Looking past the easy targets: Miles Corak on the cancellation of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics

Posted on June 19, 2012 by bhaggart

It’s easy to be a critic: find something that annoys you and explain why you don’t like it. From the early Usenet flame wars, complaints and criticisms have been one of the Internet’s killer apps.

It’s much, much harder to explain why you don’t like something while placing the issue in its proper context without resorting to ad hominem attacks, and then to propose a way of looking at the problem in a way that  attacks the underlying issue, not the surface symptoms.

All this to say, go read Miles Corak’s excellent kinda-eulogy for the longitudinal Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, the latest casualty of the Conservative government’s government-wide cutbacks, and which follows the cancellation of the mandatory long-form census. As someone who’s used SLID, this definitely seems like a really bad idea.

It would be very easy to start and stop with a comment about how this fits with the current government’s well-documented dislike of empirical, evidence-based policy. And there’s certainly some truth to that.

But Corak doesn’t go there. Instead, he essentially argues that the real problem may be that, as a government agency with a one-year budget horizon subject to political whims, Statistics Canada isn’t the best placed agency to handle projects with time horizons that stretch beyond electoral cycles into decades. This means that even throwing the bums out wouldn’t solve the underlying problem. New boss, meet old boss and all that.

Looking beyond our borders (always a good idea), he notes that long-standing SLID-like projects in the UK, the US, Australia and Germany are all funded by universities or arm’s length funding bodies:

As Canadians embark on another experiment in longitudinal survey taking they should have confidence that Statistics Canada will design and manage the technical details in an efficient, effective, and indeed innovative way; but past experience, both here and abroad, may also make them wonder if the managerial structure and financial responsibility is designed to match the long-term horizon these data require.

Left unasked but implied in this quote is: given this state of affairs, how could Canadians organize such a survey outside of Statistics Canada? I don’t know the answer, but it’s a useful and productive way to frame the debate. 

Anyway, check it out.

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Canadian copyright and the rise of user rights

Posted on June 19, 2012 by bhaggart

With Bill C-11 (legislative summary) moving ever-closer to Royal Assent, Michael Geist has a must-read post about how regular Canadians’ helped to make the final Conservative bill a lot more user-friendly than they had planned way back in 2007. For those wanting a quick summary, Geist also provides a handy table charting how various provisions in the bill changed between the aborted 2007 bill and C-11.

The key take-away:

The first five issues [in the table] – fair dealing, time shifting, format shifting, backup copies, and user-generated content – are all user-focused reforms. None were the source of serious interest from the major lobby groups (even education groups were initially more interested in an Internet exception than fair dealing reform). None were included as part of the pre-Bill C-61 approach and just two appeared in limited form in Bill C-61 itself. Yet as the public became increasingly engaged on copyright, the government shifted its approach and added these provisions in an effort to address their concerns. The importance of these provisions should not underestimated. For example, the non-commercial user-generated content provision contains broad protections for individuals and websites that host the content.

As Geist notes, in a previous post I commented that what stood out for me about the evolution of the Conservatives’ copyright bills was how little had actually changed. And, certainly, on the key issues that I’ve focused on – namely, ISP liability and digital locks – this 2012 bill might as well have been passed in 2007. Very glass-half-empty, in other words, when it comes to the public’s effect on C-11.

I think it’s not so much that I disagree with Geist but that we’re weighing things differently. Digital locks were a (maybe even the) main focus of many user-rights advocates. Given this focus, I think it’s fair that some Canadian user-rights advocates are  disappointed with the bill. As Geist notes in the post, “There is no sugar-coating the loss on digital locks” (Seriously, read it. It’s a good summary of the debate.)

But, as Geist notes, this doesn’t mean that the whole bill runs roughshod over user rights, even as it didn’t go as far as it could have. It’s definitely it’s not the total triumph that the U.S. SOPA protestors got in January when they managed to stop SOPA in its tracks, despite the very strong desire of many legislators – all of whom have real power – to move it forward. In that sense, as I argued previously, C-11 shows us the limits of social-media activism within the Canadian political system: It can’t move the immovable object (see Harper, Stephen on digital locks).

Lucky for us, Canadian politics isn’t all immovable objects. As Geist notes, C-11 is about more than digital locks and ISP liability. He’s right that the new user rights he lists represent a victory of the Fair Copyright for Canada movement. In a nutshell, no movement, no new rights. That’s pretty impressive and a real accomplishment for all those involved. It could even very well be that in real life these new user rights will turn out to be more important than the digital-lock provisions, in which case it’ll look even more impressive in hindsight.

