Size counts!

            Neoconservative "Free Market" ideology requires cutting all public sector services to the bone (even necessary regulatory functions like railway safety compliance and food inspection!)

            The results, of course, are pretty much what a non-ideologue (pragmatist) might predict: infrastructure falls apart, public safety and security fall are quietly shelved in the interest of international corporations' bottom line, the educational system goes to hell in a handbasket, life becomes less convenient, dumber, cruder..

             The urge to cut budgets (and corners) can operate on the micro-level as well as the macro. An interesting case of the perverse effects on neocon idiotology is emerging on Montréal Island, Québec. According to a Canadian Broadcasting Corp news release, speaking about the closing of a local police station:

"The borough of Rivière-des-Prairies—Pointe-aux-Trembles currently has two stations: one in RDP and one in PAT. The stations will be merged into one as a cost-cutting measure.
Community leaders say it's a bad idea."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/rdp-residents-outraged-over-plan-to-close-local-police-station-1.2763929 

             Until 1998, when station 45 was opened in RDP, the ethnically mixed community was prey to street gangs, ethnic tension and petty crime. People were afraid to walk the streets and worried about the kind of environment they were raising their kids in. According to residents interviewed on a morning news program, station 45 changed all that. The police effectively became a unifying force, a respected and admired agent of community cohesion. (Boy, oh boy, when was the last time you heard someone say that about their local cops - Yo!) What I find particularly interesting and which was not addressed in the reportage I heard or read: despite the  substantial rise in community self-confidence and harmony, the actual drop in reported crime was fairly modest, 20%. The suggestion here is that the city got a big, big bang for its buck in installing a police station in an ethnically divided community! (Unfortunately for neocon logic, it's not easy to put a dollar value on things like community spirit and it's long term impact on community development..)

             One of the points stressed by community members was the degree to which having a local police station was critical in establishing a positive rapport between 1- the police and the community and 2- the different ethnic tribes composing the community. The fact that the police were visible and knew people on a face to face basis was considered to be a crucial factor in establishing these positive rapports.

            Here we apparently have a case where the principle "small is beautiful" really works. A smaller, more local, level of organization of police services seems to work better than more integrated, centralized structures (which may be said to fall victim to diseconomies of scale). 

internal blog links: 

keywords: budget cut (13 articles),  deregulation (6 articles)

(There is some overlap between these two groups, some articles are classified under both keywords)
                                      

Pandora's box: to open or not to open..

 conclusion of previous article: Left wing populism in Québec?

              Straw polls in the Province suggest strongly that the population at large supports the PQ charter of values. In playing the populist card the PQ may have played cleverly - but did it play wisely? Qui vivra verra - time will tell..

             Even though the charter is only a "proposed" piece of legislation, many voices are rising to claim that the cure is worse than the illness (and what, exactly, was the illness that needed treating anyway?) 

             PQ Minister for Democratic Institutions, Bernard Drainville, claims that a priority is to affirm the equality of men and women in Québécois society. Fine! but if the religious headgear is banned then many Muslim women working in day care centers will either lose their jobs or be forced to conform to a law which insults thir religion. How is equality of sexes being promoted when women will, most likely, be affected more than men?

              The PQ like wisely claims to favor integration of the immigrant into the host society and its values. Fine! but the Muslim women - and there are not a few - who work in day cares and risk losing their jobs are, at least partly, integrated already. How will firing them, forcing them into social isolation (and perhaps welfare) improve their degree of integration?

             The more one looks at the charter proposals, the flakier they seem - strengthening the hypothesis that this is an electoral ploy on the part of the PQ.

             Case in point. Jewish professionals in universities and hospitals are used to wearing the kippah. These upper middle class professionals aren't going take the headgear ban lightly. En passant, middle class professionals are one of the traditional target groups the PQ tries to appeal to and recruit from. What was Madame Marois and her team thinking? Did they think - before shooting themselves in the foot?

