The CAIRS, for Coordination of Access to Information Requests System dbase has been cancelled by the Conservatives.  See a list of articles on DataLibre.ca for more information.

I am learning much about the democratic process in Canada with respect to S&T, or shall I say how difficult it is for a citizen to do citizenship (see Darin Barney Paper about his conception of this word) and find a place in this S&T discussion.  I have discovered:

• how two scientists, in an act of civil disobedience got the issue out by following their conscious and quitting their engineering jobs at MDA. They did not want to work for an American arms manufacturer, particularly one that makes dirty land mines.
  
• that journalists who have dedicated their careers to watching defence and space issues can have a very large impact,
  
• that scientific associations may have less of a voice on political matters related to S&T as a significant number of their members work for the government and are therefore under a gag order.  So far I have not heard of non lobby non consulting scientific associations taking a stance.
  
• that Nobel Prize winning scientists who do not have to worry about career limiting moves can speak freely and if we are lucky, as in the case of Polanyi they do.  Clout helps!
  
• S&T committees, where their docs are located and how to get information from the committee clerk.  Perhaps I will begin to go and observe these committees in action.
  
• great leads in the articles I read about consultants, experts and spokespeople.  By following these I discovered some incredible lobby groups, consulting firms and loads of good research on space strategy, data strategies, EO strategies, along with the space and defence industry related to radar and satellite
• that I do not know anyone who is actively working on these issues, save 1 PhD student.  That I also know few people who know more than I do on this topic that I can have a conversation with. And I know very little.
  
• some excellent educational material about earth observation (EO) technologies
• that the first organizations to appear on the scene were less scientific in nature and more policy oriented on issues of defence and sovereingty.  Later what followed were stories from science and industry.
• that opposition parties were against the sale.  That the NDP was first on the scene asking hard questions.  I need to check what the Bloc has to say.
• I received two separate and different letters from NDP Leaders Paul Dewar, MPP my riding in Ottawa-Centre and Jack Layton.  With the Jack Layton letter I received a list of actions the NDP took on this issue (I’ll paste below as they are interesting).  I also found an open letter from the Liberals.
  
• framing the story is important, in this case it was sovereignty, access to military secrets, space strategy, space industry, tax expenditures, government mistakes, the fear of arms manufactures, private public good,  and sadly for me the issue of data access and environmental monitoring was pretty much last
  
• a petition and a form letter

Doing Citizenship:

• I got informed
• I blogged about it
  
• I talked to remote sensing specialists
• I pointed the issue out to S&T experts (seems that this type of issue, is well not on their radar!)
  
• I signed a petition and submitted a slightly modified form letter

Pretty lame really and quite frankly, is this all there is? Is this all that the means of democracy (see Barney again) in Canada has to offer?  What I have done will have little or no impact on the final decision by Prentice or the INDU committee.  It seems that being an intelligent citizen who cares about these issues, who has done some digging to make a judgment (what citizens do) about what is morally and ethically right here, is blocked by the means of citizenship in Canada.  There is in fact no real space for me/you to participate in this issue.  I do not know my place as a citizen in this debate. I was glad to discover the INDU Study where citizens and groups can have a voice, I am not sure how my voice will rank on the authority structures we tacitly adhere to in this country, and I am not sure how to really get involved in S&T policy at the moment nor how to have a real influence.

NDP Problems with the sale of MDA to ATK: (via email from Jack Layton)