Most importantly, this isn’t a one-off thing. There will be other copyright debates (hello, Access Copyright debacle!), and user rights will be front-and-centre in all of them. In politics, where nothing is ever settled forever, that could be the user-rights’ lobby’s most enduring contribution to Canadian copyright policy.

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The kneecapping of Canadian soft power (government budget cuts edition)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by bhaggart

This is not good news:

Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada has been invited to review its operating and program expenses. This exercise is part of a more general effort aiming to reduce the deficit, modernize the government and to find means to facilitate the interaction between the Canadian population and the government as well as to readjust the costs of the activities of the governmental programs. Further to the announcements in the 2012 budget, some changes are made in the organization including the termination of some programs. The Understanding Canada: Canadian Studies Program has been identified as one who should be terminated. Therefore, there will be no further grants issued under this program.

What is was Understanding Canada: Canadian Studies Program? To the Wayback Machine!:

Through the Understanding Canada Program, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade fosters a greater knowledge and understanding of Canada, its values and its culture among scholars and other influential groups abroad. The Program consists of a comprehensive set of grants designed to enable foreign international academics to develop and teach courses about Canada, or to undertake research in their own discipline about an aspect of Canada, leading to publication in Canadian and foreign scholarly presses.

What impact does did it have? From the same (now deleted) government webpage:

The scope of the Program varies greatly depending on the region, country or even institutions. For example, it may encompass a student exchange in one organization whereas another may prefer to organize a seminar or conference regarding aspects of Canada’s bilateral and multilateral relations and subjects such as: social and political sciences; the Canadian political system; geography; history; business studies; the economy; women studies; aboriginal issues; Canadian culture and multiculturalism; social values; the environment; law; information media; and English- and French-Canadian literature.

The program also generates an extraordinary amount of research about Canada. In addition to Canadian studies journals published by the associations, articles, theses, essays, books and studies on Canadian realities number in the hundreds each year. What’s more, these documents often prove useful to national governments in their relations with Canada.

Why should we Canadians care if foreigners study Canada? The department had an answer for that, as well:

Foreign academics who research, teach, study and publish about Canada, more commonly know as Canadianists, are independent observers making them credible interlocutors and a source of valuable advice for their governments and fellow citizens on specifics issues or priorities involving their countries’ relations with Canada. The Understanding Canada Program has a positive influence on the promotion of Canada’s interests in the world.

In addition to academics, some Canadian studies associations also include politicians, senior public servants, business people, high school teachers, administrators, publishing house representatives, professionals and journalists.

As far as financial impact goes, the department goes on to note that a study done in the summer and fall of 2009 found that the $5 million spent annually on the program “generated 33 times its value in programming in which $55 million were spent directly in Canada.”

This is a big deal, and an incredibly short-sighted move on the government’s part. One of the ways you get what you want — in international relations as in real life — is not only making your case to others, but by convincing other people to make your case for you. If someone from the American embassy argues in favour of something like, say, stronger Canadian copyright, it’s relatively easy to respond with: “Oh, they’re just promoting their own self-interest. Maybe I should do the opposite of what they’re saying.” But if you can get an arm’s length expert to say the same thing, well, they’re harder to dismiss.

An example: This afternoon in Washington, DC, the Association of Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS), of which I’m a member, is co-sponsoring a talk by former Bank of Canada Deputy Director Malcolm Knight on Surmounting the Financial Crisis: Canadian and American Banks Contrasted.

This, folks, is soft power in action. Global banking regulation happens to be a topic near and dear to the heart of the Canadian government and the Bank of Canada. A Canadian, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, is chair of the Financial Stability Board, which is charged with strengthening global financial regulation. Washington is a key player in this high-stakes game. Prime Minister Stephen Harper believes that the world has a lot to learn from the stability of the Canadian financial system.

And this afternoon here in Washington, DC, you can be sure that Malcolm Knight will say some things that will be very useful to the Canadian government’s long-term objectives. And they will carry even more weight because they’re coming in a forum that’s not controlled by the Canadian government.

That’s just financial regulation. When it comes to a really sticky issue like the Alberta oil sands, Canada is going to need every single non-Canadian it can to make its case in Europe, Asia, the United States and elsewhere.

The last thing you want to do is to make it harder to develop sympathetic and knowledgable foreign experts in Canadian politics, economics and culture. Believe it or not, most people outside Canada don’t spend a lot of time thinking about Canada. And now even fewer will.

Anyway, ACSUS will be losing about $95,000 as a result of these cuts, which like the other cuts, were unannounced and undertaken without consultation outside the department(s).

I imagine this will make it harder to conduct my own research into North American governance, what with the affinity between Americans who study Canada and Canadians who study Canada’s relationship with the United States and Mexico. I also presented my first paper as a doctoral student at an ACSUS conference, so I know first hand of ACSUS’s importance in creating a forum in which Canada-US experts can make contacts and pick up new ideas.

