OnProbation.ca Feedback Forum - ask Stephen Harper a question

The Liberal party of Canada recently (today?) opened a new web site, onProbation.ca where they are discussing their ideas and have a Feedback Forum called Ask the PM where they state

Send your questions and comments to the Prime Minister and help us make sure that he's listening.

So I added a question regarding the taxation of income trusts, which is currently ranked number six and rising steadily.

Here's what I had to say:

The Tax Fairness Plan (which is anything but) includes a 31.5% tax on Income Trusts that has never been properly justified (the argument of tax leakage was never substantiated and independent analysis shows there is none).

The Prime Minister needs to come clean on Income Trust taxation and ultimately repeal the tax.

The Income Trust investment vehicle is available under many forms but in this form it was most accessible and beneficial to average Canadians (other forms, such as Flow Through Entities, are more complicated to participate in - although the Finance Minister himself benefits from his partnership in an FTE).

In the previous election Stephen Harper berated the Liberals for "raiding senior's next egs" by taxing income trusts (after public consultation) and yet no sooner was he in office that he imposed without consultation a punishing tax on income trusts.

I call upon the Prime Minister to repeal the income trust tax and review the entire Tax Fairness Plan.

Cross-posted on 2FatDads at OnProbation.ca Feedback Forum - ask Stephen Harper a question

CRTC Launches Online Consultation on Net Neutrality

As I discovered on Michael Geist's blog, the CRTC is offering Canadians the opportunity speak out on Net Neutrality in advance of their hearings on ISP network management practices.

I had this to say, in the Impact on User Experience section:

To me the internet is an infrastructure service. I don't expect my provider to give preferential treatment to any type of traffic based on the source, content, or destination. Just as I don't expect the city to regulate my water pressure based on whether I'm watering the lawn or taking a shower.

But to continue the water analogy I understand there's a difference when I run a bath (i.e.: bit torrent) and when I wash my hands (i.e.: e-mail). The bandwidth consumed by bit torrent can have a negative impact on my internet neighbours unless the total bandwidth is sufficiently high. Especially if we're all torrenting at the same time.

I'd love to see over-building of the network, but it's only a short-term solution until more people get on the net and use up all the over-capacity. Traffic management is unfortunately a necessary tool to ensure consistent service for all subscribers as-is continuous re-building of the network.

But the management should not require deep packet inspection - a simple high level valve that adjusts the pressure regardless of what is going through should be sufficient and would keep the ISPs neutral regarding how we use the internet.

It certainly is a concern to me that some ISPs have conflicting interests (they run multiple distribution channels, ex.: Cable-TV vs. Internet) and might specifically block or limit my access to their competitors in order to artificially increase the viewership of their material.

It would be like the water company cutting of my water if I didn't use their brand of soap!

See the full thread of my discussion...

Cross-posted on 2FatDads at CRTC Launches Online Consultation on Net Neutrality

Copyright law reform in Canada

There's a great article over the Globe and Mail about copyright reform in Canada.

The article brings up a couple points that I think are essential. Namely that public consultations in Canada a more geared towards hearing organizations (i.e.: corporations and lobby groups) than individual citizens; and that the copyright holder is rarely the artist but a distribution company.

To the first point the solution is some obvious: join an organization that reflects your values, there is strength in numbers. Of course finding the perfect group is not always easy or possible. At a minimum, write a letter or e-mail to your MP so they know how feel about Bill C-61 (the copyright reform legislation currently being discussed).

One of the points you should definitely bring up with your MP (and any organization you join) is that law needs to be able to evolve with technology and at a minimum be representative of the technology's current state. As the article says, when the current round of reform began things like iTunes and YouTube and Google Booksearch were almost non-existant.

To the second point I'm not sure what we can do. Most artists are bound by contracts, and even in the internet age the distribution companies do provide the artists a valuable service. Sticking it to the man by illegally downloading or sharing music and movies is not the way to go either.

One thing is certain in my mind though: this is a siege war. The one who can hold out the longest will win. If consumers cave to the music & movie industry demands then they will have won. But if we refuse to spend our hard earned money until we get what we want (and to me that means no DRM) then we will win.

Rock on!

Update: (Thanks JF)
Your MP's e-mail address can be found on the Members of Parliament page. And this is Bill C-61's page.

Obama win: good for the world, or not?

An article this morning in the Globe and Mail that reviewed the response in Asia to Obama's winning the US presidential election got me thinking the same logic applies to Canada!

You see Canada relies immensely, almost entirely, on trade with the United States of America to drive our economy.  According to the Canadian government 80% of our exports go to the USA and at over 22% of their exports we are their largest customer.  This represents OVER 2 BILLION DOLLARS A DAY worth trade!