             Thus hijab wearing Muslim women, kippah wearing Jewish men and turban / kirpan wearing Sikhs are all antagonized by the proposed legislation. Cross bearing christians could be too - if the law were to be equitably applied. A ban on "ostentatious religious signs" in public institutions seems a simple enough proposition but the devil is always in the details. And there are lots of devils and details in this one to go around liberally..

             Case in point. Headgear is out but what about beards worn as a religious sign? How, exactly, do you tell if a guy wears a beard out of religious conviction? Do we start measuring beard lengths as well as crucifix width to determine if they are ostentatious or not? The link below examines some of the confusing potential ramifications of the proposed charter.

 religious symbol police?

              There is also a seeming hypocrisy in the ban: religious signs in public spaces are  out but not the crucifix in the Assemblée Nationale itself -!sic! - because of its "historical" value. Stooping to splitting hairs like this is not a good sign, definitely not good for social harmony. Sophistry is often a sign of intellectual or moral decadance.

             And it gets weirder: representatives in the Assemblée may end up being exempt from charter provisions and free to wear religious signs at work, yesss..

              In short, the charter promises to generate more problems than it solves (this is my personal issue with the legislation). It muddies the waters of social interaction and pits one social group against another. 

              Case in point. Some institutions are allowed to opt out of charter provisions - why? Such arbitrariness is a sure path to social strife and corruption. It is a generator of bureaucratic Red Tape, the same Red Tape our neo-con inspired leaders are so keen on cutting (when it comes to safety regulations or programs to assure social equity for the disadvantaged..) The proposed law says that wo/men are not all equal before it. This is in violation of our sacrosanct principle of Universal Justice. In the long run, stupid or arbitrary laws are unenforcable and breed contempt for the law: the best law is the simplest!

             In defense of the PQ. Their actions are understandable if one considers the situation of Québec in North America: a francophone island in an English speaking sea: no better way to cultivate a streak of latent pranoia in the collective psyche. Québec is by nature a defensive or guarded - some say inward looking - society. In practice, such traits do not make for a closed or hostile society; they merely favor closure and hostility but do not assure them. Coming to Québec from outside, I have found Québécois society (generally) a bit less xenophobe than the anglophone surround, more open on gay and gender issues. Being demographically challenged, though, does establish an increased need to defend boundaries, physical, linguistic, cultural. These "personality" traits will remain as long as Québec continues to exist.

            In addition, some "reasonable accomodations" have been abusive and require remediation: Sikhs refusing to wear a hard hat on construction sites (because of the turban). I contend that such an accomodation is not reasonable because of the (foreseeable) consequences: society will end up paying for the keep of brain damaged vegetables injured by refusal to wear legally required safety gear. Friction and conflict between groups is inevitable but is the charter of values a sensible way of addressing it? Is the cure worse than the illness it purportedly treats..

           As a sociological experiment, the PQ charter of values project is fascinating (if disquieting). It is turning out to be a stunningly divisive issue. One could not have predicted the variety or the intensity of divisiveness.

1- Everybody has a fairly elaborated opinion, rare enough in these politcally apathetic (or cynical) times  

2- Opinions are passionate and, interestingly, highly polarized. Nuancers exist: those who want stronger, more universal restrictions on those who are different or moderates who want weaker, more circumscribed restrictions. But even the nuancers are relatively passionate..

3- Most fascinating: one can be either for or against the charter, no matter where one stand on the politcal spectrum! This is quite an accomplishment - a sort of "uniting Left and Right in their disunity".. :-0    

              I fear, not so much the charter itself, as what it may be saying about our society. Have we engaged ourselves on a slippery slope to a very bad place?               

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/bloc-kicks-out-mp-who-spoke-against-quebec-religious-symbols-ban/article14273942/ 

internal blog link: 

left-wing-populism-in-quebec?

Left wing populism in Québec?

             In its desire to promote Québec as a "distinct society" in North America, the governing Parti Québécois (PQ) has sure found a way to stir the pot a bit. A proposed "Charter of Québécois Values" will, if passed in the Assemblée Nationale (Québec City), severely restrict the display of "ostentatious religious symbols" in many public offices and institutions: provincial government offices, universities, colleges, hospitals, day care centers..

