This week, I sent the following letter the a few key members of the Federal Government, outlining my concerns with the proposed Bill C-32. Those who have read my otherposts regarding the bill may notice a great deal of similar language. As always, feel free to borrow this letter and to modify it in any way, shape, or form. Printed letters can be sent to Members of Parliament free of charge, and all Members’ contact information is available here.
To: The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
To: The Honourable Tony Clement
To: The Honourable James Moore
CC: Marc Garneau (Liberal Industry critic)
CC: Pablo Rodriguez (Liberal Heritage critic)
CC: Charlie Angus (NDP Digital Affairs Critic)
CC: Peter Braid (MP, Kitchener-Waterloo)
Dear Members of Parliament:
Last week, our Conservative government introduced Bill C-32, the Copyright Modernization Act. As its title suggests, the aim of the bill is to modernize Canadian copyright law, an admirable goal considering the incredible changes that the internet has had on our economy since our copyright laws were last reviewed in 1997. With respect to its stated goal, Bill C-32 is a reasonable proposal. It contains some much needed legislation that will indeed clarify and modernize our copyright code.
For example, the Network Services section of the Bill provides a safe harbour clause for Internet service providers and other network operators. In particular, the section provides legal protection for hosting service operators whose customers may have uploaded copyrighted works to their servers. Likewise, the Copyright Infringement section sets maximum monetary awards for copyright owners who successfully charge an individual with infringement of works for personal or commercial use. Given the astronomical awards granted by American courts in both the Capitol vs. Thomas (2007) and RIAA vs. Tenenbaum (2009) cases, this is an extremely important clause.
Unfortunately, every positive aspect of the proposed law is counteracted in the Technological Protection Measures and Rights Management Information section of the bill, wherein the proposed law explicitly bans the use, manufacture, import, distribution, sale, or rental of any technology or device capable of circumventing any technological protection measure (also called digital rights management, or DRM) schemes that have been placed on the digital content by its distributor. Should the bill become law, any use of the aforementioned technologies will constitute an immediate infringement of copyright and make the responsible party liable to all damages outlined within. Therefore, this section effectively removes all of the rights granted in earlier portions of the bill, including Non-commercial User-generated Content and Reproduction for Private Purposes, the two sections that the government is using to desperately peddle this bill as consumer-positive, when in fact it is nothing of the sort. In particular, the latter section proposes that it be made legal to create personal reproductions of copyrighted material (often referred to as time- or format-shifting, an activity that the vast number of Canadians already take part in) so long as a number of conditions are met, one of which is that “the individual, in order to make the reproduction, did not circumvent, as defined in section 41, a technological protection measure, as defined in that section, or cause one to be circumvented.”
Just like that, with a single sentence, all of the ‘rights’ that the Conservative government is waving around as they insist that their approach to copyright reform is not bought and paid for by foreign media conglomerates are struck from the record. With an anti-circumvention clause built into our copyright law, the ability to use legitimately purchased digital media in a fair and open manner (generally called fair use in the USA or fair dealing here in Canada) ceases to exist. The reason for this is that an excruciatingly small minority of the digital media that is sold today is unencumbered by some form of digital rights management. DVDs? Encrypted. Your player contains software that allows them to be read. BluRay discs? The very same. Video games? Every one. Perhaps this is the real reason that Bill C-32 was introduced at video game developer Electronic Arts’ Montreal studios. Cable television, Netflix digital downloads, eBooks, computer software of all sorts, online television services, and an uncountable number of other current and future consumer media products are all protected by some form of DRM. About the only type of digital media that you can actually buy that does not come coated in some form of technological protection measure is music, and yet millions of Canadians who purchased music from Apple’s iTunes store prior to January of 2009 still have affected tracks in their music collections. Under the proposed law, none of this digital content can be backed up, moved to a different device, transcoded to a different format, or otherwise tampered with, because to do so would require that its owner break the DRM that has been placed on it, thus making that person a criminal in the eyes of Canadian courts.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about laws of this sort is that they are known to be ineffective at stopping internet piracy. In 1996, before popular file-sharing services like Napster, KaZaa, Limewire, and BitTorrent were even invented, a group of countries that included Canada signed the World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty (WIPO), a document that required that signatory countries enact laws prohibiting the circumvention of digital rights management schemes. The United States did so in its 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and twelve years later, the Canadian government is seeking to ratify the treaty under pressure from the United States and the European Union. Unfortunately for the government, a great deal has changed since the turn of the century, and many consumers are now aware of the problems that rights management schemes can cause them while trying to use their legitimately purchased media in seemingly normal and socially acceptable ways. In those same twelve years, the digital piracy situation faced by media companies worldwide has grown exponentially, and various media industries attribute billions of dollars per year in losses to digital piracy. If anti-circumvention laws were truly effective, piracy should never have become the problem that media companies claim that it is today; the DMCA put anti-circumvention laws in place in the United States a full year before the invention of Napster and three years before the introduction of the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol.
