Vandalism Continues in Canada

The politically motivated vandalism appears to be continuing in Toronto.  Despite massive police presence, tires are still being slashed, grafitti and hate messages are appearing and voters are unfortunately being intimidated.

Areas Toronto Center, and Davenport are now also reporting that Liberal supporters cars are having tires slashed.  NDP and Green Party signs are also being defaced and destroyed.  While candidates explain that they do expect a few signs to go missing or be destroyed each day or night, the campaign has begun to take a hateful turn.

All Party leaders and their candidates are unilaterally decrying the vandalism.  While no one points blame at any other party, an assault on one is an assault on our own democracy.  Intimidation at the freedom of speech, and the freedom to exercise civil right should be met with stringent repercussions for the perpetrators.  I was in a debate with a friend earlier tonight, who thought of the damage in terms of a dollar value.  And while yes, repairing and replacing a set of tires is at most fifteen hundred dollars, the slashing of our democracy is a blow to Canadians everywhere, who we are and what we stand for.

The people out there who lack the way to express their frustration and only resort to physical damage and gross intimidation should be tried and punished as a hate crime on democracy.



CBC Article on Continuing Vandalism
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/04/23/cv-election-vandalism.html

Toronto Star Article on the Vandalism
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/979602--election-vandalism-spreads

iPod Tax Bullshit

If you're like me, you probably really detest attack ads.  Especially done in such a flagrantly biased manner.  The one that has caught the eye of Patrick though, and then brought to my attention is this fairly recent one about the iPod tax that Michael Ignatieff 'supports'.  I say 'supports' because McLean's magazine has recently completely debunked and explained the theory as to why the Conservative party is using this particular tidbit as one of their attack points.

McLean's writes:

• The claim a $75 levy was ever on the table—and that it was supported by the Liberals—is dubious for two reasons: first, contrary to Conservative claims, the Copyright Board never suggested the levy should be up to $75. That amount was proposed by a non-profit called the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which collects and distributes private copying royalties. But while they may not be the ones who collect it, it’s the Copyright Board that fixes levies on MP3 players, such as the ones that were in place until a December 2004 Federal Court decision struck them down. These ranged from $2 to $25.

• Secondly, the Liberals changed their policy on taxing digital audio devices in December and have explicitly rejected the notion of an “iPod levy.” They now support compensating artists with a yearly transfer of $35 million.

There is an immense amount of difficulty in trying to rationalize some of these strange points the Conservatives are making, so kudos to McLean's Erica Alini for digging deep into the truth of it.

What we also notice though, being savvy social media users and Web 2.0 people, is that Conservatives have denied access of comments and likes/dislikes on all their ads posted to youtube.  Probably to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening, from people digging to find the truth, and then pointing out their references and citations at how these 'ads' are untrue.

The Conservatives are, to my understanding, the only party to be denying the people their direct input on their campaign this way.  All the NDP videos I've seen welcome discussion and discourse over them, admittedly I haven't seen a lot of videos from the Liberals yet, but Patrick says they too are open for discussion.  The Conservative Party seems intent on running their campaign in a bubble, an allegation that has been leveled against them time and time again.

The sad thing, is that many people will not explore further into these attack ads.  And could very well be turned away from their nominal voting choice by untrue statements and proclamations.

This is neither fair, nor a way I should think we want our government to conduct itself.


McLean's Article about the 'iPod Tax':
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/04/05/the-bull-meter-the-conservatives-on-the-liberals-ipod-tax/

The Conservative Attack Ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_pSUHZZ5Qw