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/09/11/f-vp-fitz-morris-quebec-charter.html 

             What to make of this? In the old Québec, before the Liberal "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church was responsible for providing or administrating various social services: education, health, orphanges.. The Quiet Revolution was a wave of modernization and reform which brought the modern liberal welfare state to Québec. The province secularized with a vengeance, religious attendance plummeted, churches were sold off and converted into condos, we became the shack-up capital of North America and among the first in North America to legalize abortion on demand and gay marriage.. Québec separatist sentiments switched from the Right side of the political spectrum to the Left and gained support from the young, relatively affluent, educated Boomers. The PQ held out the promise of a social democratic secular paradise for an independant République du Québec. The sixties and seventies were heady times!

            Under the center Left / moderate Left policies of the PQ, living standards rose. Higher education became accessible to the masses. Literacy levels rose sharply. The salary gap between Anglos and Francos in the Province shrank. Speaking French was no longer a shame or a liability but a point of pride. The downside: it is hard to make a revolution if there is little evidence of the oppression wich feeds revolutionary fervor. Separatist ideologues were reduced to massaging economic statistics to "prove" that Québec would be better off without the Rest of Canada. Federalist ideologues, meanwhile, massaged the same set of states to "prove" it would be better to remain in the Canadian federation. The rise of the neo-con ideology has not helped either: narcissim is hardly compatible with self-sacrifice for the common good..

               Whatever the causes, one has the impression that the separatists movement has stagnated in support for the better part of quarter century, perhaps longer. The PQ can still win elections - they are in a minority government since September 2012 - but few today speak with real conviction of the "Mission": secession from the Canadian union. If they do, it is lip service to a vaguely envisioned Second Coming, not a battle cry to raise the troops.

              Recognizing the existential - and ontological - thiness of their position, the PQ seems to be searching for a means to reconnect with and engage the public. They seem to be searching for relevance, for the old creative spark. They want to return to the days when they could rally the People beneath the Big Tent, before the two defeated referenda (1980, 1995) relegated the independance dream to the dustbin of failed political dreams. One commentator recently observed that the PQ, in the first year of its mandate, tried various themes to revive interest and fighting spirit: the environment, the economy, protection of the French language.. None caught the public's attention for long. To speak truthfully, the PQ did not so much win the last election, rather the public decided to throw out the corrupt provincial Liberals. The PQ "won" by default. The public however, remained unresponsive and somewhat surly toward the new elected PQ who, generally, appeared to waffle and drift aimlessly without a fixed direction. Until now - the proposed charter of values has, at least, the virtue cutting through the apathy.. It is rare, I think, that a proposed piece of legislation manages to offend so many people in so many different ways.
   
             Unfortunately, with the proposed charter of values the PQ seem now to have turned toward populism as a means of currying favor with the electorate. This is a very dangerous move as the racially and ethnically motivated nationalistic movements of the 20th century tragically demonstrated.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the-horrific-plight-of-hungarys-roma/278955/

           Many people are honestly confused by the current "secularity" debate in the Province, both its content and its timing. What problem is the charter of values intended to resolve? For example, "reasonable accomodations" with orthodox Jews in the Montréal region have existed forever: zoning regulations variations, for example. Friction arises between communities from time to time but usually blows over in a climate of general tolerance and goodwill.

          The last few decades, though have seen the arrival of increasing numbers of immigrants from non-traditional sources: Vietnamese boat people, Muslims, Haitians, black Africans.. New, more demanding, "reasonable accomodations" were sought with the host community: hospitals found Muslim women refusing examination by male physicians. Worse, in the backlash of 9-11, the Muslim community was stigmatized with the suspicion of haboring terrorists, oppressing women, brainwashing children and - in several notorious cases - carrying our "honor killings" against women who had become too occidental in dress and morals. The background level of latent fear and hostility between communities began to rise.

           Into this increasingly tense situation, the PQ decided to venture with its inflammatory charter of values. Are they cracking open the lid of the box of populist hatred, oblivious to the consequences? - like that Greek gal, Pandora..

