October 30, 2008

Perspective: The new cabinet

Apparently it is new cabinet day today. Hooray!

It looks like Jim Prentice is going to be falling off my radar as he is moved to the Environment. I am going to miss driving down to Calgary and chilling with Fair Copyright for Canada - Calgary Chapter.

The new Minister of Industry is The Honourable Tony Clement. The new Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages is The Honourable James Moore. May they do awesome jobs and consult with Canadians.[1,2,3,4]

October 24, 2008

Scholarly Communication

Despite odds I managed to make it to Michael Geist's presentation. I must admit I was a bit surprised by the turn out. It was nice watching many people diligently taking notes. The presentation was a updated and expanded version of Concordia presentation. If you have not seen it yet I recommend it.

Fair Copyright for Canada- Edmonton Chapter was there in numbers. It was nice seeing familiar as well as new faces. One day I will be awesome at matching names to faces just due to all the practice I have been getting recently...one day.

With a bit of added motivation and a revised game plan it looks like more MPs shall be met. Lets see how the 40th Parliament members do.

Edit: Additional link to a more detailed write up on the presentation.

October 14, 2008

Distorted 08' election wrap up

I must admit watching the election was a bit different this year. Traditionally I see names scroll across the screen that mean almost nothing to me. Only the seats and percentage mattered. Not so this year. I met and paid attention to MPs and they became not just names but people.

Thus we arrive at my distorted round up.

Minority government: Yay
Rona Ambrose Elected: Boooooo
James Rajotte Elected: Yay
Laurie Hawn Elected: Yay
Charlie Angus Elected: Cheers!
Hedy Fry Elected: Duly noted.
Linda Duncan Elected: I have mixed feelings on this. It is no secret that I like the NDP but I did enjoy the meeting I had with Rahim Jaffer. He seemed like a pretty good MP. Did the Conservatives stance on copyright loose Rahim Jaffer the race? Either way I have more MPs to meet.

October 7, 2008

Response to the Conservatives '08 platform: Copyright

Taken from the platform

A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will reintroduce federal copyright legislation that strikes the appropriate balance among the rights of musicians, artists, programmers and other creators and brings Canada's intellectual property protection in line with that of other industrialized countries, but also protects consumers who want to access copyright works for their personal use.

We will also introduce tougher laws on counterfeiting and piracy and give our customs and law enforcement services the resources to enforce them. This will protect consumers from phoney and sometimes dangerous products that are passed off as reliable brand-name goods.
I really hope when they say reintroduce they do not mean it will be a carbon copy of Bill C-61. All the MPs I have met with agreed that Bill C-61 has problems. I imagine they will have a hard time telling me a carbon copy of Bill C-61 "strikes the appropriate balance" with my knowledge that they know better.

How do I know my MPs know better? I met with them one at a time, multiple times.

As for the ACTA, I would love to talk more about it but it appears to be a secretive treaty. Yay democracy :-(

I would also like to give a hardy congratulations to the NDP for getting my donation. The tag team of the Conservatives and the NDP turned me from political apathy to donator!

..I have no idea what the next step after donating is but it scares the heck out of me.