1. Landmines Treaty: ATK is the largest producer of cluster bombs, landmines and other munitions in the US and one of the largest in the world. Allowing Canadian technology to enhance ATK`s capacity is a breach of the spirit, if not the letter of the Ottawa Convention on Landmines which Canada spearheaded.
2. National Security & Arctic Sovereignty: RADARSAT -2 was designed and funded in large part to monitor Canada’s vast territory, particularly the North. We currently have priority access to the use of, and images captured by the satellite, especially as they pertain to national security. All this could be lost. The technology transferred to ATK could also potentially be used for the continued weaponization of space.
3. BILL C-25: AN ACT GOVERNING THE OPERATION OF REMOTE SENSING SPACE SYSTEMS: This standing legislation (in regards to the operation of the RADARSAT 2 Satellite) is aimed at protecting Canada’s national security, national defense and foreign policy interests, while supporting our continued leadership in the provision of satellite remote sensing data. It also gives special powers to the Government of Canada to order priority access or the interruption of service when it is deemed necessary to protect national security, defense or international relations interests and to observe international obligations. No government official has yet provided any answers on how the approval of the sale under the Investment Canada Act will work with the application of the Act.
4. Taxpayer Investment: Canada has invested approximately $450 Million in RADARSAT – 2, which only launched in December of 2007. What will we get for that investment?
5. Employment: Under ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) many Canadian workers may be restricted from working on the classified US projects that MDA hopes to get from the sale and it is unclear what impact this will have on the industry here (ie: what parts of the projects Canadians will work on). Also, many of the brightest minds working in this industry have indicated that they will quit if the sale moves forward and Canada will lose much of this talent.
6. Impacts on Industry: Canada is a world leader in space and satellite technology. It currently has full design and production capacity. As the technology develops, it will not be Canada’s and we will slowly lose that capacity, as well as the foreign investment that comes with a world class industry.
7. Space Missions & Space Policy: Canada has been an active participant in space missions due in large part to our technological contributions such as the Canadarm. Future contributions will not be Canada’s to make. What will this mean for our future involvement in space missions?
8. Government Failure to provide leadership: One of the central reasons given for the sale of MDA to ATK, has been due to the dwindling number of projects and contracts to work on; something potentially resolved if MDA had access to the US market. There is no shortage of projects to work on however. The shortage has come from the government’s lack of action with promised projects such as the RADARSAT constellation, as well as the government’s refusal to support a contract that would have allowed Canada to build the European Space Agency’s Mars surface rover. A national space policy and leadership on the part of the government could resolve any economic reasons for the sale.

I also need to figure out why I am bothered by this issue, why I am compelled to follow-it, and what beliefs are motivating me to pay attention to it and take a stance, make a judgment.  At the moment I can say that rationally it does not make sense, however it was not rationale that got me paying attention, is was something deeper, emotional, intuitive  - which are knowledge sources that get you no-where or have no value in debate structures in the means of male based S&T technocratic led politics!

I am a big fan of the Free Our Data: the Blog by the Guardian in the UK. The Blog has been reporting Canadian initiatives 1 2 3 and I responded in an email to the Absolutely anyone can play and profit: Canada makes mapping data free for any use and well it got posted onto the Blog in the following article In print: Canada’s maps go free - but here’s more background: it’s not so simple.

I talked to Michael from Civicaccess.ca some weeks ago that one of the things i would like to do in 2007 is some journalistic writing on the topic of access to data in Canada.  At the moment there is no journalism or editorials at all on that topic in this country.  After reading the Free Our Data: The Blog since it started, being all happy to see all that CANCon there, teaching a cartography course on the topic and well talking about this stuff for years, i think i am ready to move into that direction and this would be way better if done with other folks!

There are some fantastic people in this country working on that topic, some NGOs who really need data, some hacktivists who want to play with data and make tools, young startup companies whose progress is impeded or big companies who want a data monopoly on some public datasets, government monopolies on the production and communities who just wanna study their neighbourhoods or propose new stuff but currently cannot as the data is just too darned expensive or accompanied with too restrictive a use.  

I think it would be awesome to have intelligent interviews with these people and to feature some of the great initiatives and problems in this country at all scales and to speak to people on tons of topics like Creative Commons licensing, the copyright of databases, issues related to page scraping, mashup data sharing, community dbases/portals, postal code and MP finding, and to have debates from all sides on data as a public good.  The CivicAccess List is so rich with both tool builders, data geeks and policy wonks and it would be great for some of that content at some point to be in the public sphere.

Lets see what happens! 

As I was saying to the CivicAccess.ca folks this morning, i was reading really important news articles such as Congolese men’s desire to get manicures & pedicures, Boy George doing community service with a broom and a dust pan in NY in a black number, and power outages in Tokyo when I came across my favorite subject matter - Free (as in no cost) and Open Access to civic data!

