There has recently been quite the uproar lately about what is happening in Downtown Brantford. The City Council has been planning to knock down 41 old building as part of their downtown revitalization project. These building date back to before Canada was even founded in 1867, so you can imagine there are more then a few people ticked off with this type of city planning.

Photo credit to Oliver Casarsa from the Facebook group

My original thought on the project was to tear them down. I lived in Paris, just down the road from Brantford and spent a good amount of my formative teenage years hanging out in Browntown. I moved to the area in 1994 and bore witness to the slow decline of the Brantford Core. There used to be comic book shops and book stores that I’d frequent, or memorable nights spent playing video games at Funtown then checking out a movie at the old $2 Cineplex. All of those things are gone. Purdy’s, a favourite among friends of mine for their weekly Monday music trivia. Long gone. Since this stretch of Colborne Street had been dead or dying for at least 10 years now, my thinking was what is there worth saving down there?

After doing some reading through the Facebook group called Save The South Side of Colborne Street, a couple things came clear to me. Originally when I heard they were knocking these buildings down I assumed they had a plan in tow that would utilize this space and help the ongoing revitalization process going on in downtown Brantford. As it turns out, not so much. All they really have planned is a spot for a combined athletic facility to be jointly used by the YMCA, Laurier University, Nippissing University and Mohawk College, who all have campuses in Brantford, which will occupy only 1/3 of the cleared space. The City Council is essentially rushing headlong into this project because it has government money to burn as part of Canadian stimulus spending. They don’t have a full plan for how this land is going to be used, they just want to raze the land in hopes that developers will come running to build projects on the land. The City claims that nobody has been willing to redevelop the area in the last 20 years, so they’re just going to knock them down. The Province of Ontario has told the City Council to reconsider their decision on this issue, yet they wish to soldier on.

Personally I think that this is just a big gambit by the City to force the issue of redevelopment within the core. In the end they have expropriated the buildings, moved everyone out and now have a large amount of empty buildings with a lot less strings attached then before. I think the city all along has wanted a white knight-type developer to swoop in and save the day here. By threatening to knock down 41 pre-confederation buildings, they’ve brought the downtown redevelopment to the forefront, garnering a lot of mainstream coverage of the issue. Their goal here has been to find a developer to take this project on, so raising the profile of the issue could enable them to pull on the heart strings of some developer, get them to open their wallet and get involved.

Think of the public relations victory for the City Council, the incoming developers and Brantford as a whole if the buildings get saved and properly redeveloped? Guess we can just hope this is what actually comes to pass.

As we all know the world at large is in a financial crisis. Basically the underlying structure of our economy is faltering and every industry seems to be calling for bailouts, the latest being GM. To me this seems so idiotic. As we grow up we’re always taught stories like the squirrel and the grasshopper, yet this doesn’t seem to apply in the business world. GM and other North American auto makers have been making oversized gas guzzlers for years because of their high price margins, yet they totally ignored the underlying trend that people want more fuel efficient cars. It’s not something new. Whether gas is $.75 or $1.50 a litre, people are always looking for ways to save money. The Japanese, Korean and European automakers have been working on these issues for years, given the fact that the rest of the world isn’t nearly as spread out as we are in North America and require compact efficiency in their vehicles. It just shows their business model is entirely flawed.

Why should they be bailed out? What happens when an average person starts an ill advised business, loses their shirt on the venture and has to close up shop? Just because they decided to sell space heaters in Florida and failed at it doesn’t mean they should get a government handout to support their mediocre business model. Mom and Pop stores that fail to adapt to the times always end up closing their doors in the face of increased competition. The beauty of free market is it will self correct. If one company goes bankrupt, there is always another company waiting to seize the opportunity and fill the void.

The problem the US has is that they have let so many dinosaur industries remain viable that they are now at a crossroads. The music industry would die if it weren’t for the copyright lobby. If the government allowed the market to run its course, the record labels would die and music services like iTunes would fill in the gaps, cut out the middleman and sell music directly from artists. The auto industry would bottom out and be forced to evolve. The US automakers would probably merge and be forced to become leaner and more streamlined to compete with foreign automakers. Coddling these businesses and giving them handouts just prolongs the inevitable.