I don't expect Barack Obama to slam the doors shut today just because he was elected.  But he's definitely on the protectionist side of the fence.  In USA Today Obama is quoted as saying "well, I don't think NAFTA has been good for America - and I never have." 

(See more NAFTA quotes from Obama and McCain via Google's In Quotes)

The economy is chilling, recessions are coming or starting around the globe, and almost everywhere in the world people are looking to America's new leader, a protectionist leader, to save the world!  I find that rather ironic.

I hope the sake of Canada that Barack's advisors and his cabinet prevent him from closing the borders or initiating any restriction on Canada-US trade.  But I fear that because he is the first black president and everyone's so emotional about it he will face less criticism and debate.

Tiger Woods and a hot chick!

Like G.W. Bush said, "this election is between Tiger Woods and a hot chick!"

From what I've read (mainly in the Economist) is that Obama should win only because he's changed the least during the election - McCain was actually a pretty choice if you look at his history (not like Bush at all) but since the election started he's done 180 degree turns on almost everything - except free trade which Canada depends on.  Obama is not against free trade per-se but he's been openly critical of the current free trade agreement with Canada & Mexico and others that Bush signed. 

So an Obama win will be historical, and it might be good for Americans, and it could be good for the world in general, but it might not be so good for Canada in particular.

Then again, I firmly believe the politicians do very little - I think the TV shows Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister were documentaries not comedies.  Politicians will be pushed around by events, they'll react - too late of course - and give themselves (and their cronies) pats on the back for three-and-half years then realize that elections are coming up again and try to do something memorable to save their jobs (i.e.: get re-elected, or in the president's case after two terms his objective will be to NOT be remembered for getting indicted or getting a blow-job in the Oval office).

Vote early and vote often!

Four more years of Flaherty

C A I T I - O N L I N E: Happy Halloween: How BCE successfully gamed Jim Flaherty....

I wish Flaherty had let BCE and Telus and everyone else become an income trust. In the end I don't think companies should be paying any taxes at all. That's right, NO CORPORATE TAXES!!!

The problem is simple: taxation without representation. Companies don't vote, so why should they pay taxes. Let them distribute their profits to the citizens who do pay taxes and vote on what is to be done with those taxes.

Admittedly that would eliminate the ability of the politicians to use tax law for incentives that drive desirable behaviour (it would also eliminate the ability of politicians to use tax law for favours that drive un-desirable behaviour).

But tax law (all laws actually) suffer from becoming quickly out-dated. What was good five years ago may no-long apply. But a parliament that's pre-occupied or out of session or in the middle of pre-election campaigning isn't going to effectively change the laws to suite the times.

Shareholders, who vote at least annually, can always accept changes to the distribution that suit the needs of the company and desires of shareholders. And these days governments (through various social insurance programs) are large shareholders so they would retain a direct say in a company's behaviour.

Happy Hallow e'en!!!

Google Sites is great, but missing a couple things...

Google Sites just announced they're going international:

Today we added support for 37 more languages.

But there's still a few critical things missing from Sites:

• Feeds! They have these great, blog-like pages for announcements but you can't get an feed off of them. You subcribe by e-mail to page or site changes and that should always be available but these days updates are better distributed by a feed (Atom or RSS).
• JavaScript! There's no way to embed JavaScript code on a Site's page. I understand Google's stated reason of protecting the world from nefarious webmasters, but then every other Google service provides JavaScript snippets for embedding!!! Sites offers a number of ways to embed content from other Google services, but having JavaScript would let me fine-tune things and would also let me get content from other services that Google doesn't have (yet :)
• Integration! I know Sites is just JotSpot re-branded but I wish Google (and others too) would integrate their services better. By that I mean homogenize. Why does Google Code use a completely different wiki system than Google Sites? Sites has a lot of features offered by Code's wiki but Sites looks much nicer. And Code has a really sweet feature: the wiki is stored in an SVN repository so you can access it with all the usual SVN tools.

I still have to say that Sites is a major improvement over Page Creator. GPC was nice, and we can see they kept the best parts (mainly the dialog boxes) in Sites. Hopefully we'll get some Googlers dedicating their 20% time to Sites and have the aforementioned features soon.

RIM to launch new BlackBerry app store

From an article in the Globe and Mail:

BlackBerry users suffering from iPhone application envy will soon be able to purchase games and other software directly from their coveted devices through a new online marketplace from Research In Motion Ltd.