In truth, anti-circumvention laws styled after the United States’ DMCA serve only to reduce consumer choice while failing to prevent digital piracy in any capacity whatsoever. Lawmakers would do well to understand that DRM schemes are no more than the digital counterparts of real-world mechanical locks. There has never been, and will never be, a lock that cannot be broken by any determined party with time, knowledge, and resources on their side. Further, it is essential that lawmakers understand that a single defeat of the DRM scheme designed to protect digital media often results in the widespread availability of that media to any and all interested parties by way of the internet. Therein lies the problem with DRM as an anti-piracy measure: One does not have to be a determined hacker to access the media that a DRM scheme is intended to protect; one simply requires access to the internet, and knowledge of a website that distributes media that has been helpfully unlocked by other, more capable parties. The global nature of the internet ensures that the parties most interested in defeating digital rights management schemes need not operate in countries unfriendly to their cause. For these reasons, a government mandate that protects the sanctity of digital locks will not have the desired effect of preventing widespread domestic piracy. Instead, such a ruling will serve only to impact the ability of consumers to utilize their rightfully purchased digital media in a fair and open manner.
Since anti-circumvention legislation has not reduced piracy rates in countries where it has been introduced, and since the DRM schemes that it aims to sanctify do little to stop widespread piracy, but do make common criminals out of legitimate customers on a wide scale, it is a simple matter to conclude that this type of legislation is not, and never will be, in the best interests of the consumer. Gentlemen, I urge you all to reconsider the laws proposed in Bill C-32. As a young entrepreneur and a professional employed in our strong technology sector, I cannot help but be concerned about the potentially stifling effects of the proposed legislation on our economy, and on our ability to innovate and to create the technologies of the future.
This past week, the Honourable James Moore, Conservative Minister of Heritage & Official Languages and the Honourable Tony Clement, Conservative Minister of Industry introduced Bill C-32, “Copyright Modernization Act“ at the Electronic Arts studios in Montreal, Quebec. As its title suggests, the aim of the bill is to modernize copyright law in Canada, an admirable goal considering that our copyright laws haven’t been reviewed since 1997. In Internet time, that’s nearly an eternity, and a lot has changed since then. With respect to its stated goal, Bill C-32 is a reasonably good proposal of law. It contains some much needed legislation that will indeed clarify and modernize our copyright code.
For example, the Network Services section provides a safe harbour clause for Internet service providers and other network operators. In particular, the section provides legal protection for hosting service operators whose customers may have uploaded copyrighted works to their servers. Likewise, the Copyright Infringement section sets maximum monetary awards for copyright owners who successfully charge an individual with infringement of works for personal or commercial use. Given the astronomical awards granted by American courts in both the Capitol vs. Thomas and RIAA vs. Tenenbaum cases, this is an extremely important clause.
Unfortunately, these positive aspects of the proposed law are counteracted in the Technological Protection Measures and Rights Management Information section of the bill. In this section, the proposed law explicitly bans the use, manufacture, import, distribution, sale, or rental of any technology or device capable of circumventing any technological protection measures (also called digital rights management, or DRM) schemes that have been placed on the digital content by its distributor. Under the proposed law, any use of the aforementioned technologies constitutes an immediate infringement of copyright, and makes the responsible party liable to all damages outlined therein. The problem with this section is that it effectively removes all of the rights granted in earlier sections of the bill, including Non-commercial User-generated Content and Reproduction for Private Purposes, the two sections that the government is using to desperately peddle this bill as consumer-positive, when in fact it is nothing of the sort. In particular, the latter section proposes that it be made legal to create personal reproductions of copyrighted material so long as a number of conditions are met, one of which is that “the individual, in order to make the reproduction, did not circumvent, as defined in section 41, a technological protection measure, as defined in that section, or cause one to be circumvented.”
And just like that, with a single sentence, all of the ‘rights’ that the government is waving around as they insist that their approach to copyright reform is not bought and paid for by foreign media conglomerates are struck from the record. You see, with an anti-circumvention clause built into our copyright law, the ability to use legitimately purchased digital media in a fair and open manner (generally called fair use in the USA or fair dealing here in Canada) ceases to exist. The reason for this is because an excruciatingly small minority of the digital media that is for sale today is unencumbered by some form of digital rights management. DVDs? Encrypted. Your player contains software that allows them to be read. BluRay discs? Same deal. Video Games? Absolutely. Why do you think the government introduced the law at Electronic Arts’ Montreal studios? Cable television, Netflix digital downloads, eBooks, computer software of all sorts, online television from Hulu and other major providers, and an uncountable number of other consumer media products are all protected by some form of DRM. About the only type of digital media that you can actually buy that doesn’t come coated in some form of protection measure is music, but millions of people who purchased music from the iTunes store prior to January of 2009 still have affected tracks in their music collections. Under the proposed law, none of this digital content can be backed up, moved to a different device, transcoded to a different format, or otherwise tampered with, because to do so would require that its owner break the DRM that has been placed on it, thus making that person a criminal in the eyes of Canadian courts.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about laws of this sort is that they are known to be ineffective at stopping internet piracy. Way back in 1996, before Napster, KaZaa, Limewire, or BitTorrent were invented, a group of countries got together and signed the World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty, a document that required that signatory countries enact laws prohibiting the circumvention of digital rights management schemes. The United States did so in its 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and 12 years later, the Canadian government is seeking to ratify the treaty under pressure from the United States and the European Union by following suit. Unfortunately for the government, a lot has happened since the turn of the century, and many consumers are now aware of the problems that rights management schemes can cause them while trying to use their legitimately purchased media in seemingly acceptable ways. In those same 12 years, the piracy situation has yet to stabalize, and the various media industries still attribute billions of dollars per year in losses to digital piracy. So what’s going on? If anti-circumvention laws were truly effective, wouldn’t the rate of piracy drop in countries where they are introduced?