Yesterday Corina and I went to the Cambridge elections office to sort out our voter registration. We’ve moved twice since the last election so we didn’t end up getting our voter cards in the mail. Since we were already there we were allowed to vote in advance of the October 14th election day. I am typically a true blue Conservative and pretty much have been for as long as I can remember. Even as a kid before I could even vote I tended to lean PC. So why this year did I decide to vote Green?

Since the last election I had been thinking long and hard about who I would vote for in the next election. The Conservatives really screwed the pooch when it came to their environmental track record and in these last couple of years this has really become a larger issue for myself. It’s plain to see the World’s climate is changing. While I understood the whole move to scrap Kyoto as something entirely unattainable given the timeline it required. But the absence of a viable alternative plan really put me off. The second issue that really put my nose out of joint was the handling of net neutrality and copyright reform in this country. Both are big issues and folding like a cheap lawn chair to corporate interests really bothers me.

While I still identify with many of the Conservative views on issues, I find I can’t justify given them an unchecked majority mandate. Even though minority governments aren’t ideal for getting stuff done, it does tend to keep the party in power honest. At this point it’s a pretty foregone conclusion that the Conservatives will get in again. So to me voting Green is sending a message to the Conservatives that I don’t agree with their environmental policies. I’m not deluded into thinking the Green Party will ever take power. For the sake of saying Canada really has a 2 party system, just no one has told the NDP that yet. The party you vote for gets paid $1.75 per vote, per year. To me knowing that my vote helps the Green Party grow is an added incentive to support them. It feels less like “throwing my vote away” then actually helping the Green Party get stronger in this country. I won’t say I won’t vote for the Conservatives in the future, but they will have to earn my vote back.

I kinda wish they had actually done the whole song, it kinda seems like it’s half done. Either way it’s entertaining. This reminded me of this video from a couple of years ago of George W. Bush singing U2s Sunday, Bloody Sunday, which is a little better done, but uses the same concept.

I happened upon this article on Canoe about how Kenny Hotz of Kenny vs Spenny fame stirred up some controversy with his Jesus Sucks banner. If you’re familiar with the premise of Kenny vs Spenny, it’s basically 2 childhood friends who stage competitions against each other for bragging rights, with events like “Who can ride a cow the longest?” or “Who do kids like better?”. The show is absolutely hilarious and I highly recommend it. This banner was part of a show called “Who can piss the most people off?”. Now obviously this whole stunt was entirely formulated to piss people off, and from the looks of it, Kenny managed that.

There are people filing Human rights complaints and just generally bitching about things. People need to lighten up. To me this statement isn’t an indictment of Christians or some deeply vengeful message inflicted on them. Think about it. People say sports teams suck. Reality TV shows suck. Future Shop sucks. Sure it has a negative meaning, but really it’s about the most vanilla statement you can make about anything.

People just need to grow up and not look to the government and courts to intervene. It’s the societal equivalent of running to cry to your parents about how your sibling called you a name. Suck it up and quit whining about it.

I try not to be too political on this blog, but I felt the need to chime in a bit on the US Presidential race. It seems that Barack Obama has finally claimed the Democratic nomination. He will be facing John McCain in the November election. This whole election has had so much hype and coverage just because it comes in the wake of 7 and a half years of George W. Bush as President, and most people are clamoring for change. False wars, failing economy, devalued dollar and a collapsing housing market. Bush has screwed up the US up so badly that it is just plain obvious something has to be done.

The Democrats are chomping at the bit to get back in office, and should be a slam dunk to get voted back in given the recent Republican track record. The only problem is that they’ve managed to screw up what should have been an easy election victory. How did they screw it up? By going for too much, too fast. They managed to nominate not one, but 2 unconventional candidates to be their Presidential candidate. First you have a woman, Hillary Clinton. Then you have a black man who half the country thinks is Muslim, in Barack Obama. Now that Obama has won the nomination there is talk of having Hillary as his running mate. They’ve managed to turn the focus of the election from “Let’s get that dumbass Bush and the Republicans out of office” to “Do we really want a black man and a woman in the White House?”. The Democrats aren’t asking for change, they’re asking for a complete revolution in the way people think. I know women and African Americans have fought for equality for more then a century now, but does anyone really believe there still aren’t double standards and stereotypes floating around in the heads of the average voter? 8 years of George Bush may make people clamor for change, but the fact that the Democrats have managed to cloud the issue by opting for too much change might just turn out to be shooting themselves in the foot. I think if the Democrats go with a ticket of Obama/Clinton the election slam dunk is going to turn into a last second hail mary shot. They might still win, but I think they added a lot of doubt into the whole equation.