I'm not suffering any iPhone envy, I think Apple is cool and way better than Microsoft but definitely over-hyped and over-priced.  I do agree this is a great move on RIM's part: not everyone wants to search the internet for new software or remember where they got stuff from.  Having it all in one place makes it easy to find - it becomes a feature.  To compete with Apple this is a feature that RIM needs.

And as a hacker, hopefully one or two workable bits of my code will show one day!

Hurricane Ike

Okay, so it was only a tropical depression by the time it blew through Quebec, but it still knocked a branch of one of our trees!!! Hopefully that's it for our trees, but we still have two and half months of hurricane season to go. And then our ice storm season to look forward to.

Trust conversion rules

Ottawa released the rules yesterday for Income Trusts to convert to corporations. The Globe and Mail has this story.

And I made the following comment:

Corporate taxes suck! Every company should be an income trust. Distributions don't have to be regular or even at all for capital intensive businesses - but the taxes on the profits should be paid by individuals not corporations! Corporations don't vote - they lobby, individuals vote - and that's where the govt's money should come from.

Electrify your driving

There have been a number of articles on CBC.ca lately about electric cars and the high price of gasoline. I've posted a few comments to these articles (and a few people have replied to my comments) but it's a bit hard to find your musings on CBC.ca's web site so I've gathered my comments together here.

Oil prices spike after attacks on Japanese tanker, Nigerian pipeline
Monday, April 21, 2008

Consumer demand drives the price at the pump, not some yahoos with a grenade launcher, or speculators, or oil companies, or governments. If you want to save money on gas, buy less! If If you want to live 20km from where you work then pay the price - I do, and I cut my travel time by 2hr vs. public transit and save a ton of money on extra daycare charges! Oh wait, did anyone catch that? It's all inter-connected. The cause of pump prices is obvious, but the solution is way more complicated. And now the farmers that are producing crops for ethanol to "green" our gas are driving up the price of food that used to be made with their crops! Someone wins so someone loses!!!

Sherbrooke says no to plant biofuels on ethical grounds
Thursday, May 8, 2008

Hey SimonSimon, I checked out your ZEN car website. Three small problems:
1) Even though it's built in Quebec you can't buy it in Quebec!
2) It's not rated for highway use so I couldn't even drive it 20 km to work (twice a day, five days a week, i.e.: 90% of my driving)
3) There's nowhere to put the car seat for my 16 month old daughter
And for the price of one ZEN I could buy TWO fuel efficient sub-compacts that are available in Qc, are highway rated, and have room for my daughter (but maybe not Rick Mercer's 20 cases of beer, only 10).

Gas prices surge to $1.51 in Montreal
Monday, June 9, 2008

To JoshERTW: Have you actually looked at the ZENN car's web site? They're NOT highway certified (40km/h max speed) so most people (including myself who lives in suburbs) couldn't even go to the grocery store (not without tripling my drive time); there's no backseat so where do I put my daughter's car seat? And they cost over $20,000 - twice the price of a sub-compact that has a backseat and can go on the highway! Plus the web site is written totally in Flash - sheesh, talk about abusive wastes!!!

Quebec tests electric cars
Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Sorry, but any vehicle that cannot go on the highway is going to have very limited appeal. I live on the island of Montreal, but even for me to get around in my own town I take the highway - technically it's avoidable but not without long detours.
Also, the these cars have no backseat so no where to put my daughter - i.e.: families won't buy them.
And a fuel-efficient sub-compact is almost half the price of an electric car (and it can go on the highway and it has a backseat).
Furthermore, it may be cheaper after 5 years to replace the batteries but I bet most people will have an easier time putting $20 of gas into the tank when it runs low rather than saving up for a new battery!

And I have a second comment on the last article that hasn't appeared yet so I'll update this post once it does.

Boycott the gas stations - boycott logic!

I got another e-mail today exhorting me to boycott some gas station (Esso and Shell, there seems to be some weird correlation between people who forward chain mail and don't like Esso or Shell). This one was a bit different in that the boycott was to last more than day, in fact I was supposed to boycott Esso and Shell or the rest of the year!!!

Good idea, but won't work for the same reason the "don't buy gas for a day" doesn't work: we're still buying gas! The demand stays the same, we're just shifting our supplier.

Boycotting your local Esso or Shell station just puts one neighbour (who owns the Esso station) against the other neighbour (who owns the Petro-Can/Ultramar/Sonic/etc. station). Both of whom probably buy their gas from the same refinery and have it delivered by the same transport company.

