serendipityoucity

Frig is all I have to say! And what will we human dumbfoundadly think up next! Mafia ’sank nuclear waste ship’

When I lived in Japan I used to see trucks who were supposed to be disposing of toxic waste safely, having little tubes sticking out of them and dragging onto the pavement slowly but surely leaking their content as they drove around! We would see in Fujino illegal dumping of construction waste from Yokohama and my favourite were the sludge disposers sucking from outhouses in one hood then dumping their load in the hood next door! The high cost of disposal creates an underground economy of dangerously stupid behaviour! It is as if, no matter what we do we are doomed to stupidly intoxicate ourselves!

Addendum:

There is a 48 hour grace period for submissions until midnight Tuesday.

I also submitted the following addendum to my earlier submission based on a discussion on CivicAccess List between Jennifer Bell and Russell McOrmond and public education work over at Visible Government. Thanks to both of you!

Another solution to improve Canada’s Copyright law is to abolish crown copyright all together and follow the lead of the NZ Government Open Access and Licensing (NZGOAL) framework. Wherever Crown Copyright would be used, Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) would be used instead. The proposal argues:

“Now more than ever is there a very present need to bring information the Government holds on behalf of its people into the public domain so that it may be used in ways that stimulate innovation, generate cultural creativity, social interaction and dialogue, while also kick starting economic growth.”

This is very interesting and could be very helpful for the dissemination of government data. Also, the 2009, UK government’s Power of Information Task Force final report found that Crown Copyright was a major barrier to the re-use of Public Sector Information, and recommended that Crown Copyright be changed to a ‘Crown Commons’ license to encourage re-use.

The creation of progressive unrestricted use licenses by some government departments has moved the access discourse toward citizen participation, these are not global enough across government, but are an extremely innovative and creative step in the right direction.

Today is the last day!

Below is my submission to the copyright consultation. I read a number of submissions, and clearly, I am more of a novice on the topic than I thought. I am not at all an expert in this area, but spoke about what I know, in my own language and hope other non experts will also add their view. I saw that many submissions are about art related content and have not yet come across science nor data topics. If you come across any can you point me to them?

Public Sector Information, Government Data, Government Digital Maps, Publicly Funded Research Data - belong to citizens.

Author: Tracey P. Lauriault

Contact information: tlauriau@gmail.com

I am a researcher and a geomatician. I have worked for many years with a number of community based organizations, not-for-profit groups, research groups and the private sector to create evidence based maps, indicators, tables, analysis, and reports for decision making. I have worked in housing and homelessness, environment, quality of life indicators, child care, education, public health, social planning, etc. I am also a founding member of CivicAccess.ca and a co-author of datalibre.ca.

The greatest impediment to my work has been the high cost of public sector data & information and restrictive licensing regimes that surround these. A few examples help illustrate this: Statistics Canada Data is cost prohibitive and data pricing seems arbitrary; Vital Statistics Data are very expensive; the database that links postal codes to electoral ridings is cost prohibitive; postal code base maps are very expensive; non-private health data from CIHI are very expensive again; there are arbitrary reasons for not releasing non private non security risk data from numerous federal governmental agencies, and there are very restrictive use licenses for public sector information in general and especially the aforementioned Federal organizations.

High costs, restrictive licensing, arbitrary policies and practices, and the government acting as a monopoly on access to public sector data - data citizens have already paid for with taxation - has greatly affected the kinds of research I can pursue, has strained the pocket books of charity organizations and has left citizens and community based organizations marginalized in democratic debates since they do not have access to the data they need to formulate their arguments.

I have tried, as a citizen to analyze the characteristics of my neighbourhood, compare those with others, develop a business plan, investigate the socio-economic profiles of school catchment areas and school closures, or do a spatial location analysis for a new park. I have the skill, knowledge and tools to do this work, however, the cost of the data and use restrictions either a) make it to expensive to do this work or b) restricts how I can disseminate the results.

There seems to be a lack of coherence from the Federal Government of Canada regarding access to and fair use of public data by the public. These are data that the public has paid for already. Crown Copyright and cost recovery for public data impede participatory democracy and puts citizens, community groups and small businesses at a disadvantage when it comes to evidence based planning. It also thwarts innovation since instead of focussing on value added activities, businesses, researchers, non-profit groups and citizens are scrambling to pay for and to adhere to multiply conflicting licenses as opposed to a license that makes it easy to use these data, share these data and add value to them.

