolling the dice on another Exxon Valdez.
I urge you, as a person of influence in your government and as our MP, to make representations on this issue to the MPs from other parts of Canada who may not understand the depth of our opposition to Enbridge's plans, and to truly represent us, as you have promised to do so often in the past.
Yours very sincerely,
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Dealing with: an embarrassment of mayors
Municipal voting results too frequently reward people who do not represent the majority of electors. The consequence can be a mayor frequently at loggerheads with his council, sometimes fatally. Some examples:
Item: In Montreal just under 40% of registered electors vote. Denis Coderre becomes mayor of Montreal with 32% of the votes. There are 11 candidates; the top 4 get nearly 97% of them.
(Coderre, in spite of his narrow win, may yet prove to be a superb mayor. If that turns out to be the case, lucky Montreal! But the new mayor’s "Equipe Coderre" controls only a minority of seats, and it would be at least useful if he had a more solid claim on legitimacy.)
Item: In Toronto Rob Ford won 47.11%. Since his win two years ago he’s done everything required to trash his reputation, yet could win the next mayoralty assuming his ‘base’ holds and enough people run against him to split the opposition vote.
Item: In Campbell River’s last municipal election 30% of potential electors cast a ballot. Walter Jakeway, who then had no record in municipal politics, won with 37.79% over two former councillors, who got 37.25% and 16.93% respectively. Jakeway’s term has been less-than-impressive, but he has his fans and could win again if enough people run against him.
In each of these — and, frankly, the majority of mayoral elections in Canada — when there are a number of strong candidates and the vote is consequently split, the results frequently frustrate the actual wishes of the electorate.
Of course this also happens in provincial and federal elections (i.e. Team Harper winning only 39.6% of the vote, but achieving a majority government, largely because of three strong parties). That one, however appears impossible to resolve at present. Municipal politics, less influenced by party politics, should be easier to fix.
And I think there is a fix. It’s called the “Preferential Ballot”, and it’s used in elections in many (usually English-speaking) countries.
To see how it works in a Canadian context, we could look at recent nominating conventions of the NDP and the Liberals, which both used a hybrid version suitable for voting by mail and in convention. Or we could look at BC in1952, when a more cumbersome version elected the WAC Bennett Social Credit government that lasted some 30 years. (That government wouldn’t have lasted nearly that long if the Socreds hadn’t dumped the preferential ballot as soon as they could!)
Here’s how it works for NDP Leadership conventions: Those attending Convention vote in the usual way. The home-based elector fills in a ballot, indicating at least a first choice and a second and even a third if desired. If a candidate scores over 50% on the first count, it’s all over. If no one does, the lowest-polling candidate(s) fall out. The Convention delegates vote again and the mailed/internet ballots showing them as first choice are recounted for second choice. And so on, until one of the candidates achieves 50% plus 1.
In municipal elections we already vote on a scanned ballot so, in these days of the computer, the count would be almost as instantaneous as at present.
I think there’s a good chance many of our municipalities would run better. At the very least, mayors would be able to claim they legitimately represent the majority.
It might even dull some voter cynicism, and encourage some of the currently-uninterested to exercise their franchise.
Which is democracy as it should be.
Item: In Montreal just under 40% of registered electors vote. Denis Coderre becomes mayor of Montreal with 32% of the votes. There are 11 candidates; the top 4 get nearly 97% of them.
(Coderre, in spite of his narrow win, may yet prove to be a superb mayor. If that turns out to be the case, lucky Montreal! But the new mayor’s "Equipe Coderre" controls only a minority of seats, and it would be at least useful if he had a more solid claim on legitimacy.)
Item: In Toronto Rob Ford won 47.11%. Since his win two years ago he’s done everything required to trash his reputation, yet could win the next mayoralty assuming his ‘base’ holds and enough people run against him to split the opposition vote.
Item: In Campbell River’s last municipal election 30% of potential electors cast a ballot. Walter Jakeway, who then had no record in municipal politics, won with 37.79% over two former councillors, who got 37.25% and 16.93% respectively. Jakeway’s term has been less-than-impressive, but he has his fans and could win again if enough people run against him.
In each of these — and, frankly, the majority of mayoral elections in Canada — when there are a number of strong candidates and the vote is consequently split, the results frequently frustrate the actual wishes of the electorate.
Of course this also happens in provincial and federal elections (i.e. Team Harper winning only 39.6% of the vote, but achieving a majority government, largely because of three strong parties). That one, however appears impossible to resolve at present. Municipal politics, less influenced by party politics, should be easier to fix.
And I think there is a fix. It’s called the “Preferential Ballot”, and it’s used in elections in many (usually English-speaking) countries.
To see how it works in a Canadian context, we could look at recent nominating conventions of the NDP and the Liberals, which both used a hybrid version suitable for voting by mail and in convention. Or we could look at BC in1952, when a more cumbersome version elected the WAC Bennett Social Credit government that lasted some 30 years. (That government wouldn’t have lasted nearly that long if the Socreds hadn’t dumped the preferential ballot as soon as they could!)
Here’s how it works for NDP Leadership conventions: Those attending Convention vote in the usual way. The home-based elector fills in a ballot, indicating at least a first choice and a second and even a third if desired. If a candidate scores over 50% on the first count, it’s all over. If no one does, the lowest-polling candidate(s) fall out. The Convention delegates vote again and the mailed/internet ballots showing them as first choice are recounted for second choice. And so on, until one of the candidates achieves 50% plus 1.
In municipal elections we already vote on a scanned ballot so, in these days of the computer, the count would be almost as instantaneous as at present.
I think there’s a good chance many of our municipalities would run better. At the very least, mayors would be able to claim they legitimately represent the majority.
It might even dull some voter cynicism, and encourage some of the currently-uninterested to exercise their franchise.
Which is democracy as it should be.
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