Anti-circumvention laws styled after those of the United States’ 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act serve only to reduce consumer choice while failing to prevent digital piracy in any capacity whatsoever. Lawmakers would do well to understand that digital rights management (DRM) schemes are no more than the digital counterparts of real-world mechanical locks. There has never been, and will never be, a lock that cannot be broken by any determined party with time, knowledge, and resources on their side. In the digital case, a single defeat of the DRM system designed to protect digital media often results in the widespread availability of that media to any and all interested parties by way of the internet. Therein lies the biggest problem with DRM schemes: One does not have to be a determined hacker to access the media that a DRM scheme is intended to protect; one simply requires access to the internet, and knowledge of a website that distributes media that has been helpfully unlocked by other, more capable parties. The global nature of the internet ensures that the parties most interested in defeating digital rights management schemes need not operate in countries unfriendly to their cause. As such, a government mandate that protects the sanctity of digital locks will not have the desired effect of preventing widespread domestic piracy. Instead, such a ruling will serve only to impact the ability of consumers to utilize their rightfully purchased digital media in a fair and open manner.
Since anti-circumvention legislation has not reduced piracy rates in countries where it has been introduced, and since the digital rights management schemes that it aims to sanctify often do little to stop widespread piracy, but do inconvenience legitimate customers on a wide scale, it is a simple matter to conclude that this type of legislation is not, and never will be, in the best interests of the consumer, who also happens to be the voter responsible for electing the officers of government that attempt to introduce it into law. So why are your elected representatives being complacent in protecting your interests? Perhaps you should ask them about it.
The biggest question that a project like OpenBook raises is that of where to lay the blame. It quite clearly represents an egregious violation of personal privacy; But is that the fault of Facebook, of its users, or of advertisers who fund the site in exchange for the data? Or is Zuckerberg right when he claims that social mores are changing with respect to the expectation of privacy? Based on the screen shots below, I certainly hope not:
Me too! My favourite is banana cream! Oh, wait...
That and working at McDonalds for the rest of your life
That's the kind of thing that you might want to keep to yourself.
Quick! Everybody phone this guy and congratulate him on his purchase!
Anybody have the ability to remotely wipe devices?
Personally, I'm scared for her kid.
The bottom line here is that most of these are things that should be kept to yourself. Presumably, none of these fine specimens realized just how public a forum Facebook really is. The real problem is that you can hardly blame them, considering how often the privacy policy changes, and how far the situation has eroded since the site was first launched. There is an excellent infographic by a fellow named Matt McKeon that illustrates just how far things have come along:
Click on the image to see an animated version of the graphic that shows the state of Facebook privacy in each year since 2005
It’s funny that even though this issue has been covered multiple times by many a news outlet, the best that Facebook addicts can muster is to start a protest group on the site itself whenever the policies are changed. Perhaps Zuckerberg is right, and I actually am the weird one for not having an account with the site.
To: The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
To: The Honourable Tony Clement
To: The Honourable James Moore
CC: Marc Garneau (Liberal Industry critic)
CC: Pablo Rodriguez (Liberal Heritage critic)
CC: Charlie Angus (NDP Digital Affairs Critic)
CC: Peter Braid (MP, Kitcener-Waterloo)
Dear Members of Parliament:
It is with much consternation that I view the continued efforts of the federal Conservative government of Canada to ‘reform’ Canadian copyright law. I fear that the government has lost sight of the original purpose of copyright law, and has forgotten their sworn duty to protect the interests of their constituents over those of foreign media conglomerates. This week brought the news that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has ordered the Honourable James Moore, Conservative Minister of Heritage & Official Languages, to proceed in drafting a copyright reform bill that is likely to include strong anti-circumvention clauses and an inflexible approach to fair dealing exceptions. As a Canadian citizen and an entrepreneur in our strong technology sector, I must make clear my view that these types of laws fail to benefit the end users of technology, and Canadian industry as a whole.
In particular, anti-circumvention laws styled after those of the United States’ 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act serve only to reduce consumer choice while failing to prevent digital piracy in any capacity whatsoever. Lawmakers would do well to understand that digital rights management (DRM) schemes are no more than the digital counterparts of real-world mechanical locks. There has never been, and will never be, a lock that cannot be broken by any determined party with time, knowledge, and resources on their side. In the digital case, a single defeat of the DRM system designed to protect digital media often results in the widespread availability of that media to any and all interested parties by way of the internet. Therein lies the biggest problem with DRM schemes: One does not have to be a determined hacker to access the media that a DRM scheme is intended to protect; one simply requires access to the internet, and knowledge of a website that distributes media that has been helpfully unlocked by other, more capable parties.
