Defenestrate Them All: Canadian Politics 2021

Yes, the only way to raise avg salaries is through immigration policy, cripes

Ah well, in much better news, I just signed up for my first vaccine appointment! They're open now if you're 40+

wonder what Legault's family's income was when they came over here

Congrats!

I'm gonna spam F5 starting around 4pm on Thursday.

xp gotta adjust for inflation, doncha know.

I will almost reluctantly admit that signing up was extremely easy, no F5 required. If anything I was briefly stymied by the range of locations to choose from

just finished the long census, took twenty minutes or so

when i booked a vaccine for my partner 2 weeks ago (in the Astrazeneca gen-x cohort), it was astonishingly painless - really impressed by what the gvmt did with Clicsante tbh

both me and my partner got our vaccine appointments. Was surprised that I could have had my appointment as soon as this Friday. We ended up both taking our appointments next week (3 days apart just to be sure we don't both end up being sick with vaccine side effects at the same time). I'm very excited.

If you're in Quebec, this Twitter-based app that fetches last-minute appointments for you looks quite nifty:

https://medium.com/transit-app/find-faster-vaccine-appointments-in-québec-f14d36d0f7f

You'll need to copy/paste it since ILX struggles with such links.

UK: *announces first day without any Covid deaths due to AZ vaccine*

Ontario: ok this is a good time to announce we're not giving out AZ anymore due to the ultra low risk of blood clots

i'm so tired

got my first Pfizer dose today. went in at the appointed time, had basically zero wait time. The whole thing only took half an hour (including 15 minute waiting period before they let you go).

Same. *high five*

Went to the Palais des congrès. If anything, it got me thinking about how they could easily welcome a higher volume of people.

congrats, pfizer phreaks

Auditor shows billions of dollars of COVID relief funds were not properly tracked in Ontario, with v unclear data on e.g. whether front-line workers were properly paid: https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/toronto/2021/5/12/1_5424949.html

Canada doing better than I anticipated here, at 44% vaccinated, 13th in the world, not that far behind the US (47%) but still well behind the UK (54%): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html

As a percentage, we'll probably pass the US soon. CBC had a graph the other night, and whereas the US line was close to flatlining--you're getting down to the hardcore anti-vaccination faction; maybe some will now relent in view of the masking situation--our line was still steeply in the right direction.

(The graph referred to single shot; I think we're still much farther behind in fully vaccinated.)

Was just about to say. Only 3.7% of Canadians are fully vaccinated. That puts us as #66 or so.

Oh yeah, wrt to fully vaccinated, we're at 3.7% while the US is at 37% and the UK is at 29%.xp yeah

My understanding--and these goalposts move all the time--is that even a single shot gives you solid protection against hospitalization or worse.

Is anyone following C-10? I'm finding the reporting on it really confusing tbh. What I gather is that it is supposed to impose on "online media giants" the same sorts of regulations that are imposed on traditional broadcasters - how? Which regulations, exactly?

I think I linked to an article on it a few months ago, don’t recall specifics, but my understanding is that it is (was?) basically intended to function like cancon rules used to for traditional media, a bit of protectionism to benefit Canadian content creators and our distinct culture (resisting scare quotes) which IMO has mostly fallen off a cliff in the past decade. I gather something was altered from its original form to cause accusations of overreach, and of course the cons are sacrificing any potential benefits because they see an opportunity to distort the intent and land a blow on the libs. Someone else correct me if I have any of that wrong.

It’s being characterized as censorship, but I’m not sure that it is.

But... how do you make sure that 30% of the content on something like Youtube or Tiktok is Canadian?

I think it’s mostly via adjustments to what the algorithms promote rather than quotas on what you can access.

Wow, Cancon algorithms on user-generated content platforms sound kind of fascinating.

It quite likely is a bit of a mess, might just not work, but I’ve never really been anti-cancon regs in the past. (If we’re gonna rehash that, my position is something like arguing even the mediocrity was invaluable for its existence as a shared experience.)

Main point is that it probably isn’t as Orwellian as some would have us believe. I’m going to read up more on it tomorrow I think.

CanCon & stuff like the Canada Council & FACTOR have been, I think, a net positive for Canadian cultural industries, & maybe even for Canadian culture full stop, notwithstanding the distorting effect they have on the actual art, & propping up the relentlessly milquetoast etc. I’m honestly in support of anything that would even approximate their effect in the digital realm.

Grants for culture are good. Quotas for content I'm a little less sure about, in principle. I do think they have been successful in achieving their intended effect of stimulating an industry. I was being serious that the idea of algorithms that approximate their effect sounds kind of fascinating, though: I'm not much of a programmer but I don't quite know how that would work.

In what sense do you think Canadian culture has gone off a cliff, Kim?

But... how do you make sure that 30% of the content on something like Youtube or Tiktok is Canadian?

Same thing radio's been doing for decades: Guess Who YouTubes, Guess Who Tiktoks, Guess Who everything.