And the effect is even more perverse in Quebec: As demand at your local non-Esso/Shell station rises so must his prices - especially at the start when he didn't plan for all the Esso/Shell customers to come to his station (increased demand = increased price). Now you would think the Esso/Shell station would lower their prices since their demand is down, but Quebec has a minimum price law to prevent gas wars from bankrupting the independent retailers. As the other guy's prices rise the Esso/Shell station's minimum price rises too!!!

There's only one thing that determines the price of gas at the pumps: consumer demand. That's it. Don't blame OPEC, don't blame Esso, don't blame Shell, don't blame the government. BLAME YOURSELF!

If people didn't want it they wouldn't sell it. If people didn't want to pay enough to cover the cost, they'd find a way to lower their costs and then sell it. But if people are so addicted to driving, and flying, and buying groceries or goods that need to be transported long-distances, etc. then we'll pay $1.50/l of gas and $3 for a
watermelon and $500 to fly one-way to Toronto. And the gas companies will make money because what we get from gas is valuable to us!

Yes, I drive to work. Because public transit adds 1 hr to my commute each way and it's worth more to spend those 2 hrs a day with my family than the cost of the gas.

And finally, our local stations are BOTH Ultramar - long live free-market competition (ummm, wait a minute).

Snow check Easter Weekend

Snow spring has arrived and it's Easter Weekend, who would have though we'd have so much snow!? At this rate will I still be wearing my Sorel's in June?!

View the whole album online.

March Snow Storm

I love the snow! I think in winter it should snow, none of this wishy-washy maybe rain, maybe freezing rain, maybe snow. And I certainly was not disappointed this winter, what an awesome amount of snow we've had! But when we woke up to over 30cm of new snow this Sunday my back was starting to think enough is enough. Still, we had fun

The whole album is available online

Illinois university shooting

In the CBC article Illinois university shooting over in seconds: police there's a very interesting sentence near the end:

It's the fourth shooting at an American school in a week.

Yes, that's right, there were three other shootings on US campuses this past week! I hadn't heard of them. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, or maybe there really is a problem when students getting shot in school isn't automatically news and has to attain a certain threshold before it gets reported.

Nortel-Motorola Mega merger

According to the article Mega merger in today's Montreal Gazette Nortel and Motorola are going to combine their least profitable wireless divisions into a spin-off company. Let's just think about that for a minute...

Pancake Tuesday

Today is Pancake Tuesday So we're having latkes for dinner!!!

Latkes

submitted by Santiago at ifood.tv

I guess any kind of pancake would do, but we had regular pancakes not too long ago and felt like making latkes! (Mainly for the apple sauce I think)

Microsoft bids $44.6-billion for Yahoo

This morning's announcement that Microsoft bids $44.6-billion for Yahoo is causing a lot of speculation.

For my part, I could care less about Yahoo's or Microsoft's web sites - I use Google almost exclusively since they're way ahead of Yahoo or MSN/Live (and when I don't use Google it's because someone else is ahead of them which implies Yahoo or MSN/Live don't even register).

But what does concern me is the effect a "war" between MSN/Live/Yahoo and Google could have on Google's dedication to it's cool stuff.

I'm not sure how the industry works, but something tells me nobody makes any money when I visit Yahoo.com or Google.com; or when I sign-up for an account and create a personalized homepage. My understanding is these companies make their money selling ads. But Microsoft also makes their money selling software, hardware, game consoles, etc. Basically, Microsoft has tons of cash sources it can use to undercut Google, who probably depends a lot more on advertising revenue.

What would Microsoft do if they "won" the war? Well, I doubt they would produce cool things like the iGoogle homepage, Google Reader, Google Alerts, etc. And I doubt they make public so many services that people can integrate into their web sites. And I predict a bunch of MS Office Product Managers stomping on the servers that host Google Docs & Spreadsheets (followed by an attempt to use MS Streets & Trips to locate Zoho's head office and then an attempt to use MS Encarta to figure out why if Indians live in India isn't India a reserve somewhere in the USA).

So sarcasm aside, I think a successful purchase of Yahoo by Microsoft would lead to the death of the Google we geeks love, because online ad prices will go down and Google will have less cash to fund their 20% projects.

UPDATE Feb 3, 2008: My interpretation of the Google's blog post on this subject is they are coming to same conclusion as I am - although they clearly but the blame on Microsoft rather than the underlying mechanisms of a free market.

Google celebrates 50th anniversary of the Lego block

Google celebrates 50th anniversary of the Lego block with their logo today! Insert rambling reminiscing about childhood Lego memories here. Thanks Google!

First Storm Of 2008

Well, mother nature did it again, and followed our latest dusting with a beautiful winter day! Full sized photos are available in the online album.