The global nature of the internet ensures that the parties most interested in defeating digital rights management schemes need not operate in countries unfriendly to their cause. As such, a government mandate that protects the sanctity of digital locks will not have the desired effect of preventing widespread domestic piracy. Instead, such a ruling will serve only to impact the ability of consumers to utilize their rightfully purchased digital media in a fair and open manner. Taken to their fullest extent, anti-circumvention laws prevent consumers from watching legitimately purchased films on their computers and from listening to personally owned music on their mobile devices. They encourage a marketplace that limits consumer choice and promotes vendor lock-in; a market that licenses media to consumers instead of selling it. This situation often results in the loss of personal property when DRM servers that consumers rely on to enjoy their media are inevitably shut down for economical reasons.
Last summer, the federal Conservative government conducted public copyright consultations under the auspices of creating what they advertised as a “made in Canada approach to copyright reform.” Unfortunately, it seems as though the thousands of voices that participated in those deliberations were largely ignored by this government, contrary to the very concept of a representative democracy. While we can all agree that copyright reform is necessary, it is important that the reforms that are ultimately enacted accurately represent the interests of the majority of Canadians, whose lives are impacted by their access to media technology on a daily basis. We must remember that the primary purpose of copyright law is provide a monetary incentive for artists to contribute to our society, and not to enrich foreign media conglomerates.
Thank you for your time,
Jonathan Fritz,
A concerned citizen
This open letter was emailed and posted to all listed Members of Parliament. If you are interested in joining in on the discussion and want your voice to be heard by your representatives, feel free to borrow my letter and to modify it as you wish. Alternatively, head over to the website of the Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights and use their automated form to accomplish the same task.
Today, Michael Geist, law professor and Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law from the University of Ottawa, tweeted a link to some leaked documents allegedly pertaining to trade negotiations between Canada and the European Union. While there are quite a few documents available, I took a moment to flip through the one focused on intellectual property negotiations, and found some rather shocking proposals that would both lengthen existing copyright terms and dismantle what few fair-use laws currently exist in Canada.
This past summer, our federal conservative government held public copyright consultations on the possibility of Canadian copyright reform. At the time, I both participated in the consultation process, and wrote a lengthy post detailing my answers to the questions posed by the government. Based on this leak, and previous leaks of alleged ACTA materials, I guess that secretive international treaties were what our government actually had in mind when they said that they would take a ‘made in Canada’ approach to the reform process.
So without further ado (and with full recognition that I am not a lawyer, and could be way off the mark with my comments), I’ll run through a couple of the scarier things that I found in the leaked document:
A possible extension of existing copyright terms from 50 years to 70 past death:
The rights of an author of a literary or artistic work within the meaning of Article 2 of the Berne Convention shall run for the life of the author [EC: and for 70 years after his death, irrespective of the date when the work is lawfully made available to the public.] [Canada: and the remainder of the calendar year in which the author dies, and a period of at least 50 years following the end of that calendar year.]
[EC: In the case of anonymous or pseudonymous works, the term of protection shall run for 70 years after the work is lawfully made available to the public.] [Canada: Where the identity of the author of a work is unknown, copyright in the work shall subsist for whichever of the following terms ends earlier:
(a) a term consisting of the remainder of the calendar year of the first publication of the work and a period of fifty years following the end of that calendar year, and
(b) a term consisting of the remainder of the calendar year of the making of the work and a period of seventy-five years following the end of that calendar year.]
25-year term protection for the first person who uses a copyrighted work after its initial expiry date:
[EC: The Parties shall ensure that any person who, after the expiry of copyright protection, for the first time lawfully publishes or lawfully communicates to the public a previously unpublished work, shall benefit from a protection equivalent to the economic rights of the author. The term of protection of such rights shall be 25 years from the time when the work was first lawfully published or lawfully communicated to the public.
Non-negotiable royalties to the rights holder of a copyrighted work any time that it is resold (this could mean a loss of the ability to sell used books/CDs at a garage sale):
The Parties shall provide, for the benefit of the author of an original work of art, a resale right, to be defined as an inalienable right, which cannot be waived, even in advance, to receive a royalty based on the sale price obtained for any resale of the work, subsequent to the first transfer of the work by the author.
The Parties shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures, which the person concerned carries out in the knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he or she is pursuing that objective. The Parties shall provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which:
(a) are promoted, advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or
(b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent, or
(c) are primarily designed, produced, adapted or performed for the purpose of enabling or facilitation the circumvention of, any effective technological measures.
For the purposes of this Agreement, the expression ‘technological measures’ means any technology, device or component that, in the normal course of its operation, is designed to prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subject-matter, which are not authorised by the right holder of any copyright or any right related to copyright as provided for by law. Technological measures shall be deemed ‘effective’ where the use of a protected work or other subject matter is controlled by the right holders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.
