Canada and the politics of ACTA implementation

Posted on February 26, 2010 by bhaggart

Nice post by Sara Bannerman about the potential effect of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on Canadian copyright reform. I think she has the issue mostly surrounded, and that possibility number three – a treaty will simply introduce another element into the basics of the current copyright debate – is most likely. As she writes, pro-ACTA groups will say Canada has an obligation to implement the treaty; anti-ACTA groups will say we don’t and that it’s illegitimate (an argument that grows stronger every day the text stays secret).

Sounds a bit like a continuation of the Canadian debate over the WIPO Internet treaties, doesn’t it?

But the really big question is, will the Canadian government implement the ACTA (assuming it signs on)? While my guess is as good as the next guy’s (depending on who the next guy is, I guess), it’s worth remembering that the fact that Canada signs a treaty doesn’t really mean that much in terms of whether or not Canada will actually change its laws. As Howard Knopf has written several times, and as Sara also notes, signing a treaty does not require its implementation. If it did, the U.S. and Canada would have been implementing their Kyoto-mandated greenhouse gas reductions for about a decade now.

Directly related to this point, Queen’s University International Relations professor Kim Nossal was in Mexico City this week for a lecture that dealt extensively with the myth of Canadian multilateralism. His point was a simple one: Canada, like pretty much every other country, follows its own conception of the national interest. Nossal remarked that in cases like Kyoto and the Law of the Sea, Canadian governments of all stripes have demonstrated the willingness to act unilaterally and to ignore treaty obligations when they thought that the costs of compliance were too high.

The same is true of the WIPO Internet treaties and will be true of ACTA. Any government – Conservative or Liberal or NDP – will consider the potential effects of the treaty on its political fortunes and (relatedly) on the economy. It will also consider its effects on its international relations. While each party may come to different conclusions about how exactly ACTA implementation will affect each of these factors, domestic politics and international relations will determine whether and how the treaties will get implemented. Furthermore, my hunch is that it is unlikely that the treaty in and of itself will alter anyone’s conception of what is in their national or specific interest, if only because the legitimacy of the treaties can be so easily called into question by asking why they are being negotiated in secret outside the World Intellectual Property Organization, the World Trade Organization, UNESCO or any other copyright-related international institution.

In this sense, ACTA will do little but add another rhetorical tool into the arsenal of proponents and opponents.

To put it bluntly, it’s all about pain and reward. Treaty opponents will seek to convince the government that implementing the treaties will hurt the government, politically or economically, and/or that non-implementation will help the government. That’s what the Fair Copyright for Canada and the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook groups are all about.

Treaty proponents will try the opposite: arguing that implementation of the treaties will bring political and economic rewards, and that non-implementation will carry a cost.

Signing ACTA will only be the beginning (or continuation) of the debate. It all comes down to the politics, and it’s way too early to guess how any of this will fall out. But arguments that Canada has an obligation of any kind (moral or otherwise) to implement a treaty it has signed should be seen for what they are: rhetorical exercises masking self-interest.

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Posted in ACTA; Facebook activism | Comments Off on Canada and the politics of ACTA implementation

Understanding Facebook activism in two easy steps

Posted on February 18, 2010 by bhaggart

After reading Michael Valpy’s confusing article on the political effectiveness of Facebook in this morning’s Globe and Mail, I have to wonder if reporters will ever get their minds around exactly what Facebook is. Judging from Valpy’s interview with a pollster about how Canadians feel about Facebook’s effect on politics – not, note, what Facebook activism has actually accomplished – I fear our intrepid reporters will be misunderstanding Facebook for a long time to come.

Valpy and his source, pollster Nick Nanos, essentially rehash that old chestnut: what does it mean when a bunch of people join a Facebook group? This is the wrong question and misses almost all that makes Facebook and social-networking sites important. I’ll try to put this in more traditional terms.

Facebook is the telephone. It is a way for people to share opinions and to organize online and offline activity. If you remember that Facebook is only a tool, and a tool is only as effective as the people using it, the whole idea of social-networking platforms becomes much easier to understand. It also demonstrates the silliness of asking, as Nick Nanos does, whether Facebook can replace political parties. This is as absurd as asking if a fax machine (remember them?) could replace the Conservative Party of Canada. Facebook is a tool for communicating and lobbying, not governing.

