A Canadian Protest

Last January 18 saw the largest online protest in history when Americans (and many Canadians) staged the Stop SOPA event.  The "Stop Online Piracy Act" before the US Congress would have censored websites and impeded creativity. 

In Canada, people were horrified that the United States government would infringe on the rights of its citizens that way.  They were still clucking their tongues about the Patriot Act and complaining about the added border security and fees.  There was no shortage of Canadians ready to offer advice on how to better run a country.

On January 20, both houses of Congress backed down.

Meanwhile in Canada the Conservatives had finally formed a majority government, and were ready to prove that they could do whatever they wanted now that they didn't have to worry about offending members of the other parties.  It takes some getting used to.

So what they did was they cooked up Bill C-30, which sounds a lot like the Patriot Act, except they call it the "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act."  The CBC sums it up:

The bill includes no mention of children or predators except in the title, which appears to have been changed after it was sent to the printers.

Like similar legislation introduced in the past by both Conservative and Liberal governments, the new bill includes provisions that would:

• Require telecommunications and internet providers to give subscriber data to police, national security agencies and the Competition Bureau without a warrant, including names, phone numbers and IP addresses.
• Force internet providers and other makers of technology to provide a "back door" to make communications accessible to police.
• Allow police to get warrants to obtain information transmitted over the internet and data related to its transmission, including locations of individuals and transactions.
• Allow courts to compel other parties to preserve electronic evidence.

However, unlike the most recent previous version of the bill, the new legislation:

• Requires telecommunications providers to disclose, without a warrant, just six types of identifiers from subscriber data instead of 11.
• Provides for an internal audit of warrantless requests that will go to a government minister and oversight review body.
• Includes a provision for a review after five years.
• Allows telecommunications service providers to take 18 months instead of 12 months to buy equipment that would allow police to intercept communications.
• Changes the definition of hate propaganda to include communication targeting sex, age and gender.

This really got under people's skin, and the Harper government is already beginning to backpedal, stating that they're willing to "entertain amendments."  It might not be enough.  Canada's Public Safely Minster, Vic Toews (pronounced "Taves") stood up in the House of Commons and said, "He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers."




It was too George W. Bushian for many Canadians, especially users of Social Media.  A uniquely Canadian protest has broken out on Twitter.  Using the hashtag #TellVicEverything, people are flooding the @ToewsVic account with the minutia of their lives.


It's absolutely wonderful.

Sign On The Dotted Line

While my American friends are using their smartphones to deposit money in their Chase accounts without ever leaving their apartments, I have to deal with Canadian banks.  It takes some getting used to.

Anything that isn’t simple means going into the bank and dealing with the tellers.  And of course, because everyone inside the bank has something complicated to do, it takes forever to get your complicated thing done.  You just have to plan on spending an hour in there and hoping for a good outcome.

Today’s transaction was especially complicated.  The teller took it in stride and just got on with it, but it took some doing.  After 20 minutes of tapping the keyboard and squinting at the monitor and looking things up in a manual, she said, “OK.  Now I just need to get some John Henrys on this,” and headed for a cluster of desks.

“Oh,” I thought to myself.  “She means John Hancock.”

Pretty flashy signature for an insurance man.

But while she was off locating John AND Henry, I started thinking, “Hang on. This is Canada.  Maybe up here a signature has to do with a steel-driving man, and not with the American Declaration of Independence.”

But wait.  There’s more!  It IS John Henry, but it’s not the steel-driving man!  Apparently a cowboy never signs a document, he puts his John Henry to it. Who knew?

The Stanley Cup

It’s the end of April, and time for baseball.  At least for me it is.  But here in Canada, people are paying far more attention to hockey, as the Stanley Cup Playoffs are underway.  It takes some getting used to.

When I was a little girl, I listened to the NY Rangers on the radio late at night. I'd never seen a hockey game, but I loved the rhythm of the game, and the French names of the players. My favorite team was the Toronto Make Believes, and I hoped to stand one day in Make Believe Garden. It was a pretty big disappointment when I saw my first (televised) game, and finally understood the name of the team.

When I lived in the Bay Area, the San Jose Sharks came into being, and I paid attention to hockey once again.  The standing joke then was that there were really only 17,442 Sharks fans. That was the capacity of the San Jose Arena configured for hockey, and the most likely explanation for a team with one of the worst records in the NHL selling out every home game.

Now, the Vancouver Canucks are in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but even more thrilling, the Stanley Cup was in Kelowna last night.  I'll never stand in Make Believe Garden, but I got to touch the Stanley Cup.



No Falcons baseball until June.  So it’s root, root, root for the Canucks.

Pop Quiz!

Fill in the blank.

Damn the __________________.

1. torpedoes
2. Americans
3. Harper Government

Canada’s navy wants to spend about $120 million to retrofit torpedoes they bought from the Americans in order to fire them from submarines they bought from the British, according to news reports.

So Canada has four submarines.  One of them is “partially operational” and the other three are not at all operational.  The navy has a total of 36 torpedoes, none of which can be fired from any of the submarines, even the one that is partially operational.  It takes some getting used to.

Apparently once the torpedoes are converted, Canada will need to spend more money to refit the subs.

All this comes to light in the middle of a federal election campaign, but it was the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency that published the information about the pending sale in a press release dated March 23.  Weapons sales of this nature have to be approved by the United States Congress.  Canada is awaiting approval.