To include citizens in the process of decision making I recommend an unrestricted user license such as that developed by two Federal Government programs GeoBase and Geogratis. Also, the government should act less as a monopolist regarding its public data and more as a public agency and abolish cost recovery policies, and create an infrastructure to share these data with their necessary metadata and licenses. We also need to consider the long term preservation of these to ensure they can be disseminated for the long term. This I believe will enable and facilitate the process of citizens and the Government working together. This will also provide a way for us to think together, particularly on troublesome issues such as homelessness.

Sincerely Tracey

I am really excited that this woman is coming to town! I try to watch the NFB film about her work Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics just before every census. It is because of her that unpaid work gets tracked and women all over the world stopped calling themselves homemakers and started calling themselves nurses, nutritionists, childcare providers, nursing home care attendants, handywomen etc. on the Census.

She was also instrumental at tracking the unpaid work of women in subsistence economies. She revealed how their work, instrumental at the survival of the household, never made it into national accounting systems! She developed time maps to assess how a woman’s day was structured versus a mans. That technique has made its way into many development practices to truly assess the work of women in overseas development projects but also to assess the affects of the decisions made by male leaders on women’s behalf, and that affected women’s lives in a real way. Also, she was instrumental at making New Zealand a nuclear free zone!

Her book If women Counted is what got me to really think about the politics of the census, the politics behind the ‘objective’ and seemingly benign questions that were being asked and how those influence how we envision our societies and what deserved to be tracked across time. That book also got me excited when the long form of the Census would show up at my door or the short form for that matter!

Octopus Books and Oxfam are thrilled to welcome Marilyn Waring and launch her new book 1 Way 2 C the World: Writings 1984-2006 on Monday, April 27th at 7:00 p.m. at the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library (120 Metcalfe).

Marilyn Waring is a truly absorbing figure known as a distinguished public intellectual, a leading feminist thinker, environmentalist, social justice activist, and for her early political career after election to New Zealand’s parliament at age twenty-three. Assembling some of her most thought-provoking writings, 1 Way 2 C the World is a compelling collection of essays and reflections on many important issues of our time. Written in lively, crisp, and often humourous prose, Waring provides illuminating commentary on topics such as gay marriage, human rights, globalization, the environment, and international relations and development.

Including accounts of being in India at the time of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and in Ethiopia’s during the 1984 famine, Waring’s vivid writing remains contemporarily relevant, while this collection includes recent writings on the post-9/11 world. Brimming with pieces that are essential reading for anyone concerned with the state of the world, 1 Way 2 C the World is bound to fascinate and inspire.

Now here is a job for me! Idlers beware! Only in New York and other parts of the US though , I think I would have to modify the outfit a little but I know this job would give me pleasure and I see no other way to enforce these issues.

Polluters, Beware: These Eco-Police Officers Are for Real

Officer Stevens’s uniform is olive green, not blue, and he wears a Stetson hat that gives him a friendly Smokey Bear look. But drivers of smoke-bellowing trucks, owners of oil-oozing body shops, vendors of undersize fish and other city dwellers underestimate him at their peril. As a member of a small force of police officers whose sole focus is enforcing environmental laws, Officer Stevens carries a gun and handcuffs and can haul a suspect off to jail. These environmental conservation officers number barely 20 in New York City, out of about 300 around the state, but issue about 2,000 summonses for violations and criminal charges annually.

read more here…

This is just the awesomest! Obamas to Plant White House Vegetable Garden

The following is a proposal I submitted today for a mini course!  It was fun to write, it would be fun to work with students.

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Title: Sniffing geography and mapping scent

Geography is scented and places are odoured. Smellscapes mark seasons, industries and neighbourhoods. Our noses detect danger, geographic features and environmental change.  Scents can be politically charged, think of land-use and pig farmers or garbage dumps; the pulp and paper industry or chocolate factories. This mini course aims to awaken our forgotten sense of smell and sensorially immerse students into places by: introducing the characteristics of scent; expanding olfactory vocabularies; exploring the geography of smellscapes; showcasing smell technologies; featuring scented art; and learning basic olfactory cartographic techniques. Student research sniffers will ground their newly acquired scented knowledge by using their noses to collect smell impressions; annotate maps; calibrate and smell truth findings with peers and represent these in scented map projects.