Wow, Cancon algorithms on user-generated content platforms sound kind of fascinating.

― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Monday, May 17, 2021 11:40 PM (yesterday)

There are valid concerns with how platforms make content (UGC or otherwise) prominent / discoverable, but the problem with a hypothetical Cancon algo is: how do you regulate the algorithm? Who checks that individual users are being recommended the Cancon quota? Does it matter if they choose to not watch any of it? Given that last point, surely it's better to increase support on the grant side—as hardcore dilettante says—and then to regulate the platforms not as "broadcasters" but with a clearer idea of how they actually operate and what kind of power they have over cultural production

Tbc I do think there are problems of a "Cancon" nature. For one thing, all the platforms I use in Quebec* have me identified as anglophone, and I never get recs for francophone content. And from what I've read, platforms like Spotify are just kind of bad at handling French-language Quebecois music.

* Actually now that I think about it, this is not true of the iTunes Store, which alone seems to recognize bilingualism as a feature of QC life.

Sund4r, you might find this interesting; it's not about cultural protection algorithms, but: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1271900

“ off a cliff”, well ok, aside from watching Canadian politics (especially the politics of everyday people) increasingly in lockstep with a two party mentality, I’m imagining if ilx started today populated by people of the same age we were in 2000, I don’t think they’d have near as much experience that they considered distinct from the American posters. The touchstones we had just don’t exist for them - they’ve grown up online. In terms of arts, what new “uniquely Canadian things” with large scale relevance are there for us to discuss? Canadian artistic significance now is more deeply tied to international significance. Arguably beneficial for the quality of art produced, but the price is assimilation.

@rob, I'm an anglophone in Québec who listens to quite a lot of francophone music and the Spotify and YouTube algorithms correctly push that content to me, as if they've identified my bilingualism.

Ottawa-area vaccine bookings seem to be a mess this morning. The earliest I could get was June 22. No booking options at all at the central downtown location.

Ottawa's vaccine distribution is going to be super screwed up because City Hall was probably going to be one of the largest locations because of the dense central population and NO ONE was able to book there. This then sent an overflow to the suburbs and is creating a large wait

— BudrinoU (@Budrino) May 18, 2021

Yeah, spotify pushes some Québecois music at me from time to time and I don't really listen to that much of it.

I'm guessing my "Discovery Weekly" will be required to be 30% Canadian or something like that if C-10 passes? I would be fine with that. Honestly, the best way to do this for me would be if Spotify algorithmically found local Montreal bands that align with my listening habits.

That's useful to hear sean & silverfish, thanks. A key theme in these debates is the degree of "training" recommendation algorithms need. Would a brand-new Spotify account serve you those same QC recommendations? It's very difficult to say before we even get to "should".

It is pretty easy to imagine a Cancon system for a platform like Spotify. It gets trickier when you include platforms like YouTube and TikTok that combine industry and user content (also Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Google Search, etc.). Or smaller platforms like Bandcamp, podcast apps, etc.

Actually my favourite platform test case for these discussions is Twitch

I’m imagining if ilx started today populated by people of the same age we were in 2000, I don’t think they’d have near as much experience that they considered distinct from the American posters.

Isn't this also because Canadian artists and products are achieving greater international renown without needing to leave the country, though (from the hegemony of Drake/Weeknd/Bieber on the pop charts to the international successes of Schitt's Creek and Murdoch Mysteries to even the prominence of Canadians in indie rock)? The situation seems pretty different from what it was in 1970 when Cancon regulations were first introduced. We've even got our own terrible alt-right Youtubers. What exactly is the problem that this bill is seeking to solve?

god I didn't even think that J0rdan P3terson could be considered cancon

(I would obv listen to Gowan and Harmonium before Drake myself, don't get me wrong.)xp

This article seems helpful, rob.

I love the idea of Mathieu Bock-Côté as CanCon.

true, Canada has punched well above its weight in unleashing fascists on the world

And tbf to Bill C-10 (lol), that is one good reason to put YouTube under a broadcasting regulatory regime

I don’t have any answers here, but the problem with simply throwing money at cultural production is that it’s less than half of the conversation. Thanks in part to the Canada Council et al, there’s way more Cdn art being produced than consumed. Our ecosystems need nurturing, not just seeds planted. Or something.

Re Ontario school reopening: even as a teacher, I'll defend Ford here. He's in an impossible bind. He has the Pediatric Society urging him to reopen (understandable), some doctors saying reopen and some saying continue remote, the teachers threatening an injunction if he reopens, plus parents of course (not sure what the percentages are there). How can you possibly thread that needle?

https://www.ontario.ca/page/reopening-ontario

A lot to read.

Almost under 1,000 today, but it's hard not to wonder if the numbers are being massaged via intentionally reduced testing (shades of Trump):

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-testing-ontario-reopening-1.6030981

Defenestrate the catholic church imo.