Facebook groups are mailing lists. The power of mailing lists isn’t necessarily in how many people are on that list, but in the amount of money they are able to raise, the number of people they are able to deliver at election time, the number of protestors they’re able to mobilize for a rally. Again, their effectiveness will depend on the people using the lists.

Facebook and other social-networking platforms make it much, much easier for individuals to organize. Before Facebook, getting over 25,000 people out to protest, on a single day, across the second-largest country in the world, with only a couple of weeks of organizing, would have been a massively expensive and complex logistical undertaking (to those who downplay this remarkable accomplishment: try doing it yourself sometime). Most interestingly, Facebook makes it easy for this to happen with little central organization, beyond the original Facebook page.

While its decentralized, inexpensive nature make Facebook activism potentially much more effective for grassroots groups than more centralized forms of political activism, at the end of the day its effectiveness depends on the people involved. It’s still up to the people doing the organizing to make protests work.

So what do the numbers mean? Like everyone else, I don’t know how worried the Conservatives should be that over 225,000 people have joined the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook group (I’d be a bit worried). I do know that, via Facebook, Canadians across the country were able to get 25,000 people into the streets to voice their displeasure with Stephen Harper’s suspension of Parliament. I do know that since December, Conservative support has dropped dramatically into a statistical dead heat with a Liberal party that could most charitably be described as “adrift.”

I also know that two years ago, tens of thousands of Canadians joined the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group, which they used to organize protests, including visits to MP’s offices, letter writing campaigns, and even showed up at the Industry minister’s riding’s Christmas party to call for public consultations to address copyright reform. I also know that these protests were at least partly responsible for delaying the introduction of a copyright bill long enough that it was killed when the Fall 2008 election was called. It also seems clear that the Summer 2009 public consultations into copyright reform (for which the Conservative government deserves praise) were at least partly the result of this public pressure.

From these two examples, it seems clear that joining a Facebook group does, in some cases, lead to political activism. To the extent that it facilitates this activism and makes people aware of the issues, it can have, as Nanos says, “political heft in (sic.) the ballot box.”

Look: Facebook is still relatively new. We need more research into the conditions under which joining a Facebook group leads to political activism (hmmmm, that would make a nice postdoc subject…). But it does happen. And I’m sure that some enterprising political aide or grad student can come up with a nifty formula that tells us how many voters are represented by each Facebook joiner. It’s not like there are no data on the subject: Facebook has been around for five years, and in Canada we have at least two, and probably more, examples of effective Facebook-based political campaigns.

Understanding the limits and possibilities of Facebook activism requires moving beyond a simplistic view of Facebook as a pseudo-pollster and toward a more nuanced understanding of how Facebook, as a communications tool, actually works.

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Buy American: Surprise! No linkage!

Posted on February 5, 2010 by bhaggart

Since I mentioned it before, I thought it worth noting that Canada and the United States have reached a tentative deal on the “Buy American” stimulus package, in which Canadian suppliers are allowed to bid on contracts funded by what remains of the $US 787 billion in stimulus money. In exchange, Canadian provinces and (according to the government press release) “a number of municipalities” will be covered by the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement. (The federal government is already covered by that agreement.) What this means is that American companies can now bid on government-procurement contracts in these provinces, territories and municipalities, and that Canadian companies will have access to government procurement contracts in 37 states, including New York, California, Texas and Pennsylvania. The provinces still have to sign off on the agreement.

Whether or not this is a good deal (of which more in a second), note that the agreement was reached without linking the issue (government procurement contracts) to any other separate issue (like copyright, for example). Which is what one would expect, given the complex nature of the Canada-U.S. relationship.

Is the deal itself a good one? Without a lot of digging (and I really do have to get back to writing my chapter on the Mexican implementation of the WIPO Internet treaties), it’s impossible to say. The fact that the press release, joint statement and the backgrounder on “Buy American” and the tentative agreement contain no numbers whatsoever (or useful links to where these numbers might be living) is, shall we say, less than helpful. They don’t even mention the size of the U.S. stimulus package. Not good.