Instructor: Tracey P. Lauriault - PhD Candidate and Researcher at the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre

Grades: 8-12, Ontario/Sec. 2-5 Quebec

Reference:  Lauriault, T. P., & Lindgaard, L. (2006). Scented Cybercartography: Exploring Possibilities. Special Issue of Cartographica on Cybercartography, 41(1), 73-91.

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Geography & Cartography Excerpt from the reference paper.

The following discussion sketches how olfaction is geographically conceptualized. The list is by no means exhaustive, but it illustrates methods that cartographers could adopt.

6.2.1 Olfaction and Places

Scents are geographically associative. Regions, countries, urban and rural areas, neighbourhoods, and households have characteristic smells. Household scents are intimate to each family but also represent cultural norms, habits, and rituals shared among a community (Dulau 1998). India is known for its aromatic oils and spices; Egyptian markets smell of cinnamon and dust (Staples 2004); urban areas yield whiffs of car exhaust, industrial districts broadcast the malodorous scents of pulp and paper factories, and neighbourhoods can be characterized by ethnic foods, while the countryside can boast of the sweet smells of farm manure, vegetation, and trees. Industrial sectors are associated with particular odours (e.g., coal burning, refineries, agro-food), and natural features such as hot springs and woodlands have their own signature scents. Other scents are associated with daily spiritual and cultural rituals (e.g., burning incense) (Dulau 1998; Classen 1993; and Nakbi 1985), are nomadic (e.g., scents of temporary food stalls) (Dulau 1998), or are connected to historical practices (e.g., aromatic trees in courtyards) (Lignon-Darmaillac 1998). Antarctica is characterized by an absence of smell, apart from odorous penguin colonies and human-introduced smells (e.g., diesel). Developing a database of place-specific and georeferenced scents with attributes and a calibrated case-study vocabulary is quite conceivable. These data could be mapped with annotations to become scented map attributes.

6.2.2 Olfaction and Time

Smells mark time. They evoke seasonal change like the funky smell of the spring thaw in Ottawa, orange blossoms in Grasse, mouldy leaves in autumn, and idling cars on cold winter days. Flowers are densely and successively planted for the perfume industry in Grasse: mimosa in January, jonquil in February, orange blossoms in April, and Jasmine between July and October; violets bloom almost year-round (Genders 1972, 207). For southern Tunisians, incense triangulates the time of lived experience, marking fasts, marriages, deaths, and everyday experiences (Nakbi 1985). Smells also indicate the time of day (e.g., rush-hour fumes). Empires transported perfumes, spices, teas, and flora from far-away lands. The ‘‘silk road opened up the Orient to the western world, but the scent road opened up the heart of Nature’’ (Ackerman 1990, 6). In Le Parfum, by Patrick Suskind (1985), the protagonist Grenouille is born without personal scent but with olfactory genius. His nose guides us through the densely populated working-class districts, fisheries, rivers, tanneries, caves, palatial parks, and perfumeries of eighteenth-century Paris. Alain Corbin (1986), in The Foul and the Fragrant, maps the social and cultural smellscapes of France, from 1750 to the late nineteenth century, ranging from the stench of urban Paris to its perfumed gardens, to the reek of the cemetery of the unfortunates captured in epidemiological maps, ending with advances in urban planning whereby cesspools are turned into sewer systems and paved roads protect citizens from earthly fumes. Smellscapes of the first half of the twentieth century included the smell of baking and laundry day. Modernization has sanitized some smellscapes and replaced them with new ones.

6.2.3 Olfaction and Climate

Odiferous plants adapt to their climates, appear seasonally, and attract insects that propagate them. Lavender, thyme, and dill grow in the north and cloves, vanilla, and star anise in the south (Pitte 1998). Seasonal smellscapes or climatic zones could be represented olfactorily in scented time lines, climatic zones, and land-cover maps. North, south, and equatorial maps could be accompanied by keynote-scented cues. The challenge will be to select the right associations.