As well legal ramifications for any person who uses a device that can circumvent DRM schemes:
The Parties shall provide adequate legal protection against any person knowingly performing without authority any of the following acts:
(a) the removal or alteration of any electronic rights-management information;
(b) the distribution, importation for distribution, broadcasting, communication or making available to the public of works or other subject-matter protected under this Agreement from which electronic rights-management information has been removed or altered without authority, if such person knows, or has reasonable grounds to know, that by so doing he is inducing, enabling, facilitating or concealing an infringement of any copyright or any rights related to copyright as provided by law.
Finally, a potentially positive section that seems to limit the ability of ISPs to use deep-packet inspection and selective filtering on their customers’ internet connections:
Where an information society service is provided that consists of the transmission in a communication network of information provided by a recipient of the service, or the provision of access to a communication network, Parties shall ensure that the service provider is not liable for the information transmitted, on condition that the provider:
(a) does not initiate the transmission;
(b) does not select the receiver of the transmission; and
(c) does not select or modify the information contained in the transmission.
Please take a moment to read the document for yourself, and consider contacting your member of parliament to discuss the proposed treaty with him/her. It’s only by being vigilant that we, the citizenry, can protect our rights against laws such as this that are quite obviously slanted in the favour of corporate rights holders.
Just wanted to share another fantastic TED talk, this time from Michael Specter of The New Yorker.
In his talk, Specter argues that by any metric, we are currently living in the greatest time in which anybody could ever have lived throughout the entire history of the world. He then qualifies that claim by stating that if we don’t change popular opinion on the issues currently facing modern science, that state won’t last. In particular, Specter has beef with what most people call ‘junk science,’ including homeopathic medicines, herbal remedies, and the batshit-crazy beliefs of Jenny McCarthy. It is his belief that in order to solve the important problems that are facing modern science, we as a people must overcome our superstitious distrust toward the scientific method, and the gifts that it has brought humankind.
The report reviews the justification for some sort of rapid transit system, discusses three alternative plans for the building of such a system, the tax burden imposed by each, and the justification for settling on a north-south light rail line supported by a series of east-west iXpress-like bus routes. One of the most interesting pieces of information in the document concerns the current rate of rapid transit growth, as reported by the GRT:
Since 1999, annual transit ridership has increased from 9.5 million rides in 2000 to 16.5 million rides in 2009; a 75 per cent increase or 6.3 per cent annually. This increase is significant compared with the population increase of 1.85 per cent per year in the region. The commitment to funding increased service levels and new initiatives such as the iXpress has played a key role in ridership increases.
It also contains a map of the region upon which the proposed upgrades to our public transit system have been superimposed:
A map of proposed improvements to the transit system here in Waterloo Region (Click to Enlarge)
Finally, the document announces three public consultations to be held this month in Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo. The meetings will present current plan for the future of transit in our region, and accept public feedback on the proposed improvements. The meetings are as follows:
Thursday, April 8, 2010
United Kingdom Club
35 International Village Dr.,
Cambridge
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church
54 Queen St. N.,
Kitchener
Thursday, April 15, 2010
First United Church
16 William St. W.,
Waterloo
Check out the to the TriTAG Blog for related information on the future of transit in the Region of Waterloo.
Earlier this week, I stumbled across the third episode of a new podcast called The 100 that was all about issues local to Waterloo Region, politics included. One of the primary issues that was discussed in the episode was the state of public transit here in Waterloo Region, which naturally led into a discussion about the proposed Light Rail Transit system (LRT). Listening to the piece, I realized just how uninformed I am about the proposal. Since the LRT has been a divisive issue since its introduction, and since there are so many misconceptions surrounding the project, I decided to try and learn as much about it as I could. In the process, I will try to dispel some of the myths surrounding the proposal.
A little bit of background
The proposed route of the LRT (Click to Enlarge)
According to the Region of Waterloo’s Rapid Transit website, the LRT will be a system of public transportation that forms a backbone for attractive, inexpensive public transit that runs through our city centre. It will be constructed in two phases: in the first, a light rail system will be built between Conestoga Mall in Waterloo and the Fairview Park Mall in Kitchener, with a bus route running from Fairview Park mall to the Ainslie Street terminal in Cambridge. In the second phase, the bus line to Cambridge will be replaced with a continuation of the light rail transit line.
The entire project will cost the region an estimated $790 million to build, with an additional $1 million per year set aside to help build transit ridership in Cambridge for the first ten years of the project. The operating cost overhead added to our existing public transit system will result in a property tax increase of about $40 per year per household. The region is currently seeking funding for the project from the federal and provincial governments, who have promised up to 2/3 of the required monies in past budgets and announcements. Construction of the first phase of the LRT is expected to begin in 2012, with the line slated to open in late 2014.
Why the focus on the city centre? When many people hear about the plans for the LRT, their first reaction is that we shouldn’t pour such a massive amount of money into a transit system that will ‘really only benefit those who live or work near the city centre.’ The planned line runs north to south along King Street for the majority of its distance, and many see it as a system that will benefit only a minority of our population. So why the focus on the city centre?
Basically, the region is landlocked. According to the regulations of the province of Ontario’s Places to Grow initiative, by 2015, at least 40% of all annual residential development within the urban areas of Waterloo Region must take place in the urban centres of our existing cities. The regulations further stipulate that we must intensify these core areas so that our cities demonstrate a minimum of 200 people and jobs per hectare of land. This means an end to the sprawling suburbs that we’ve been building to accommodate our expanding population for the past 50 years. The new focus is on building upward instead of outward.