There are a bunch of questions I hope the media and opposition politicians ask the government, for which the answers aren’t immediately clear. (Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if Parliament were in session? Then the issue could be raised in Question Period and discussed in more depth in committee hearings. Ah, the good old days.)

Specifically, what were the government’s assumptions regarding:

  • How much of the remaining in stimulus funds would find its way to Canadian contractors (and, for that matter, how much is remaining). Obviously most won’t go to Canadians, so the direct benefit of this agreement is likely to be much lower than this headline number.
  • How much of the U.S. states’ government-procurement market would go to Canadian firms and workers?
  • How much of the $22-billion provincial and municipal government-procurement market would go to U.S. companies. (It would’ve been nice to mention the size of this market in the Backgrounder.)
  • The importance of government procurement for provincial and economic development.
  • How having more competitors for provincial and municipal contracts would affect the costs faced by provincial and municipal governments (presuming that more competition leads to lower prices).
  • Net employment, domestic economic activity and tax revenue, since the opening of this market could cut both ways (some effects will reduce employment, others increase it, everything else being equal).

As I said, without these basic facts, it’s impossible to evaluate the agreement. I’m hoping that the fact that they weren’t provided along with the announcement of this tentative deal was only an oversight. It would be nice to know that this government reached a deal that they believed made economic sense for Canada based on empirical evidence, not on some short-run political calculations. We’ve had enough of that lately.

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Parliamentary Committees I: The (mostly) civilized polar opposite of Question Period

Posted on January 31, 2010 by bhaggart

Up front, I have to note that I worked as a committee staff member (specifically, I was an economist with the Parliamentary Research Branch of the Library of Parliament) from 1999 to 2005. In other words, I have no direct experience with the minority governments of Paul Martin and Stephen Harper. The fact that the dynamics of committees are different under a minority government – the government controls the chair but not a majority of committee members – and that the current government is actively working to undermine the committee process, means that some of my experiences will not be directly comparable to today’s situation.

That said, much of the mechanics of committee work remains unchanged. I hope that they will provide an overview of how committees work and a benchmark against which one can compare the current committee setup.

Onward, then…

If you’re fascinated by politics and interested in public policy, but would rather not outsource your higher brain functions to the Party, there is no better job in Ottawa than working for a parliamentary committee, which I did for six years. While Question Period is, unfortunately, the public face of Parliament, the actual legislative and public-policy work of Parliament happens in committees. It’s here that MPs and Senators study issues, hold hearings and review legislation. In order for any bill to get passed, be it new banking rules or anti-terrorism legislation, it has to be approved by the appropriate House and Senate committees, after hearing from witnesses and debating it (to what degree depends on the issue). As a non-partisan staff member, committee staffers have a front-row seat to the best show in town. As my old boss used to say, since you’re non-partisan, you get to be close enough to the action to see everything go down, but far enough away that when the bombs go off, you’re not hit by the shrapnel.

Interest groups – lobbyists, activists, think tanks and the like – pay attention to what’s going on in committees. And if these groups are paying attention, it probably means that the average citizen might be better served taking a gander at a boring regular committee meeting instead of being distracted by the freakshow that passes for Question Period.

While much of the lobbying that happens in Ottawa occurs behind the scenes, in meetings with civil servants and ministers, committee hearings offer Canadians the most transparent means of finding out who wants what and where the parties stand on various issues (for reasons I’ll got into in another post, committee members usually march in lockstep with the will of the party, which means the will of the Leader). Without committee hearings, we would be reduced to relying on unverifiable (and potentially untrustworthy) leaks to favoured journalists and press releases issued at the government’s discretion. In contrast, committee hearings on issues both profound and mundane give our elected representatives the chance to grill lobbyists and activists and to question the bureaucrats and ministers. And while committees don’t always get to the bottom of some issues, and while they can be thwarted when the members and parties do not act in good faith, they more often than not get the job done, away from the spotlight.