Canada’s coming DMCA will be the worst copyright yet
Looks like Canadians will be gearing up for another round of copyright stupidity. In Canada I think we’ve always viewed ourselves as progressive folks when compared to the US. Now they want to pass a bill that will not only match the stupidity that is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but actually exceed it by not allowing copyright circumvention of any kind for any device. So if you want to copy tracks from a CD you own into iTunes for use on your iPod, under this new legislation you would be a criminal. How is this right? This whole bill is aimed at appeasing the interests of the RIAA, MPAA and the big media conglomerates they represent. This whole bill displays a complete lack of understanding of digital distribution in the internet age. If they were smart they would actually consult some experts in the field that actually know something about copyright instead of towing the copyright lobby line.

I consider myself a Conservative supporter in this country and typically am not a person that believes in political action. But this really irks me to the point I’m actually going to contact my MP about the matter. I think it would be pretty much political suicide to push this forward and I plan to make my stance on this known and suggest you do too if you feel strongly about this issue. You can find the contact info for your local MP here, as well as you can email Conservative Jim Prentice at Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca about this matter. I don’t like the idea of Canada becoming a backwater country because of draconian copyright laws. We already pay levies on media that we buy and on media devices like iPods or any other type of media player whether you are a copyright infringer or someone who uses CDs and DVDs to back up their own data and downloads all their music through iTunes. Canada prides itself on our progressiveness and this would be about 5 steps backwards for our society.

As you might have heard, Russia has claimed the North Pole as its own. This is absolute crap and I’m quite pleased Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay stood his ground and dismissed the whole thing. Arbitrarily declaring that you own the North Pole based on unconfirmed geological surveys done by Russian scientists seems sketchy at best.

This smacks to me like Russia just trying to assert itself in the face of irrelevance. Since the Soviet Union broke up Russia has pretty much been an also-ran world power. They know they are well on their way, if not already eclipsed by China in terms of world power and status. Now they’re to the point they’ll do anything to get their hands on more oil, which in today’s day and age is what equates to power. It used to be all you had to do was have a couple thousand nuclear warheads and you were a big fish. Now nuclear weapons are like iPods, everyone has one. The US and Russia still have the 80gb models, but a lot of other countries own iPod nanos, so nobody really cares who has an iPod anymore.

It seems pretty sad that Russia is to the point that they need to use, as Peter MacKay put it “15th century” posturing to put their point across. If they really thought they had a proper claim they would actually go through the proper channels to make a claim, but I think they know if they put the choice in front of the International Community they’ll get the proper slap upside the head they deserve over the whole thing.

Kids In The Hall did this sketch in their first season that I thought was particularly relevant given the recent events.

Today the blanket smoking ban goes into effect across Ontario and I have to say, I couldn’t be happier. Being able to go into a restaurant or bar without coming out smelling like an ash tray cannot be understated. You don’t realize how great it is until you experience what it was like before smoking bans. There have been certain cities that had their own bylaws, but in Brant County they never had one in place which I always disliked. When I would go out to a bar I had to be concious that I shouldn’t wear contacts because the smoke dried out my eyes. I’m glad this isn’t a concern anymore.

Loose Change 2nd Edition
Here’s a link that may take you awhile, so you might want to watch it when you have a good chunk of time.  The video is about the alleged 9-11 conspiracy.  I happened across it last night and ended up watching all 80 minutes of it.  To me, the documentary was pretty eye opening.  It layed out a pretty convincing case disputing the fact that Al-Qaeda initiated the attacks on the US and that it was in fact the US government that planned these attacks on itself.  I highly recommend checking it out.

While I am a little skeptical when it comes to things like that, as the creators typically skew or omit things that might cloud the message they’re trying to convey. Stuff like Fahrenheit 9/11 was decidedly politically motivated and acted essentially as Democratic party propoganda.  This documentary doesn’t seem to have the same kind of agenda.  So watch with with an open mind and draw your own conclusions.

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