The Region estimates that when our census data is combined with these new provincial stipulations, we can expect an influx of around 100,000 people to our city centre over the course of the next two decades; likely more once the LRT and other urban renewal projects are completed. This growth will exacerbate the traffic problem that is already present in the area, and we will need to come up with some way to relieve that congestion, lest the city grind to a halt.
So what about building more roads or increasing the number of buses? Unfortunately, due to the less than ideal urban planning of years past, there really isn’t any more room for roads in the downtown areas of Kitchener and Waterloo, unless we demolish existing commercial and residential buildings in order to accommodate road widening. While this alone is an undesirable solution, wider roads also tend to reduce the desirability of a neighbourhood, as they increase noise and traffic, and present a physical barrier to pedestrian travel. Since the overall goal of this project is to increase the density of our downtown core, more or wider roads are not the answer. Another consideration is parking availability. Many people currently avoid our downtown areas because parking is at a premium. A fast, cost-effective transit system would allow both consumers and employees to reach downtown shops and workplaces without having to bring their cars with them.
A GRT Bus
All right, so we need public transit for the downtown core. How about buses? According to Grand River Transit, bus service alone cannot continue to provide enough capacity for the projected increases in regional population and transit ridership. The existing iXpress system runs a route very similar to that of the proposed LRT system, and is already running at near capacity. Simply increasing the number of buses on the road will lead only to further congestion of our busy roadways, as buses share a lane with other traffic, and are constantly stopping and starting. Traffic congestion already makes our bus system unreliable, and thus undesirable to the vast majority of our population. A transit system like the LRT that travels within a dedicated lane can avoid this problem.
Finally, unlike widened lanes or increased bus frequency, a permanent LRT installation is a quiet, efficient, and attractive public transit solution that tends to increase property values and standard of living along its route. Should this claim seem incredulous, I urge you to read about an example case study from the City of Portland, Oregon.
Will this thing actually be used? According to the Region, transit models developed in association with the Universities of Waterloo and Toronto show that ridership throughout the downtown core can be expected to nearly triple with an LRT system in place. The same model predicted a ridership of 27,000 passengers per day on opening (about three times as many as the iXpress route currently services), with an expected increase to 56,000 passengers per day by 2031. Although the estimated growth in ridership may seem large, one must keep in mind the estimated population influx of over 100,000 residents to the area over the same period of time.
Those who live outside of the area directly surrounding the installation will also be able to use it. The region has proposed three park and ride facilities, and a number of cross-city bus routes similar to the current iXpress system that will run east to west, ferrying passengers to and from the LRT backbone. Ideally, the combination of high speed bus service and the high speed LRT installation will create exactly the kind of desirable public transit system that solves the congestion problems that we face while urging the inner city growth that is required by provincial law.
However, some people aren’t happy with the plan…
The T4ST is a group opposed to the plan
As is to be expected on any large infrastructure project, some members of our community are unhappy with the proposed plan. Unfortunately, many of the fears on which they are basing their assessment of the plan are simply unfounded, and the dissidents show a lack of willing to educate themselves on the issues at hand before commenting. For instance, a petition organized by the Taxpayers for Sensible Transit (T4ST) claims that
“The LRT will turn King Street and other streets into rail corridors. For much of the route, King will be reduced to one lane of car traffic each way. There will be no parallel parking, and left-turns will be impossible. This will reduce accessibility and have a negative impact on many businesses.”
In point of fact, the vast majority of King Street is already one lane of car traffic in each direction, a situation that will not change. While it is true that parallel parking is likely to be removed along much of the route, larger parking structures like the one built across from The Shops at Waterloo Town Square can easily handle the displaced vehicles, and many people will use the LRT to get downtown instead of bringing their cars at all. Left turns will be no harder to make than they are now, as LRT trains will always be given the right of way at intersections, allowing them to move through quickly without disrupting traffic. While the construction process may temporarily reduce accessibility to many businesses along the route, the Region feels that its effects will be more than offset by the increased levels of pedestrian traffic that the LRT system will bring to the downtown core, and the increased population density that the project will encourage along its route.
Although the wording of their petition may be a little bit off base, the Technical Studies page of the T4ST’s website is a little bit better written, and is also worth addressing. In particular, it points out that the estimates of initial ridership and eventual rider growth increased wildly between two studies commissioned by the Region, one from 2005, and the other from 2009. Unfortunately, the claim of the T4ST does not take into account the actual conclusions of the 2005 study (*.pdf), as expressed in the following excerpt:
As points of comparison, the Edmonton LRT system, which is similar in size to the proposed Region of Waterloo system, reports 36,000 daily boardings (track length 12.5 km and 10 stations) with a transit service population of 660,000. By 2041, the Regional transit system and service population assumptions would be similar to Edmonton today. The Portland LRT system (serving a much larger 1.25 M. population) reports 80,000 daily boardings or 1,300 boards per km and 1,500 boards per station. For the Region of Waterloo LRT line, boards per km are estimated at between 900 and 1,900 (2011 to 2041), while boards per station are estimated at between 1,300 and 2,800 (2011 to 2041).
