In Canada, media companies like The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, or CBC are liable for the content they publish and face severe penalties for publishing harmful, defamatory, or illegal content like hate speech. As a result, these media companies take great care to ensure the content they publish is legal and accurate, and in doing so, they preserve the integrity of democratic debate.
Platforms like Facebook and YouTube that host user-generated content consider themselves not responsible for users’ posts, and so far, Canadian police and prosecutors have done little to oppose that argument. This leaves platforms free to publish, amplify, recommend, and make unprecedented sums of money from content that would land most other media companies in court. Examples include child abuse, revenge pornography, incitement to suicide, or worse.
However there is reason to believe that existing Canadian law says that companies like Facebook are responsible for promoting hateful and illegal content.
The early internet held out the promise of Eden but delivered anarchy instead. Nowhere is this anarchy and its consequences more evident than on social media, particularly Facebook and YouTube.
This timely and essential paper documents how these platforms have been overrun by hate speech, threats, and other illegal or otherwise objectionable content. It makes a compelling argument that Canadian law, while certainly imperfect, is decently equipped to beat back the online harms—individual, social, and political—with which platforms like Facebook are increasingly synonymous.
This paper reveals that the platforms’ standard excuses for failing to address the scourge of illegal content—for example, claiming not to know about it until it is flagged by users—are likely insincere. Among the paper’s many striking insights is that social media platforms—by their own admission—have technology that correctly interprets even highly nuanced user-generated content before they publish it. What is most shocking is not the ghastly prevalence of illegal content online, but rather how little governments have done to crack down on the businesses that profit from it
The battle over Ottawa’s decision to impose a national price on carbon pollution is heading for a final showdown in front of Canada’s highest court this morning.
The Supreme Court of Canada will hear arguments over the next two days on the constitutionality of the carbon pricing system — a critical part of the Liberal government’s plan to cut Canada’s carbon emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.
The court is hearing three separate appeals from Saskatchewan, Ontario and Alberta — three provincial governments that argue the federal government is overstepping its authority and encroaching on provincial jurisdiction.
The COVID-19 pandemic has pummelled Canada’s automobile industry but it’s the lack of supply that’s helping to short-circuit electric vehicle adoption across the country.
Electric vehicle sales plunged along with gasoline-fuelled models in the second quarter of the year, when dealerships joined widespread lockdowns to prevent the virus’s spread. As the economy reopens, consumers are starting to return to auto showrooms _ but finding an electric vehicle continues to be a problem, especially outside Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario.
A series of roadblocks are contributing to the shortfall, including battery shortages and manufacturers prioritizing shipments to China and Europe rather than North America. It’s exacerbating difficulties that already existed.
The article says, “The COVID-19 pandemic has pummelled Canada’s automobile industry…”
Not true. The industry has been “pummelled” by the government. Depending on whom you believe, fossil fuel powers 30-95 percent of Canada’s transportation. The low end of this seems a little crazy. 30 percent would mean two-thirds of the cars and trucks on the road use something other than gas or diesel. This isn’t what I’m seeing…
I think it would be closer to the truth, if the reason for not having more electric cars and charging stations throughout the country, might be fear — the governments losing revenue from something they are in no position to replace. We can’t afford to lose that revenue.
They just want to make sure they have enough excuses to cover themselves.
Police in riot gear stand in a line against protesters next to a message spay painted on the Kenosha County Courthouse in August 2020 after the police shooting of unarmed Black man Jacob Blake. — (AP Photo/David Goldman)
How should a society allow for the legitimate use of force by police? Egon Bittner, the esteemed sociologist who specialized in policing, wrote in his book Aspects of Police Work:
“As long as there will be fools who can insist that their comfort and pleasure take precedence over the needs of firemen for space in fighting a fire, and who will not move to make room, so long will there be a need for policemen.”
Bittner argued that police “were created as a mechanism for coping with the so-called dangerous classes.” But the “dangerous classes” are simply people deprived of the privileges and societal benefits enjoyed mostly by rich white men.
Let’s consider five scenarios in which force is not required and where, therefore, police are not required.
Situations in which force is unnecessary
First and foremost, it must be acknowledged that most of everyday life needs no police intervention at all — including protests and demonstrations. That’s because people overwhelmingly police themselves, as individuals, families, road users, workplaces, associations, communities and protesters.
The use of uniformed, armed officers whose modus operandi is to demand obedience to barked orders or to resort to violence is clearly a criminally abusive method of dealing with such situations.
The mother and siblings of D’Andre Campbell, who was fatally shot by police in his home in Brampton, Ont., while in a mental health crisis, are seen in this July 2020 photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio
When it comes to traffic enforcement and accident resolution, police should not be involved. Speeding and other driving violations can now be monitored by technology or via public complaints. Leave accident resolution to insurance agents or other specialized officials. Where criminal driving is involved, unarmed driving violation investigators can be used.
The immediate decriminalization of the possession of narcotics and other drugs (beyond marijuana), as Canadian chiefs of police are recommending, is necessary. Addiction must be regarded as a public health issue to be dealt with by the appropriate specialists. Decriminalizing the entire illicit drug industry and regulating it like any other business would, obviously, remove the need for force by police in what is otherwise a huge area of criminal law enforcement.