At their best, committees are dull and pedestrian and vitally important to the maintenance of our democracy. When it comes to recommending specific courses of action, you can be sure that MPs act like partisans – they do, after all, have very different, honestly held, views of what is best for Canada – but committee work (again, when everyone is working in good faith) also involves by necessity a degree of cooperation among the members of all parties. Committee chairs sometimes exert/abuse their power by ramming through certain things, and opposition members can be obstinate to the point of extreme annoyance, but at the end of the day everyone has to work together, requiring a certain base degree of civility.

In other words, it’s nothing at all like Question Period.

That’s the idealized version of committees, and it’s a credit to those involved that committees often (in my experience) live up to this ideal, usually when it involves what are seen as technical issues or in the rare case when all parties are in general agreement. In other cases, it’s been my experience that committee chairs often work to achieve some degree of consensus within their caucus and among opposition members, even if they don’t always get it.

There are problems as well, but not necessarily from the committee members themselves, most of whom are at the very least attentive to the concerns of their constituents. (I’m speaking of MPs. Senators aren’t beholden to voters, and it often shows.) Instead, ever-increasing party control, the “friendly dictatorship” nature of majority governments, endemic understaffing and (under the current government) an active campaign to ensure that committees do not function well all prevent parliamentary committees from completely fulfilling their role as the public’s voice in the lawmaking process.

I’ll try to tackle those issues in later postings. Next up (tentatively, and hopefully within a week), a run-down of who’s actually on these committees.

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The prorogation protests: What’s next?

Posted on January 24, 2010 by bhaggart

Nice to see so many Canadians out on the streets in the depths of January to protest prorogation. With any luck, this strong turnout will finally put to rest the idea that Facebook-based protests are inconsequential “slacktivism.” Facebook is a tool, just like the telephone: what matters is how people use it. Check out www.noprorogue.ca and click on the Local Info links to see how organized and effective decentralized organizing can get.

Reading the reports from my tiny apartment in Mexico City, the thing that caught my attention (other than the numbers) was NDP leader Jack Layton’s reminder that the NDP has called for legislation that would require a Prime Minister to put the decision to suspend Parliament to a vote in the House of Commons. With such a bill in place, a minority government, like Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, would have had to respect the will of the majority of MPs (and Canadians) when it comes to proroguing Parliament. Which is what, ultimately, these protests are all about.

Even the Liberals, who actually stand to gain from Harper’s expansion of executive power as the only party with a realistic shot at replacing the Conservatives, are getting in on the action. Michael Ignatieff earlier this week suggested that the prorogation controversy was all about “character,” and that what mattered is that we elect people who won’t abuse the rules. Pretty surprising, given his background in political science, really. Now, according to the Toronto Star (linked above), the Liberals are making noises about supporting some rule changes.

Going forward, we should be able to gauge how seriously Stephen Harper takes the opposition to prorogation by whether a version of the NDP proposal becomes law after Parliament is unlocked in March. In Parliament, government legislation takes priority over private-members’ bills, so without government support it can be quite hard to get a bill though Parliament, majority or minority.

If the protesters who came out on Saturday want to capitalize on the momentum and organizations they’ve created, they could do much worse than working to get such a bill passed. It wouldn’t solve all our problems or do anything to curb abuses by majority governments, but it would be a start.

On that note, I had hoped by now to have a first post up on Parliamentary committees and how they work, but life – in the form of my parents coming to town and me showing them around – intervened. I should have something by the end of this week. But if you want a sneak peek of my overarching point, it’s that we should focus more on the rules rather than the personalities. The problems that we’ve seen with Parliament under Liberal and Conservative governments are fundamentally a matter of bad rules, not bad characters.

Update: Chantal Hébert points out correctly that nothing short of amending the Constitution would completely tie the hands of the Governor General and the Prime Minister. She argues that, like the fixed-election-date law, “Layton’s legislation would likely be no more binding on the prime minister (or the governor general).” That said, Hébert’s analysis is too narrow. The NDP proposal can also be seen as an attempt, like the Facebook protests, to increase the political price to be paid for ignoring the will of Parliament when it comes to prorogation. Think of it as focusing on the spirit of the law, not just the letter. In politics, this can be often be more useful than a constitutional amendment as a restraint on politicians seeking re-election.

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