 

Montréal rock 'n roll

               In Québec the expression "rock 'n roll" signifies not just the musical style but also has judgemental values close to "badly raised", "delinquent", "of bad reputation"..
  

               For the past 18 months, the Charbonneau Commission has been investigating the linkages between organized crime and the awarding of municipal contracts to the Québec construction industry. The existence of construction company cartels with links to the Mafia and to the funding drives of municipal and provincial political parties has been revealed. Cartel members agree upon the price of municipal contracts and who is next on the "list" to get a contract. Prices are inflated and unnecessary cost overruns are incurred with the aid of colluding officials and bureaucrats. For example, the contract's "fair market" price will be inflated by 30%. Inflated costs will be ignored by city employees whose job is to scrutinize contracts - in return for a "cut" of several percent of the total worth of the contract, of course. In general, several layers of corruption may be involved, each peeling off a few percent of the contract's value. The contractors and the mafia roll in the big bucks. Minor players in city hall and consulting firms live a life of perks. 

              Question: if you have an extra 10 grand or so payed under the table per annum, what exactly are you going to do with it? It is, after all, "hot" money. From the responses I've heard from witnesses at the Charbonneau Commission, there is a strong pressure to burn hot money, presumably so it won't show up on ledgers anywhere. So it gets burned on high living for corrupt officials. In the case of ex-mayor Gilles Vaillancourt of Laval, who was a local godfather type figure - "the King of Laval", millions of dollars were allegedly spirited away to overseas tax havens.

King of Laval used mules to smuggle $ to Swiss banks

              Meanwhile the public overpays a neat 30% on city (and provincial) contracts. And then, we are told by the politicians, we need to cut government, education, social services, pensions, rehabilitation programs.. And of course gotta crack down hard on phony refugee claims, welfare bums and recidivist unemployment assurance claimants, all those who try to "game the system". Indeed.. And so Pincocchio's nose grows.. 

                  There is, of course, a price to payed for this silliness, a potentially very high price in social disruption. In the article cited above, a reader poll revealed some exceedingly disquieting statistics:

Do you think the police will ever get to the bottom of corruption in Quebec politics?

9% Yes 130 votes

84% No 1255 votes

6% I'm not sure 93 votes

                  This is scary! With my - apparently - Pollyannaish view of life, I voted unhesitatingly "yes" on the poll question. To me, there is a cyclic element in the life of corruption. The beast grows strong until its depradations become intolerable. Then some knights in shining armor go and kill it and establish a New World Order. Till the beast ressucitates.. In the meantime, one enjoys a period of transparent and progressive government. That's how it's supposed to work, anyway..

                 I was actually looking forward to a period of clean government, following this big house cleaning. With a bit of luck, I envisioned a forward looking, rejuvenated Québec that could actually become a model for other jurisdictions in North America - and elsewhere - to emulate in these early days of the new century..

                 I also took a bit of pride in being Québécois for another reason. I live in a society which has some expectations of governmental transparency, intellectual honesty and fair play. If we did not have this shared - mostly uncounscious - backdrop of assumed moral values, an exercise like the Charbonneau Commission would simply be unthinkable. If we didn't have a Charbonneau Commission, then we would really have a lot to worry about.. :-0

                 The undercurrent of cynicism revealed in the above poll is, to me, very disquieting. While the respondants of the poll do not necessarily reflect the views of the general public, 90% of the respondants believe that our political system is so corrupt it cannot be reformed. Is that not a formula for fascism? Powerless people will seek a superhero, a messiah, who will sweep away the evil Old World Order and institute a New Age of Peace and Plenty. The 20th century, we should recall was awash in blood shed by the neo-messianic movements of deperate peoples whether Marx's utopian Classless Society or the Nazis' (equally utopian!) "thousand year Reich" with its apocalyptic (post-)Christian overtones:

tausendjähriges reich 1 - thousand year Reich

                  Anyway, back to cheerier topics. "Montréal rock 'n roll". In the last few months, several mayors and lesser luminaries have been forced to resign including Montréal's ex-mayor, Gérald Tremblay. Tremblay was replaced by interim mayor Michael Appelbaum who now, himself, is under criminal investigation for fraud, breach of trust, corruption and God knows what else. Fourteen counts, at my last counting. What major American city can outfunk good ol' Montréal rock 'n roll?