6.2.4 Industry Smellscapes

Industries have seasonal, local, and global smellscapes. Perfumers in France were once co-located where the best roses were produced. Italy and Spain produced much of the essence of citrus, lavender water was produced in England, and Bulgaria produced flower perfumes (e.g., violets, jasmine, acacia, orange, and rose) (Genders 1972, 206). African states also produce odorous substances, such as marjoram, lavender, and thyme, while eucalyptus, rosemary, and dill are distilled in Tanzania (208). B. Dezert (1998) discusses changes in smellscape with changes in the agro-food industry. The case study examines factory production, landscape, and how what is grown and reared changes along with shifts in transportation routes and methods (i.e., both landscape and smellscape). Industries are also vulnerable to the whims of international finance (e.g., sugar and coffee prices, cheese and wine), and these smellscapes could be studied at different scales. Scented graphs can make visible the olfactory dimensions of environmental change (e.g., land-cover change) (Mainet-De´lair 1998). Maps of particular industries could include the locations of factories, distribution networks, and other scented elements of the industry (e.g., fields, distilleries). Counter-mapping could also apply smell to represent the industrial north as reeking, logging concessions as foul smelling, or biodiversity as aromatic. Olfaction could represent industrial change, qualify perspectives, and also critique.

6.2.5 Culture, Class, and Society

Smell is associated with culture and class. Smells may evoke historical, geographical, economic, or cultural associations, or ‘‘des zones olfactifs géographico culturels,’’ as the authors of Le Marketing Olfactif call them (Barbet and others 1999, 163). In urban areas, city wealth is inversely related to stench, industry, and refuse. Poverty is associated with the personal smells of peasants, the sweat and oil scent of fast-food workers, and the reek of slums (Corbin 1986; Porteous 1985; Pitte 1998; Largey and Watson 1972). By contrast, wealth is associated with a summer cottage surrounded by fresh air, scented gardens, and perfume. According to Graham Dann and Jens Steen Jacobsen, ‘‘such patterning of smell follows the medieval division of cities by crafts and guilds, as also the later ghettoization of cities according to immigrant communities’’ (2003, 11). Odour is also a marker of identity, otherness, and social structuring (Classen 1993). Scent is a hostile marker of racist stereotyping and social exclusion (Largey and Watson 1972; Le Gue´rer 1990). Scent preferences are associated with nationality, and International Flavor and Fragrances Inc. (IFF) has many smell experts on site (Ackerman 1990) who provide a sensory assessment of market niches. IFF recently completed a study of the geographic and demographic segmentation of China (IFF 2005a). Scent designers and manufacturers have already created scent kiosks combining scent and geography. For Expo 2000, a visitor information system displayed integrated scents characterizing each continent (Aerome 2005). Aerome also developed an audio-visual film presentation of environmental themes, accompanied by scents synchronized with scenes, for the United Nations. This project used scent broadcasting hardware and software linked with touch screens and PCs. Could political maps be territorially scented with the odours of official flowers? Could a spatial location analysis of poverty and dirty industries be scented? Who would stink? The economically marginalized, or the dirty industry that takes advantage of that context to locate its factory?

6.2.6 Ordering Territory

Humans order territory and space using their noses. People of the terroir and the growers of la vigne in France ‘‘have relied on olfaction not only to tell them where to plant different varietals, but also, perhaps more importantly, to build cognitive maps of these regions’’ (Press and Minta 2000, 180). The gout de terroir is the ensemble of savours, tastes, and aromas that can only belong to one grape varietal grown in one place (Press and Minta 2000, 180). The concept of terroir and the French appellation controle´e system are important because they offer a vital, living example of the critical role olfaction plays in ordering whole regions and land uses (Press and Minta 2000, 181). The Tukanoans mark their territory with smell (Classen 1993, 81), and when travelling, they continually sniff the air and remark on territorial and tribal odours (81). Odour is thus a marker of identity, territory, and intertribal relations (Classen 1993). Can boundaries and buffer zones be scented? Would these scents have to conform to the visual map’s lines?

6.2.7 Private and Public Space

Private and public spaces are olfactorily mediated. Henri Lefebvre tells us that ‘‘where an intimacy occurs between ‘subject’ and ‘Object,’ it must surely be smell and the places where they reside’’ (quoted in Rodaway 1994, 61). US public space is odourless in order to avoid susceptibility to emotions, while in Tunisia, people love to share the smell of jasmine bouquets to create small pockets of scented friendship and familiar spaces in the vast public arena (Claval 1998, 69). Robert Dulau (1998) studies the odours linked to domestic space and notes that front and back courtyards are transition zones between the public and the private where the smells of home and the broader community mix. These bounded scentscapes, he argues, connect inhabitants in a cultural, social, and habitual space where time and space are peppered with keynote scents. Dulau has also mapped what he calls the invisible scents of architecture of Tamil homes. These scents are intimate to each family, but they also represent cultural norms, habits, and rituals commonly shared among most villagers. Could affiliations that cross boundaries, unseen on a political map, be scented (e.g., the Kurds or the Naga)? Could private scents be blended to represent the unique scent of the collective?

