Health Canada proposes a 50 percent increase in most fees on pesticide manufacturers, the first increase in charges since 1997. The fees would still not cover most costs associated with reviewing farm chemicals worth $2.2 billion a year in sales, the department said: “If we made our fees too high, it would potentially be a disincentive to industry”.
A group denied Canada Revenue Agency status as a charity for its promotion of “cosmic” oneness has lost a bid to take its case to the Supreme Court. Justices declined to hear an appeal from the Humanics Institute of Ontario: “There was no god in this, which is generally a requirement”.
The Quarter of Combat
in the city of Paris.
Used to be the site of animal fights,
public hangings.
Nowadays, it’s a residential neighbourhood
and a landscaped, 61-acre park
featuring a lake, a waterfall,
and a miniature Roman temple.
To repeat our top military commanders,
there are no Canadian soldiers in Combat.
For all we know
they are 10,000 km away,
somewhere in northern Iraq.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
Pat and Mike, two rival saloonkeepers on Main Street, were complaining of poor sales when they hit on a scheme. Pat took a dollar and went to Mike’s to buy a glass of beer, then Mike took the same dollar and returned the favour at Pat’s. On it went, Pat and Mike swapping the same dollar for beer. By month’s end both had phenomenal sales, and no income to refill their empty kegs.
So author Michael Strangelove hits on a peculiar analysis of what ails television. He complains media companies insist on charging for content to recover production costs while kids today just like free beer. “Free, easy, simple and feature-rich – this is not something that can be yanked out of consumers’ hands without a fight,” says Post-TV. Um, yes, but television, like beer, costs money to make. How would Post-TV suggest that television networks get cash to keep refilling the program schedule? The question does not interest Strangelove.
Post-TV documents an industry in transition. Thirty-nine percent of Canadians subscribe to Netflix and other unregulated internet TV services, according to the CRTC. They are still outnumbered by cable subscribers (47%), but the writing is on the wall: “The internet is transitioning into an alternative vehicle for watching television and movies,” Strangelove writes. “This in itself would not amount to much except that at the same time content and audiences are spiraling out of control. There are rumours and dire forecasts of the end of network broadcast television. There is the possibility that the internet will devastate the television and film industry in the same manner that it gutted the music industry.”
The phenomenon raises questions of federal regulation and the future of programming. Of Canadians under 34, the Netflix generation, only 28 percent tell the CRTC they consider “community programming” important. Internet TV is neat for watching Family Guy reruns, but who is left to cover the local school board? And if ad-sponsored network television is dead, where will media companies find the money to subsidize their news divisions?
Details, details, dismisses Strangelove, a lecturer at the University of Ottawa’s department of communications. He did not interview any TV executives for his book. The main fact worth noting is kids today “prefer to get their news online for free or from the Daily Show,” he writes.
“It is the changing habits of the young that are transforming the music, news and publishing sectors,” Post-TV insists; “The younger generation of internet users is the canary in the coal mine and will indicate if death is in the air for the incumbent television industry.”
It’s not, of course. Paid media remain the only reliable source for sports, news, documentaries and public affairs, the programming millions buy. More importantly, it remains the only means of meeting the cost of coverage. Netflix doesn’t interview school board trustees; YouTube doesn’t read the federal budget; and piracy remains a crime, though Strangelove celebrates theft: “The general trend has been towards the mass criminalization of everyday behaviour and increasingly draconian penalties for downloading something that is otherwise of marginal worth.”
There is something odd. Post-TV is not available for free on Strangelove’s website. The book is financed by taxpayers’ grants through the Canada Council For The Arts and still costs $28.48. It appears when you work as a university lecturer and heavily-subsidized author, you can opine on media economics and leave it to someone else to figure out how to fill the keg. Pat, meet Mike.
By Tom Korski
Post-TV: Piracy, Cord-Cutting, and the Future of Television, by Michael Strangelove; University of Toronto Press; 360 pages; ISBN 9781-4426-14529; $28.48
Lawyers, accountants and everyday contractors including janitors doing casual work for unions will be required to tell the government of their political activities under Bill C-377, a Senate committee has been told: “If that’s not an intrusion in privacy, what is?”
A federal judge has cited Employment Canada for incompetence in managing the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, describing the department’s paperwork as a “mess”. Justice Michael Phelan ordered the agency to pay an employer $2,500 in costs for bungling his application: “Do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence”.
Canadian airlines would be compelled to guarantee bilingual service for passengers aboard international flights under a private Liberal bill introduced in the Commons. It follows a Supreme Court dismissal of damages claimed by an Ottawa-area couple who complained they were denied French-language service on Air Canada flights to the U.S.: “No one saw this coming”.
Canada must ban a common industrial wood preservative as a public health peril, say environmental advocates. The chemical pentachlorophenol, commonly used in fence posts and telephone poles, has been cited as “extremely toxic” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: “There are safer chemicals”.
The Government of Canada should cite the word “veteran” with a capital V in official use out of respect for those who served in uniform, says a Royal Canadian Legion branch. Cabinet did not comment on the request: “We’re talking about the meaning of words”.
NHL players are seeking an exemption from Conservative Bill C-377 mandating disclosure of confidential union data, saying the measure is so broad it compromises licensing agreements on hockey cards and other paraphernalia: “This is the first time I’m seeing this”.
The Royal Canadian Legion opposes a bill to make November 11 a legal holiday, though the measure was approved in principle by a near-unanimous Commons vote. The veterans’ group said it feared the bill would turn Remembrance Day into “just another long weekend”: “Look at Victoria Day to question what observances are held across the country to honour Canada’s longest-serving monarch”.
Cabinet has stepped back from wholesale federal deregulation of food and beverage container sizes following industry and provincial protests. The original 2012 proposal prompted criticism Canadian processors would lose production to U.S. factories: “They had no idea”.
Vietnam is a corrupt and repressive police state that should be pressed by Canada on its “abysmal human rights record”, a dissidents’ group has told MPs. The testimony at a Commons committee came as MPs passed a bill to commemorate the 1975 fall of Saigon: ‘Corruption runs all the way to the top’.
More than 7 in 10 foreign visitors arriving in Canada by air will be subject to mandatory federal background checks under regulations to take effect in a year, excluding U.S. citizens. The rule applies to visitors from countries who don’t already require a Canadian visa including French and Germans: ‘It’s something between a visa, and nothing at all’.
The Senate has passed into law a red-tape reduction bill described as largely symbolic in repealing unnecessary regulations. The bill contains no penalties for violators, and exempts tax filings: ‘It doesn’t sound sexy to most Canadians’.