Montréals' harried ex-mayor being led to court by provincial police.

                 We'll even give Toronta the Good a run for their money with their (allegedly) crack-smokin' mayor Rob Ford.. Yah, suck it up Toronta..

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2013/06/17/montreal-michael-applebaum-taken-into-custody.html?cmp=rss

                   At last notice, the Province of Québec was still debating whether the city of Montréal should be placed under trusteeship. Interesting times!


 

Have we become so inured?..

From the Dirty Tricks file:

          Pollsters have a professional watchdog called the "Market Research and Intelligence Association". It is an in-house attempt to auto-regulate the industry. Even so, even they found a conservative pollster guilty of conducting a misinformation campaign against a Liberal MP from the Montréal, Québec region and thereby sullying the reputation and good name of the profession.
 
           In a voter identification poll conducted for the Federal Conservative Party last fall, Campaign Research, Inc. is alleged to have suggested to interviewees that Irwin Cotler had or was about to quit politics. The apparent goal of such a manoeuver is to dissuade voters from voting for a Liberal favorite in upcoming elections.

           Following the condemnation by the Market Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA), interim Liberal leader Bob Rae and MP Cotler denounced the disinformation campaign, demanded and apology and a dissociation of the Federal Conservative Party from the offending pollster. While the MRIA has the power to expel members, it stopped short of expulsion, only "censuring" - publically rebuking - Campaign Research, Inc. for violating professional codes of conduct. While many of us might feel that such a finding and action don't go far enough, MRIA did find the violations of public trust compelling enough to redraft it own professional code of ethics:

"The controversy prompted the MRIA earlier this year to update its code of conduct to spell out that voter identification or partisan promotion can not be conducted under the guise of market research." And this dirty tricks campaign was, let us not forget, carried out on the watch of a party that was elected on a platform of "transparency, responsible government and law and order".

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/11/28/conservative-polling-firm-censured-for-misinformation-campaign-against-liberal-mp-irwin-cotler/

                  What I find so troubling about this affair and the possibly related "Robocalls" misinformation campaign is the relative indifference of the public to these repeated abuses against the public trust and goodwill on the part of Steven Harper's federal conservatives. Have we become so inured to this abuse we no longer react?

internal blog links: (Keyword: populism)

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2011/06/tacky-tacky-tacky-face-of-populism-in.html

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2010/10/lies-lies-lies-and-more-damned-lies.html

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/06/populism-101-basics.html

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2011/07/do-we-live-in-sick-society-are.html

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2011/10/fascism-and-optimism.html

Turning over rocks: the things you find..

           When I was a child, there was a patch of undeveloped swampy land behind our house, fed by a spring. There was tall grass, so high I remember it being over my head - fantastic place to hide! There were big grass snakes slithering around, hunting. And there was a shallow bog which held water all year round, except when it froze solid in winter. In the higher, drier spots of the bog there were discarded bits of lumber and some big rocks. When you turned these over you would find an amazing zoo of light shunning creatures: ant colonies, spiders, centipedes, earwigs, worms, woodlice.. I even saw my first slime mold ameba.. Sadistically, I would occasionally lure another kid to see one of my prized "collections" of creepy-crawlers. Sometimes I wouldn't have time to finish turning over a rotten board or a flat rock before I saw their backside cutting a wake through the tall grass to get the hell out there as fast as possible..

           When governments lose contact with their true function: to provide services essential for the maintenance of a civlilized society, they become like that bog of stagnant water. Strange lifeforms which shun the light of day proliferate and take over. When the bog becomes too stagnant and stinks too much people finally decide to drain it and clean it up. Investigators, whistle blowers and muck-raking journalists turn over rocks and expose what has been hidden to the light of day. This is what transparency looks like in action..

           Québec province's Charbonneau Commission into organized crime influence in the construction industry has claimed its first victims.