This paragraph rather clearly shows that even with the lower estimates of the 2005 study, the projected ridership of the proposed system was still found to eventually be comparable to similar systems in both Edmonton, Alberta and Portland, Oregon. On the same page, the T4ST also points out that the 2005 study showed that an expanded bus system would cost far less than a light rail system, and thus made much more economic sense for the Region. However, the group discounts the additional benefits of the LRT that the study also revealed. Quoting again from the 2005 study:
The TransDec model is typically used to evaluate traditional transportation projects and is not well suited to evaluate a complex initiative such as the Region’s [rapid public transit] initiative… The results indicate that although costs of LRT are higher than [bus rapid transit systems] BRT, the benefits associated with LRT are also much greater than BRT and that LRT is much more likely to achieve the benefits associated with the Regional Growth Management Strategy than BRT.
Unfortunately, careful reading of both the T4ST’s website and the studies in question reveal the formers’ tendency towards misinformation. Because the Region’s 2005 study addresses most of the concerns raised by the T4ST, those who agree with their concerns are urged to read it for themselves. The Tri-Cities Transit Action Group (triTAG) also runs an excellent page dedicated to dispelling the myths around the proposed light rail system.
Well, I’m Convinced Everything that I’ve been able to find about the proposed system makes it seem like a great idea, and one that will finally make our public transportation system attractive to the vast majority of our citizens. It’s no secret that urban sprawl of the kind that we’ve witnessed throughout south-western Ontario increases living costs, raises health concerns, and leads to more time spent commuting than with family. It’s also no secret that while Grand River Transit tries its best to provide timely and reliable bus service, it falls short at times. By avoiding congestion and helping to construct dense communities centred around the service, the light rail transit line will allow us to conform to the demands of the province’s Places to Grow initiative, and will ultimately result in a community that is more attractive and easier to navigate for all of our citizens.
Joel Salatin is a larger than life character. In his own words, he is a “gregarious, outgoing schmoozer.” If we’re relying on stereotypes to judge him, he is also the the opposite of what you’d expect from a farmer; intelligent, outgoing, and opinionated. Breaking the stupid farmer stereotype is just one facet of what he is trying to accomplish. His larger goal is to start a revolution that changes the way that we grow and eat our food. I was fortunate to see Salatin speak two weeks ago at the Bring Food Home conference in Kitchener Ontario, where spoke to the eager crowd on the idea of building a strong local food economy like the one that has sprung up around his family’s Polyface Farms in rural Virginia.
Perhaps the most important point that Salatin made about the industrial food system is that it can be differentiated from a healthy local food system by the concept of transparency. Industrial food production is not transparent, primarily because it tends to be a bad neighbour. Factory farms and processing facilities are noisy, smelly, polluting, and unpleasant to look at. Instead, farming in the manner practiced at Polyface concentrates on being aesthetically and aromatically pleasant, and invites people to visit. By putting the constraint of transparency on the operation, a farm is forced to be beautiful and community friendly.
In Salatin’s mind, the quest for farm transparency consists of a few key concepts:
Diversity: Single-species environments don’t appear anywhere in nature, so it holds that single-product farms are unnatural. Companion planting can give the farm something to produce at all times of the year, and helps to reduce weeds, animal, and insect problems.
Respect: We need to respect “the pigness of the pig.” To view animals as inanimate objects is to dishonour them, and the way that we treat our farm animals belies the way that we treat the weaker members of our society.
Balance: Everything in nature seeks balance, and the rise of food-borne diseases like e-coli correlates nicely with the rise of factory farming. Perhaps these newly rampant infections are nature’s way of saying “enough!”
A big part of the problem is that our society has been geared to drive its top thinkers away from the farm. The business knowledge of Wall Street holds that when the average working age in a company is over 35, it’s marketplace viability beings to decline because new ideas aren’t being brought to the table. Compare that with the fact that the average farmer in the USA is over the age of 60, and the problem starts to become clear. We need to bring brains back to the farm, because our current system implicitly entrusts the quality of our air, soil, water, and food supply to C-level students. Farming should be regarded as a sexy profession, with plenty of exciting problems that need to be solved by smart people who are driven to succeed.
Alright, so we can create a responsible and aesthetically pleasing farm. But what of the large factory-based processing facilities that package the majority of the products that we consume? As far as Salatin is concerned, in an ideal world, we would process our food right on the farm. In most every other resource-extraction industry, we put processing facilities near the source of the resources that they need to function. Economically then, it makes little sense to process our food hundreds of miles away from where it’s grown. On the other hand, the government will tell you that it is safer to process our food in highly-regulated government-inspected medically-sterile facilities. Unfortunately, like everything else in life, food safety is a subjective thing. The latest research into diabetes shows without a doubt that eating massive amounts of sugar in the form of high-fructose corn syrup is a life-threatening habit, but our government allows it anyway. The following infographic from Andrew Price at Good Magazine shows an interesting comparison of the food pyramid and what North American governments tend to subsidize:
The biggest lesson to learn from our experiences with factory-based food processing is that sterility is not necessarily equitable with safety. The vast majority of bacteria are essential to sustain life; Bleaching our meat to get rid of them is not. Further, the prohibitively high entrance costs to the food processing business that are created by such strict regulations tends to starve the market of innovative ideas. This isn’t to say that we should allow just anybody to process and sell meat; safety checks are necessary to ensure everybody’s health. Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemmatells the story of Bev Eggleston, an acquaintance Salatin who tried to open a small meat-processing plant for production of grass-fed beef products. He nearly bankrupted his family farm under the costs of building the facility and getting the approvals and licenses required by the USDA, only to have the plant shut down because it wasn’t processing enough animals to justify the time of the USDA-required on-site inspector.