Instead, we should create new organizations to handle much of what police do today.
Force doesn’t prevent or solve crimes
The use of force by police neither prevents nor solves crime for the vast majority of criminal offences. In fact, as Bittner wrote in his book:
“When one looks at what policemen actually do, one finds that criminal law enforcement is something that most of them do with the frequency located somewhere between virtually never and very rarely.”
Detective work certainly doesn’t require the use of force. It can continue to be conducted by unarmed, plainclothes specialists trained in talking to witnesses, conducting interrogations, assessing crime scenes and collecting evidence.
We’re therefore left with a problem. In Canada, spending on police in Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta is rising at a faster rate than other municipal spending as the national crime rate decreases. And in the largest 150 U.S. cities, police budgets have risen steadily for decades, even as crime decreased and during economic downturns, according to data compiled by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy from U.S. census records.
This suggests, correctly, that policing has little or nothing to do with criminal law enforcement. As crime has gone down, police budgets have gone up. So what’s policing for?
As Bittner argued, it’s about protecting the wealthy from the “dangerous classes.”
Threats to order, property
The “dangerous classes” are those who are seen as a threat to public order and property rights. The job of police has long been to effect control — colonial, racial, class, gender and/or sexual — over citizens. Clearly, it’s time for this to stop.
The solution lies not with enforcing economic and social inequality, but in removing it. Putting our tax money towards this — for example, by building affordable housing — makes far more sense than shoring up a police institution that is too often brutal, colonial, racist, sexist and homophobic.
Police use chemical irritants and crowd control munitions to disperse protesters during a demonstration in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 5, 2020. Hundreds gather regularly for rallies and marches against police violence and racial injustice following the death of a Black man, George Floyd, in police custody in Minneapolis in May. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
While there will always be occasions when legitimate force by police is necessary, they’re relatively few — and police shouldn’t be militarized in weaponry, rank or uniform. Get rid of all three, except for some small arms held in reserve for use only in exceptionally dangerous situations. Other agencies or officials can do much of what police do now.
So let’s defund the police and put the savings into social services. But let’s go further, and disband police forces as they’re currently configured and replace them with local community organizations, some highly trained members of which are empowered to use force as required by fellow citizens and according to circumstance.
(This post was first published October 11, 2019. It is now updated and republished September 9, 2020.)
After decades of ongoing climate talks, in December of 2015, some 195 countries approved the Paris Agreement, the first ever global climate accord .
The call was for an all-hands-on-deck approach—governments at all levels, individuals, private industry, and the big financial institutions—to tackling climate change, the largest threat ever faced by humanity. In the months that followed the signing, the world felt a sense of hope, optimism and relief. We were finally going to do “something” about climate change.
But now, some four years later, the initial enthusiasm has fizzled out and the Paris Agreement is on life support. Governments and world leaders lack the political courage to support the more ambitious climate action needed to match the urgency and scope of the climate crisis. The world continues to subsidize fossil fuel expansion and emissions continue to rise—1.6% in 2017 and 2.7% in 2018. However, less well known is the role of the banking industry in financing the climate breakdown.
Big Banks Financing the Climate Breakdown
Image: Banking on Climate Change 2020 Report
The Banking on Climate Change Report for the first time “adds up lending and underwriting from 33 global banks to the fossil fuel industry as a whole. The findings are stark: these Canadian, Chinese, European, Japanese, and U.S. banks have financed fossil fuels with $2.7 trillion since the Paris Agreement was adopted (2016–2019), with financing on the rise each year.”
The video which follows does an exceptionally clear job of examining investments the banks have made in fossil fuel industry infrastructure since the Paris Accord. It provides a compelling case why you should stop banking with any of the big banks and points out how to divest from your bank. Please watch and say goodbye to your “trusted bank.” It simply doesn’t deserve your trust.
Video Description: We all know the impact that fossil fuels, backed by huge government tax subsidies are having on the climate of our planet. What’s less well publicised, and arguably even disguised by the top banks, are the mind boggling levels of investment that they have also been pouring into Oil, Coal and Gas, even since the Paris Accord of 2015.
Between 2016 and 2019, Canada’s 5 large banks loaned over a third of a trillion dollars to fossil fuel producers. Our major banks are partnering with the fossil fuel industry and continue to be aligned with climate disaster. RBC (Royal Bank), TD (Toronto-Dominion), JPMorgan Chase, Bank of Montreal and CIBC (Imperial Bank of Commerce) are the top 5 bankers of the Tar Sands projects.
In an era of climate emergency, this is morally reprehensible and unconscionable!
Paris Agreement
The stated objective of the Paris Agreement is clear in Article 2.1.a:
Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.
The banking industry is out of sync with the Paris Agreement and “with the direction the world needs to take, and the emissions trajectory we need to get there. Banks must align with that trajectory by ending financing for expansion…while committing overall to phase out all financing for fossil fuels on a Paris Agreement-compliant timeline ~ Banking on Climate Change Report. — for discussion
The early internet held out the promise of Eden but delivered anarchy instead. Nowhere is this anarchy and its consequences more evident than on social media, particularly Facebook and YouTube.
