Coalition! I Was Wrong about Being Wrong

By Joshua Chalifour, 1 December 2008

In my last post, I said that I was wrong about Dion’s political strategy in the last election. It turns out that while I wasn’t exactly right, I also wasn’t wrong. I’d imagined a scenario in which the conservatives were unable to win a majority, thus putting us back in the same, unworkable situation in [...]

Polishing Up the Political Remains

By Joshua Chalifour, 19 November 2008

Looks like I was wrong about Dion’s political strategy. Even if I was right, it didn’t turn out as I thought. I waited until today to proclaim my wrongness because I thought the last likely possibility it could unravel as I theorized would be with the speech from the throne. Today the NDP, Liberals, and [...]

Vote Swapping Breaks Democracy

By Joshua Chalifour, 13 September 2008

I’ve always thought the concept of vote-swapping was problematic. Not only is it flawed in its own right but treating it as an acceptable strategy is like snuggling up to the idea that one party can function as a spoiler and that somehow, certain parties are entitled to votes. This is endemic to thinking of [...]

Unravelling Dion’s Political Strategy

By Joshua Chalifour, 10 September 2008

Puzzling over the parties’ bizarre responses to letting/not letting Elizabeth May into the televised debates lead me to consider their histories and theorize that Harper’s Conservatives may stand little chance of forming the next government, while the Liberals could be the most likely to form the next government.

Some Notes on the Canadian Digital Information Strategy Draft

By Joshua Chalifour, 21 November 2007

I’ve been reading the draft consultation version of the Canadian Digital Information Strategy. The strategy proposes strengthening content, ensuring its preservation, and maximizing its access and use. These are important for many reasons the report addresses regarding culture; the report also has some anchors in industry, stating that “nations that nurture their digital information assets [...]

Copyright Reform and the Stats Can Report

By Joshua Chalifour, 12 November 2007

Michael Geist posted about the politics in the debate on copyright reform. The point stems from dissonance between the recent Statistics Canada report and a reform-oriented bill expected to introduce more restrictive copyright policy. The report showed some nice Canadian recording industry profits where similar industries in other parts of the world seemed to be [...]

Anti-IP Motivation from Me

By Joshua Chalifour, 29 October 2007

Frustrated with the state of things on the “intellectual property” news front, last week I sent a few letters accompanying copies of Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture book to some Canadian politicians. Is that self-righteous? I really enjoyed the book. Lessig did some sound thinking around all kinds of issues and he wrote about them in [...]