But that’s just me. The loss of Understanding Canada for the country as a whole is more serious. It means fewer chances for Canada to talk softly and advance its interests abroad. At the very least, I hope for an explanation of why these cuts were made, and how the Conservative government plans to make up for this loss of an important source of Canadian influence.

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On the move

Posted on April 27, 2012 by bhaggart

I’m very happy to announce that in July I will be joining the Department of Political Science at Brock University as an Assistant Professor. (As my brother suggested, I’ve clarified that my actual title is not Assistant to the Professor.) It’s a pretty impressive department; I’m looking forward to having such a convivial home base to extend my research into the international political economy of copyright and North American governance and integration. On that last point, you can expect to see more North America-related posts into this blog.

The teaching also looks good: intro to international relations, and upper-year courses in global political economy and the politics of North American integration, all of them right up my alley.

Oh, and now I have a way to get back to Mexico to see what’s really going on with their copyright debate.

This is going to be fun.

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Metaphor slinging, ends and means: Yet another plea for a rational copyright debate

Posted on April 27, 2012 by bhaggart

While slogging through my Google Reader backlog this morning, I came across this interesting Ars Technica post on “metaphor slinging” in the Copyright Wars. You know: is it “infringement” or is it “theft”? Asher Hawkins reminds us that people have been throwing around loose language like “piracy” and “theft” since the dawn of copyright law. He then goes on to look at the rhetorical pros and cons of using “piracy” and “theft,” compared with the more (legally) accurate term infringement.

His conclusion? “Piracy” and “theft” have won the rhetorical battle, and we should come to terms with that: 

Since we appear to be stuck with these terms, perhaps the most pragmatic approach is to demand greater clarity in their usage—by pushing those involved in the copyright debate to either limit the terms’ application to specific scenarios that involve a level of willfulness and/or commercial motivation or provide better reasons why they should be applied to unintentional conduct. Would Orwell approve? Probably not. But an ill-defined metaphor is at least better than an undefined metaphor.

I get where Hawkins is coming from, and it may be unfair to criticize an argument for not being about something else, but I think he misses the real problem with the way that copyright is discussed today, namely that so much of it focuses on language and rhetoric, and not on what we want copyright to accomplish. At the end of the day, debates over whether something is “infringement” or “theft” are effectively debates over what copyright should do. Unfortunately, focusing on metaphors means that this debate happens in the most confusing way possible.

As it happens, I was in Ottawa last week to give a talk to the Library of Parliament on a paper I wrote last year on the usage of metaphors in competition policy. In it, I criticized the way that people use “level playing field” to turn a conversation about ends — how can be maximize competition in a particular economic sector — into one focused exclusively on means — how can we apply the rules equally to everyone. That’s not a good thing, since sometimes applying the same rules to everyone can actually lead to less competition. For example, when the Canadian government opened the aviation industry to competition in 1984, Air Canada used its status as the legacy national carrier to reduce, not increase, competition.

Whoops. 

Over the course of the Q & A that followed, I realized that I was essentially arguing for regulators and policymakers to focus directly on what they want to accomplish and what their sector looks like in reality, and to avoid “metaphor slinging” (what a great term). After all, “level playing field” is itself a metaphor that may or may not be appropriate for the problem at hand. If you know what you want and are open to how you get there, and aren’t basing your worldview on metaphors, I’d argue you have a much better chance of coming up with creative ideas that will actually get you where you want to go.

(Just in case the utilitarian nature of this argument doesn’t give it away, yes, I used to be an economist.)

The presentation was about competition policy, but I think the lesson works for copyright as well. When we talk about “piracy” or “infringement,” we’re talking about a specific action (e.g., illegally downloading a movie), not about our ultimate objectives. A conversation about “piracy” vs. “infringement” misses the point. It’s a discussion of means (“We have to stop piracy” vs. “It’s not equivalent to stealing”), not ends (say, “How do we maximize creative production and ensure that the most people have access to the most creative works?”).

Your milage may vary regarding whether you think that maximizing creative production and distribution is or should be the main goals of copyright (or, more precisely, the main goals of however we decide to regulate the market in creative works), but that’s the conversation we should be having. It would be just as contentious and politically bloody — there are no shortage of people and groups who think that copyright’s main goal is (or should be) to compensate artists or intermediaries — but it would almost certainly be more honest and straightforward. Focusing on the metaphors instead of the market misses the forest for the trees (See what I did there?).

We’d be better off if we took a step back from thinking about what a specific term means and focus more on what we want to do, and how to best get there.

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