6.2.8 Urban Planning

Urban planning is greatly influenced by olfaction, and research into air-quality sensing devices and related issues has dominated smell research in geography (Porteous 1985). Stinks, stenches, and miasmas are major issues for city governments. Citizens complain about smells, and officials attempt to measure, track, and assess their intensity while mediating the needs of both those who dislike an odour and those who create it (Hutchinson 2004). Hog farms are contentious, and engineers are training sniffers downwind to measure the severity of odours and assess how close farms can comfortably be built to residential areas (‘‘Manitoba: Engineer’’ 2004; ‘‘Hog Wild’’ 2005). Smell is also highly political, as discussed earlier with the Monterey example, and scientists employ a variety of models (e.g., dispersion and emission) to study the social welfare and health impact of scents on a community or to avoid future problems (Environmental Quality Board of Minnesota 1999). The same is true for factories and sewage treatment plants located away from dense residential areas. As discussed, planners are using electronic noses and trained sniffers/nasal rangers to collect scent data to inform urban and rural decision making (Jacobson and others 1998; Porteous 1985; Dulau and Pitte 1998). City planning committees could be enlivened with constituents broadcasting pig-farm, refinery, or factory smell-intensity maps. Alternatively, a spatial location analysis on the placement of aromatic vegetation in an urban setting could lead to a pleasant sensory urban planning.

6.3 OLFACTION IN CARTOGRAPHY

Geography is odoured. Scent as a theme is making its way into cartography, but there are only a few scented maps. A design competition produced the Twin Cities Odorama: A Smell Map of Minneodorous and Scent Paul (Figure 2). This two-sided poster map includes olfactory ‘‘experiences emanating from the intersections of people, enterprise, and physical environments’’ (Twin City Odorama Team 2003). The reader is taken on a synthetic tour where words, colours, and images evoke scents (although scents are not actually embedded in the paper map). Noxious smells have inspired earlier cartographers. Franc¸ois Emmanuel Fodere´ highlighted the social dimension of olfaction with his 1813 map of noxious smell thresholds, which contained places considered to be infectious threats, such as cemeteries, cesspools, and brothels (Corbin 1986). We can only imagine the noxiousness scale in the legend! To create Géographie des odeurs (Dulau and Pitte 1998), a group of geographers studied and visually mapped scents. Lucile Gresillon (1998), with a group of trained sniffers, mapped the odours of the historical pedestrian enclave ofSt-Séverin in France, while Dezert (1998) mapped the smells of industrial zones and Sophie Lignon-Darmaillac (1998) captured the location of the aromatic trees and plants in the ancient town of Seville in Spain. The Association Senteurs et Saveurs en Droˆme promises an olfactive experience and promotes the production of scented agriculture and the maintenance of terroir with their scented and gustatory route map (Figure 3) (Association Senteurs et Saveurs en Drome 2005). These few examples, combined with the previous geography discussion, demonstrate that it is possible to systematically use olfaction as a way to understand culture, daily ritual, social patterns, history, space, and place and to inform ways to conduct spatial location analysis or attract tourists. Invoking scents on a map is one thing; scenting maps is another matter altogether. Scented cartography is in its infancy. France Telecom, OlfaCom, le groupe SQLI, and Les Vins de Bourgogne created a fragrant interactive Web site, Balades olfactives, that provides information about the wine industry using audio narratives, music, sounds (e.g., cork popping), images, film, and smell (Figure 4). A small icon appears to indicate that a scent is available, and users require a scent diffuser to broadcast these scents in their homes. Thomson Travel Agencies in the United Kingdom, Remote Media, and Dale Air have developed the first multi-sensory travel pamphlet (Remote Media 2004). A short movie is shown in a virtual-reality headset device, synchronized with location-based scent. Users sit in a reclining chair, wear the headset, and take a sensory tour of Egypt. They can hear and see toes scrunching in the sand, smell a sea breeze, or experience a market smelling of ginger, cinnamon, and curry (Staples 2004). The virtual traveler is subjected to a poly-sensory experience of the market beyond the ‘‘tourist gaze’’ (Dann and Steen Jacobsen 2003).

