One of my local candidates recently had left an automated message on our answering machine proclaiming his support of “safe neighbourhoods, good health care and the care of the elderly”. Just in case, you know, since all the other candidates are running for unsafe neighbourhoods and the mugging of senior citizens. With all this rhetoric and mother-truthing, three groups decided to ask the dominant Canadian parties what their plans were for privacy, copyrights, spam, and open source software. The Toronto Star also covered this topic.
Unsuprisingly, the political parties seemed to not have any clue what they were talking about. The Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens nebulously stated they were “looking at the issues”.
The Liberals were the first to respond, pointing out they created an anti-spam workforce, and also launched the infamous CDR tax levy.
The Greens probably responded the most lucidly, claiming they were for music sharing and open source, but didn’t get into many details.
The NDP and Bloc had no position on open source software, but agreed that spam = Bad!
The Bloc answered back in French, but that’s okay if you don’t understand la belle langue because every answer was the same: look up the Bulte Report, an interim government study done by my local Liberal candidate which basically approves Internet censorship.
Unsurprisingly, all four parties said that national IDs were bad.
The Conservatives didn’t bother to respond.
In any case, if you’re Canadian and haven’t voted yet, go vote. And remember, don’t eat your ballot, it’s illegal.