The UK Guardian informed me this morning that:

The government of Manitoba says it was the first in Canada to make all its publicly funded geospatial data freely available, without any licensing terms, to government, businesses and citizens.

Dam! Harvey Pokrant, director of the information technology services branch in the provincial capital Winnipeg says:

"Frankly, it just did not make good economic sense to try and sell data that the taxpayers already paid for, and it was costing us much more to try to sell data and manage distribution then we were making in revenue,"

This is what the folks at CivicAccess.ca have been saying! 

I am sooo jealous - they even had a public debate with the big cheezes - Ordinance Survey - on access to public information.  Sigh! Maybe one day we weee Canajiuns will gain momentum on this topic! 

Canada proves itself to be genuine land of the free
Michael Cross
Thursday August 10, 2006
The Guardian 

Public data drives public debate
Michael Cross
Thursday July 20, 2006
The Guardian

When I was in Montreal for a 2 week holiday, selflessly taking care of my Friends’ Condo and coco the cat while he and his wonderful wife were in Mexico, i had the good fortune to get a tour of L’auberge by Hugo the great, met one of the Koumbit members, heard lots about FACIL & Communautique, went to the Ile Sans Fil board meeting, monthly meeting and met their great pres Daniel, board members Denki, Benoit, Alexis, another wonderful guy with a great smile whose name i forgot!, met the Montreal contingent of Civicaccess.ca and got to spend some QT with Michael & Amy, Omar, Jessy, Amanda & Hannah, Afke, Jean-Chistophe, Heloise and had a great chat with Catherine and fell in love with the city. I also got to see the ever so wonderful Boris who saved me from starvation late one night, and met Julien & Ella too!  I even got to train where the National Judo Team trains at the Shidokan (ow!) and had a great dinner with Sayaka a visiting student. I have not had the chance to write about it all yet, as i needed to go back to work to get a rest.  I will briefly share one of the many reflections.

Bref! There is alot of grass roots hacktivism a la geek artsy community development variety going on, and it seems to be spilling over into the non-governmental-organization (NGO) sectors.  It seems like geeks are providing infrastructure - soft and hard - to community and art groups - and these geeks are also running their own community groups.  Seems like hardware, software, human resources, open source technologies, tek training, ideas and quite a bit of creativity all around are enabling community groups to get their work done, communicate and well develop technological independence.  The geek community groups are learning community development and art, and the whole scene is merging into a seamless whole of intelligent, artistic and civic activity. In fact, it seems hard to figure out who was what - artist, geek, hacktivist, community developer, entrepreneur, all of the above! The demographic i met was pretty much white guys (franco & anglo), between the ages of 20 and 40, but mostly near 30 from a variety of backgrounds. Denki, catherine and ella were in that age group, but a goils. And if i make a network map, there would pretty much be a major node connecting most of it all too!

This was the macro view! I will get into the details later! I did not even get to the cafe & fripperie, urban agriculture, art, food and serendipitous finds! What a great city that montreal! What fab people! 

Not in my wildest nerdy dreams (whatever those may be!) did i ever think i would grow up to know people who write thesauri, dictionaries and glossaries! 

But Dang Namit! i look around and realize that my friend Mim Pearse used to write dictionary definitions for a livin’, then i spent time with some metadata people who went and wrote searching schemas based on a bunch of key word thesauri type of thinggies (you can see their knowledge did not quite rub off!), and today I went and looked at Arizona Richard’s (Pearce-Moses).

A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology

and now i feel all fuzzy, informed, & nerdy. i’m also wondering about the circles i’m in and the company i keep! 

Richard - your thingamahwho glossary has been a real help!  You are helping us rascally geographers begin to understand what you wild archivists are all about, or at least sayin’!  I feel tears welling so i gotta go now! sniff! wipe! wipe!  And are the Pearse’s & Pearce’s related!

I love data, art, science and technology.  My knowledge of these is limited however I know just enough to comprehend their potential and to dream about integrating bits, bytes and gadgets into an interactive air quality art installation.

Last summer I was accused of trespassing! Oui! Moi! 