            Montréal mayor Gérald Temblay decided to step down as the heat went up and accusations of corrupt practices in the metropole's city hall came to light. As Don Macpherson noted in a recent column, the Charbonneau Commission also has a mandate to investigate corrupt political linkages between the construction industry and the financing of political parties, both municipal and provincial. These links may prove the greatest embarrassment of all. Mayor Temblay denied any knowlege of inflated contract prices and an organized system of kickbacks to collaborating city officials in Montréal. But resign he did and not without signficant political fallout. The Mayor's ruling municipal party found itself so weakened and morally compromised that it was forced to cancel tax hikes that been announced a mere two days earlier. The municipal tax hike was pared back from 3.3% to 2.2%, reflecting the annual inflation rate. It was simply too embarrassing to demand super-inflationary tax hikes while city hall is under suspicion of accepting bribes from mafia-ridden construction companies to inflate city contracts. Contracts may have been, in some cases, inflated as much as 30 to 40% over their real value. Corrupted city officials are alleged to have received skim-offs of 2 to 3% of the final contract value to let the inflated estimates pass without question.

              There has already been blow back from the Charbonneau Commission at the provincial level. Ex-premier Jean Charest (Libéral) was, more or less, forced to call an early, summer election rather than face the storm of corruption charges that the Commission would unleash. He lost that election..

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Macpherson+Charbonneau+commission+least+some+Quebec/7512778/story.html

             Nor were Mayor Tremblay and Premier Charest the only early victims. The city of Laval's "king", Gilles Vaillancourt, was forced to fall on his sword after a 23 year reign. The heads have only started to roll, one suspects..

              Investigators are looking into allegations that Mayor Vaillancourt funneled millions of dollars of dirty money into overseas tax havens. In addition, two provincial officials have stepped forward claiming that he offered them illegal political contributions.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/11/06/laval-mayor-gilles-vaillancourt-steps-down.html

             A smorgasbord of articles on the Charbonneau Commission by Macleans Magazine:

http://www2.macleans.ca/tag/charbonneau-commission/ 

internal blog link: http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/11/the-right-hand-knows-not-what-left-hand.html

While the inquiry is usually described as being into corruption into the construction industry, its mandate also includes possible connections to political financing.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Macpherson+Charbonneau+commission+least+some+Quebec+politicians+nervous/7512778/story.html#ixzz2Co9uQ55x

While the inquiry is usually described as being into corruption into the construction industry, its mandate also includes possible connections to political financing.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Macpherson+Charbonneau+commission+least+some+Quebec+politicians+nervous/7512778/story.html#ixzz2Co9uQ55x

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charbonneau_Commission

Pipelines aren't transparent, you've noticed?

Reversal of pipeline 9 between Westover and Montréal - Équiterre reveals Enbridge's real motives.

Montréal, October 4, 2012

Équiterre (environmental group) revealed today that Enbridge has concealed the real motivations behind its project to reverse oil flow in pipeline 9 between Westover, Ontario and Montréal. 

During public hearings before the National Energy Board last May, Enbridge claimed that this project was uniquely destined to supply the energy needs of eastern Canada.

However, according to information released today, the Canadian consulate approached the governers of the New England states, particularly Maine, in order to promote the sale of Albertan oil sands in the region. Information was obtained from the Natural Resources Council of Maine through the American Access to Information law.

"For several months, we suspected that Enbridge was hiding its real intentions for the reversal of oil flow in line 9. Now we have the proof that it was not to supply consumers in eastern Canada with Canadian oil nor to reinforce the energy security of our country! The goal was, and always has been, to export oil sand bitumen to the United States" stated Steven Guilbeault, adjoint director general of Équiterre.

"Given the fact that the federal government is in bed with the petroleum industry, we are appealing to the public, to municipalities as well as to the newly elected Québec provincial government in order to prevent this project from proceeding. Enbridge wants to transport one of the most polluting forms of petroleum through the second largest city of Canada (Montréal) via one of the oldest pipelines in the country! Are we going to let them get away with this?" concluded Mr. Guilbeault.