As we know it, the factory-based food processing system also has a number of ethical issues. According to the documentary Food Inc., workers are generally underpaid semi-legal migrant workers from South- and Central-American countries trying to make a living to support their families back home. The factories know this and exploit them with low wages and unhealthy working conditions. The bottom line for workers is that it is not emotionally acceptable to have to kill animals all day, every day. Repetitive killing is a physically and mentally unhealthy chore that should not be the sole task of any person in a responsible society.
We live in abnormal times. In most cases, less than 5% of our food is grown locally, even though we have lots of farms right here in south western Ontario. As the following video sponsored by Hellman’s Mayonnaise Eat Real, Eat Local campaign illustrates, our local food system is in shambles, with the average item on the plates of eaters here in Kitchener-Waterloo having travelled well over four thousand kilometres before coming to rest on our plates:
The distribution system that has been created to serve the needs of the supermarkets and fast food restaurants has only existed for about 60 years. If we want the best food for our families, it needs to change. The supermarket is the great equalizer – the place where all food is made to look the same, with price as the only differentiating factor. The truth is that all food is not produced in the same manner, and some is better for you than others. The supermarket fails to preserve the integrity of the production behind the product, and fools people into thinking that the system isn’t broken. Good food is worth paying for, and incredibly cheap food should raise red flags with the shopper before it even enters the grocery cart. Of course, there have been efforts to create alternative markets for responsibly-produced local foods, like speciality stores and farmers markets. Unfortunately, farmers markets require that both the farmer and consumer make a commitment to get together and exchange goods. This is unproductive for the farmer and inconvenient for the customer, so it doesn’t really stand a chance of gaining widespread adoption.
Salatin finished his speech by noting that we need to bring cooking back into the home. An astounding number of families eat frozen food out of a box every night of the week, and thus create no demand for healthy, local, responsibly produced foods. Thirty years ago, every woman knew how to cut up a chicken. These days, many people have never seen a piece of chicken with skin or bones still attached. There is a sort of courtship romance to the experience of preparing food to share with your family, but somewhere along the line, we lost the idea of the family dinner; a time to share the day’s experiences over a plate of delicious nourishment prepared together and for each other.
The new food revolution doesn’t require us to give up our high-tech lifestyles. We just need to let our technology enable the local foodshed. In Salatin’s words, “We need to re-insert the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker into our communities.” Let’s learn from our mistakes – will we have a richer culture that we can be proud of with an industrial food system, or with a local food heritage?
This week on SlightlySauced, our regular crew is joined by special guest Greg Lehman to talk about the impact of the lowly text message on the inhabitants of countries with less developed infrastructures. Listen in to find out how the technology that we take for granted is making a positive impact on those without access to the utilities of communication tha […]
Jon
The primary contributor to and maintainer of the site
Steph
My girlfriend, who sometimes posts her writings
Downloads
Charles Darwin
An essay that I wrote about Charles Darwin’s contributions to Science and Society for a history class at WLU
DRM Essay
An essay that I wrote for an Ethics class I took at Laurier that examines DRM, the USA DMCA, and the failures of both as security against piracy
iTunes Playlist Exporter
Exports all of the songs in any iTunes playlist file to any location on your computer. Originally written to load a blackberry or other mp3 player with music.
MAX 3D Engine
A not quite finished 3D engine written in C++ and OpenGL for my CP411 computer graphics course.
Ted Rogers
A paper that I wrote about Ted Rogers’ personal and business pursuits for a history class at WLU
The Battle of the Atlantic
An essay exploring the lessons learned by both sides during the Battle of the Atlantic in WWII. The essay explores the military and industrial capabilities of the combatants, the technology behind the Enigma and Allied code breaking efforts at Bletchley P
Tile-Based Map Editor
Written in VB for my top-down XNA rpg, allows easy creation of 2D tile-based maps, and exports to both a PNG pallete and an XML map description. Use it or modify it as you see fit.
Bus Error
Jake Billo’s excellent weblog, always good for a laugh or some handy info.
Matthew Good Online
The excellent (although sometimes jaded) blog of Canadian musician Matthew Good.
MusikPolice @ Last.fm
My profile over at Last.fm, one of the few social networking sites that I use.
The Linux Experiment
Seven Windows users with varying levels of Linux experience attempt to run it various distributions on their primary computers for four months. Hilarity ensues.
TylerBurton.ca
The blog of fellow computer enthusiast Tyler Burton, who uses it primarily as a showcase of software he’s written.
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