It was a really hot summer day, a 40C, humid, poor air quality alert day where you are supposed to reduce your physical activity to a snail’s pace and you are warned that it is dangerous to be out if you have any form of respitory illness, are elderly or a baby.  A few weeks earlier a neighbour, mother of two teenagers, died of an asthma attack on one of these days and i recall many late night ambulance driver & fire fighter visits bringing my son oxygen.

In the COOP’s parking lot, sat an old 1970’s brown van idling, its windows open & no driver in sight. Around the corner on Booth Street, the commuter street to Gatineau, is bumper to bumper traffic.  Each car with only one impatient driver, no passengers, windows closed, AirCon blasting, with cumulative expulsions of exhaust getting trapped under the tree canopies and dust particles from the Lebreton Flats soil rehabilitation endeavour thickening the air.  This is the spot where i engage in a small piece of urban beautification - the place where i garden. 15 minutes later, after weeding and counting single driver commuter cars, the van is still idling.  I reach into the window and turn it off. 

Busted! A bunch of "pox on your family" type of threats later, I am labeled an irrational radical, a trespasser! Sheesh!

John Vidal in the Guardian today discusses the meaning of 3C, (only a small scale temperature fluctuation really!).

3C is slap in the middle of the range that the ultra-conservative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says is most likely. A draft of their report, leaked by the US government, says greenhouse gas levels are at their highest for 650,000 years.

This human made phenomena:

• will mean that half the world’s wildlife reserves and corals will have gone,
• tropical forests will dry up,
  
• and perhaps a billion people will starve. 
• it could trigger the melting of the Greenland ice cap,
  
• the destabilization of the Antarctic Ocean current system
• and "irreversible system disruptions" (re-crazy weather!)
  
• malarial mosquitoes will be able to breed permanently in the north
  
• cement-eating termites move into northern cellars
  
• and so on
  

if emissions are not cut, sea levels will rise 43cm by 2100, and go on rising after that for 200 more years.

and most of the world’s islands and coastal states and cities will be flooded, become unbearable, and wild wind & rain storms push infrastructures to the limit. Plus Rien as les Cowboys Frangrants de Montreal would say! And i am a radical irrational tresspasser! oh la!

Bref, we humans are smart stupid beings, with lots of data, science and knowledge who can’t seem to modify behaviour! 

I refuse to give up though and will continue to:

• trespass,
• turn off idling cars,
  
• inform idling drivers about the City’s Anti Idling Bylaw and let them know they could get fined in a friendly community service sorta voice,
  
• pass around the NRCAN no idling campaign brochures,
  
• ride my bike,
  
• participate in critical masses
  
• continue to call into radio stations that tell the vulnerable to stay home, to instead request that drivers take transit and not idle.
  

But that is just not enough!

By the end of the summer my already limited diplomacy is significantly challenged by the tyranny of it all. 

So, I wanna do something on the corner of Booth and Albert.  That infamous commuter intersection between Hull (Gatineau) and Ottawa.  Along the road that moves public servants back and forth across the Ottawa River between two provinces (see the Zone 4 City Booth & Lebreton Intersection WebCam), near the busy transitway full of racing buses, and the route with the Chaudiere Gov. Buildings, the Domtar Paper Plant, and War Museum to the north and Natural Resources Canada and Dows Lake to the south.

I would love to play with air quality and respitory illness data and live feed these quantitative bits into a qualitatively comprehensible form such as an esthetically pleasing installation. The piece could reflect the physiological sensation of loss of breath, represent the affect of a good AQ day or bad AQ day, drowning, or submersion, it would be beautiful on a clear day and be ugly or stressed on a bad day, it would readily and meaningfully communicate what is going on globally and interconnect local + immediate activities that influence local and global climate change. And so on…

It would need to be an artifact people want to see, look forward to seeing and where they wonder -  what the … on the corner of Booth on my way home is doing today! A subtle, meaningful, political, symbolic statement.

sigh! I feel better now! 

ben oui! J’ai travaillè avec un groupe de personne superbe et devouè à ce sujet à travers le pays et aujourd’hui on lance! Youppie!