Our translation of the following press release from Équiterre

http://equiterre.org/communique/renversement-de-la-ligne-9-entre-westover-et-montreal-equiterre-devoile-les-veritables-in?fb_action_ids=10151345070348054&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582

Charbonneau Commission: when transparency dies

            Writing this blog has been instructive. The ambient cynicism / political passivity has probably insulated me from the important role transparency plays in healthy political, social and economic systems. I am surprised to discover the degree to which democratic societies are hostage to the word. Who controls the word and how it is spun controls (in the short run, at least) the nature of the political game and the power relations among the various players.

            I have come to look for examples of what happens when transparency breaks down, when structures and political actors become opaque, when information does not flow freely, when news is distorted or "spun" to attribute a desired meaning or signification to an event..

             The province of Québec is a "small" society. Demographically and, especially, ethnolinguistically, it is a small island of francophonie in English speaking North America. This status, this mentality, has its advantages and its disadvantages. The relatively lowered mobility of our elites (the language issue) means that our big shots - nos gros légumes - know each other. They inhabit a small world, evolved from the ancestral farming village where you knew your neighbors and were probably related to them. "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" was a survival strategy before the invention of the modern State and insurance policies. Unfortuantely this philosophy, in modern societies, leads all too often to political corruption and the exploitation of unfair advantages: those with money purchase politicians and judges. Québec, as a small society, must therefore constantly be vigilant to eradicate corruption. The seeds of the disease must be extirpated before they have time to spread and infect the entire culture.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Charbonneau+Commission+Lino+Zambito+points+finger/7331677/story.html

                The Charbonneau Commission is investigating corruption in the provincial construction industry. Evidence is coming forth in Montréal that a cartel of ten favored contractors received the lion's share of contracts with the provincial or municipal governments.This favoritism was bought with kickbacks to politicians and "taxes" payed to the Mob (about 3% of project cost in the city of Montréal). Cartel members, in turn, inflated their costs in order to pay for this privilege. And of course, in the final analysis, it is the poor taxpayer who foots the bill. We pay about 30% more for provincial tenders than in the neighboring province of Ontario, for example. How much of that difference is due to political corruption in the construction industry? Perhaps the Charbonneau Commission will shed some light into dark corners. (I suspect a horror movie is coming..)

                 This is what the breakdown of transparency engenders in modern, nominally democratic, societies: public theft, gangsterism, public apathy and cynicism toward the political process. Our declining infrastructure - some shoddily constructed in the first place - has reached the point of posing a physical danger to the public.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2006/10/01/overpass-collapse.html 

Decline and fall of Canadian Science: the muzzle

              Canada, land of the free, right? Well, maybe.. maybe..

              Take a look at this latest piece of "Orwellian" NewsCrafting on the part of the Harper government. This is so wacky, I could not possibly make it up. I simply don't have enough imagination.

                "Hundreds of researchers from around the globe arrived in Montreal this week to attend the International Polar Year Conference, but those scientists working for Environment Canada were also accompanied by so-called "media relations contacts" tasked with monitoring and recording interactions with the press"  

            Climatologist Andrew Weaver compared this to Stalinist era science policy in the Soviet Union: scientists who were allowed to attend international conferences were accompanied by a "minder" to monitor their statements. Get off track and your career is kaputsky.. And now, wonder of wonders, we seem to have a acquired a modified version here in good ol' freedom lovin' N. America. This is like duh, too weird to be true. But weirdly, it is..

                  Aside: The Harper government has taught us one thing: expect the unexpected / attendre l'inattendu.

                  It gets so bizarre - there's no other word for it! - that even published results - sic! - are being censored:
 
                  "The groups noted that last fall Environment Canada had prevented David Tarasick from speaking about his ozone layer research, which had been published in the journal Nature, and that earlier the Privy Council Office had stopped Kristina Miller, a researcher at Fisheries and Oceans, from granting interviews about her work on sockeye salmon decline in B.C., findings previously published in the journal Science" 

                 From a purely logical point of view, why censor published work (unless, of course, you figure the public is too stupid to read technical works)?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/04/24/scientists-muzzling-canada.html

Internal blog link (previous related article): 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/03/decline-and-fall-of-canadian-science.html