I accompanied my ever so wonderful neighbours H & G to the Centre communautaire Tétreau in Hull to hear Stéphane Dion discuss the Liberal Party of Canada Green Shift / Tournant Vert economic and environmental platform.  The meeting was convened by le député Marcel Proulx of Hull-Aylmer and and I think it was mostly liberal supporters (clues - standing ovation when M. Dion entered, a chant in unison at the beginning and intermittent clapping at the end of many declarative sentences irrespective of the quality of the declaration), I did see some green party members, and there were people from environmental, housing and anti-poverty NGOs, unions and Le conseil régionale de l’environnement et du développement durable de l’Outaouais (CREDO).  There were some good questions such as: How can the Green Shift plan be coherent with urban planning, designing infrastructures to reduce dependence on cars and increase public transit?  How will the plan tie in with urban Canada? Will the plan yield basic goods becoming more expensive if producers offset the tax onto consumers?  How to link environment, economy and social justice, particularly when it comes to housing and the poor?  Can we have a different electoral system beyond first past the post to increase the chances of green friendly parties getting seats?  How to improve the public service in that direction?  Why not a tax on gas? I was impressed that M. Dion actually answered the questions, which is highly unusual for a politician, furthermore he did so intelligently.  In the end, the plan introduction, the discussion, the questions and answers were all too general for me to formulate an opinion.

I have to read about carbon taxes and talk to some environmental friends before I can even deconstruct what was being proposed.  At first glance it seems somewhat counter intuitive.  It is basically a carbon tax on polluters and a tax rebate for all.  We all get a tax cut, the reduction in revenue to the government will be offset by taxes paid by polluters.  The revenue generated from polluters will go toward investment in green technologies, R&D, green jobs and to support green house gas reduction strategies. Low income families are supposed to benefit as they will pay less taxes which in turn means they can spend more on energy reducing appliances etc.  At one point he stated that a family earning 10 000$ per year will receive a tax return of 2 600$ which they can reinvest in energy conservation (hmm, seems to me like food is more what such poor families will spend their money on and what of reduced revenue for the social transfer payments to the provinces!).

The idea is to tie the economy to the environment, and make the private sector and consumers who pollute pay, and they in turn will find ways to pollute less in order to pay less taxes and in the long term will create green jobs in Canada.  The Carbon Tax would be incremental, 10% per ton the first year up to 40% the fourth year.  Apparently Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the UK and others have done the same with some success.  Citizens in Colorado apparently have been doing this for 10 years and have been increasing their reliance on sustainable sources of energy and reducing dependence on fossil fuels in a very significant way.  I wonder what the incentives will be to stop companies from shifting production to polluter friendly locations?

I also wonder if we can generate more revenue from polluters than we can from taxes, and if not how will we regain the necessary resources to pay for the shift and for other social programs such as health care for instance.  Also in the long term if we no longer pollute where will revenue come from?  Or will we become addicted to pollution tax revenue as we have from gambling revenue – which does come near to covering the social cost of gambling? Dion stated that a better, more diversified and intelligent private sector will be more prosperous as it will supply the world with the environmentally or carbon reducing technologies, products and knowledge it needs.  I am also not convinced the poor will divert their tax savings into energy efficient equipment, the poor are already good for the environment as they can’t really afford anything in the first place and will probably want to consume whatever they can at the most affordable price irrespective of greenness – re-organic vs regular cheaper vegetables. 

Irrespective of my trepidation, the idea is interesting and I have to read more about it before I can develop a critical opinion about the plan.  It is at least a vision, which is more than anyone else has provided (did I just say that about the Liberals? – oye veigh!).  Time will tell if Dion can convince Canadians to shift spending and the entire economy in a more green direction, and if Canadians are ready for an intelligent leader.  

Article in Le Droit. 

According to this Globe Article: Where gadgets go to die, Sims Recycling Solutions does not ship its electronic toxic waste products abroad as per the Canadian Signed 1994, the Basel Convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal which is monitored by BAN - Basel Action Network.  Sims is HP’s recycling partner.  The HP Recycling page for Canada has tons of information on what you can do with your stuff!

The Globe article also provides some backgrounder on the process in the plant!  Maybe I will go and visit them someday!