*******************

Lancement publique - AccèsCivique
26 avril, 2006

Nous souhaitons vous annoncer le lancement d’un nouvel espace en ligne dédié à l’engagement citoyen au Canada : Citoyen-ne-s pour un Accès Libre à l’Information et aux Données Civiques (aussi désigné par AccèsCivique). AccèsCivique a été fondé par une vaste communauté à travers tout le Canada composée de bibliothécaires, d’employés gouvernementaux, d’universitaires, de spécialistes du droit, de défenseurs des logiciels libres, de professionnels en géomatique et d’acteurs du monde communautaire. Nous croyons fermement que des informations civiques libres d’accès représentent un outil incontournable pour tout citoyen engagé dans un contexte de société de l’information.

Nos buts sont :

1. D’encourager tous les paliers gouvernementaux (municipal, comté, provincial, fédéral) à mettre à la disposition des citoyens les données et informations civiques dans des formats ouverts, sans restriction d’utilisation et ce gratuitement.

2. De supporter le développement de tout projet citoyen se basant sur les données et informations civiques.

Un accès libre aux données et informations civiques nous aide à faire des choix éclairés en tant que citoyens et électeurs. C’est également un gage de transparence et d’imputabilité de nos gouvernements, un élément essentiel dans toute démocratie. Ce sont là les éléments clés nécessaires à la compréhension, à l’analyse critique et à l’élaboration des communautés dans lesquelles nous vivons.

En tant que citoyens engagés dans nos quartiers, nos villes, nos provinces, nous travaillons pour développer une communauté de pratique centrée sur les données civiques libres au Canada.

Le temps est venu de développer cette vision. Joignez-vous à nous pour en faire une réalité !

Fondateurs : Darin Barney, Marcus Bornfreund, Stéphane Couture, Patrick Dinnen, Daniel Faivre, Michael Geist, Stephane Guidoin, Michael Gurstein, Daniel Haran, Ted Hildebrandt, Alton Hollett, Cory Horner, Tracey Lauriault, Nathalie Leclerc, Michael Lenczner, Graham Longford, Hugh McGuire, Russell McOrmond, Robin Millette, Joe Murray, Michael Pilling, Joel Rivard, Gabe Sawhney, Phillip Smith et Marc Tuters.

Pour participer :

Liste de discussion - http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca/

Adresse Web - http://civicaccess.ca/

I have been working on this with some really great folks across the country and today we launch! YES!

******** 

Public Launch - CivicAccess
April 26, 2006

We would like to announce the launch of a new online space for Canadian civic engagement - Citizens for Open Access to Civic Information and Data (aka: CivicAccess.ca). CivicAccess is being founded by librarians, civil servants, academics, lawyers, free- and open-source advocates, geomatics professionals and community planners from across Canada. We are motivated by the belief that open civic information and data are necessary for being engaged citizens in an "information society".

Our goals are:

1. To encourage all levels of governments (county, municipal, provincial, federal) to make civic data and information available to citizens without restrictions, at no cost, and in useable open formats.

2. To encourage the development of citizen projects using civic data and information

Access to civic information and data help us make informed choices as voters. In addition it helps to ensure government transparency and accountability - essential elements of a democracy. These are the bits and bytes required to understand, critically analyze, and re-envision the communities in which we live.

As engaged citizens in our neighborhoods, cities, and provinces we are working to develop a community of practice on open civic data in Canada.

This is an idea whose time has come. Please join us in making it a reality!

Founders: Darin Barney, Marcus Bornfreund, Stéphane Couture, Patrick Dinnen, Daniel Faivre, Michael Geist, Stephane Guidoin, Michael Gurstein, Daniel Haran, Ted Hildebrandt, Alton Hollett, Cory Horner, Tracey Lauriault, Nathalie Leclerc, Michael Lenczner, Graham Longford, Hugh McGuire, Russell McOrmond, Robin Millette, Joe Murray, Michael Pilling, Joel Rivard, Gabe Sawhney, Phillip Smith and Marc Tuters.

To find out more:

Discussion List - http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca/