The Council Of Canadians:
"Founded in 1985, the Council of Canadians is Canada's largest citizens' organization, with members and chapters across the country. We work to protect Canadian independence by promoting progressive policies on fair trade, clean water, safe food, public health care, and other issues of social and economic concern to Canadians."

The Pembina Institute: Election 2008:
"The Pembina Institute envisions a world in which our immediate and future needs are met in a manner that protects the earth's living systems; ensures clean air, land and water; prevents dangerous climate change, and provides for a safe and just global community."

LISPOP: Laurier Institue for the Sutdy of Public Opinion and Policy:
"studies issues pertaining to the creation, use and representation of public opinion in the policy process. "

The Fraser Institute:
"Established in 1974, The Fraser Institute is an independent public policy organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto."

David Suzuki Foundation:
"Since 1990, the David Suzuki Foundation has worked to find ways for society to live in balance with the natural world that sustains us. Focusing on four program areas: oceans and sustainable fishing, forests and wild lands, climate change and clean energy, and the web of life the Foundation uses science and education to promote solutions that help conserve nature."

Globe Foundation of Canada:
"Located in Vancouver, Canada, the GLOBE Foundation is a private, not-for-profit foundation created to help environmental firms, corporate environmental managers, and financial institutions capitalize on international opportunities in the business of the environment. "

Canadian Federation of Students:
"The New Democratic Party (NDP) comes out on the top with an "A." The Liberal Party posted a "C" largely due to research funding, and the Conservative Party gets a failing grade, with an "F"."

There should be a rule...
The media are asking questions for which there are scripted answers. Perhaps we need a few questions that just might have broader implications. What if? ( turn the crank a few times on these issues ) These questions can be pushed to the side easily without thinking too hard, but if you suspend disbelief for a while and explore how the implications propagate you might be surprised where these approaches can take us. Wing of a butterfly ... small changes can have large and sometime unexpected systemic effects.
Examples:

• Carbon Footprint of Organizations Include Travel and Portion of Commute
  What do you think would be the social impact for cities if the carbon foot print of any Canadian organization included business travel and 50% of the commute of its employee's. This would put real value on the proposition that employees should either be close, close on transit or perhaps make satellite offices or remote work from home possible.
• Open Source Informed Consent To Reduce Pharmaceutical Costs
  We could reduce the price of pharmaceuticals if we changed a single form. In hospitals informed consent forms enable your data and biological samples to be used for research and commercial purposes. If these informed consent forms required that and data derived directly or indirectly from you was to be used only under a specific Open Source licence, that is available to everybody ( with the same privacy protections as exist now ) and any data aggregation that included your data would be held to the same terms. At first it seems bad for commercial interests. In the long term it is not. It reduces duplication of effort and stops one company from patenting your DNA and effectively blocking research into the very area you and your children would like developed.
• Newest Technology Deployed in Most Remote Areas First
  Imagine what would happen if the newest technology had to be deployed in the most remote areas first. Very often technologies are deployed in dense urban areas to cream profits. Sometimes the incremental cost to make the same technologies deploy in rural or remote areas is small but ignored because you can get away with it.

Insite - Supervised Injection Site Vancouver Coastal Health ( Wikipedia Polical Context )
Insite has been subject to rigorous, independent third party research and evaluation by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, recognized as one of the world?s leading research organizations. The goal of the individuals and the community. The research focuses on Insite?s impact on overdoses, the health of injection drug users, their appropriate use of health and social services, and the health, social, legal and incarceration costs associated with injection drug use. The Centre?s research has been published in peer-reviewed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and The Lancet.

• Harper dodges questions on RCMP's anti-Insite research October 9 2008 The Tyee
• NEJM-The New England Journal of Medicine: Attendance at Supervised Injecting Facilities and Use of Detoxification Services
• BMJ-The British Medical Journal: Impact of a medically supervised safer injection facility on community drug use patterns: a before and after study
• CMAJ-Canadian Medical Association Journal: Summary of findings from the evaluation of a pilot medically supervised safer injecting facility
• The Lancet: Canada's decision on reducing illicit drug harm

Time to Get Serious on Climate Change (Canadians for Climate Leadership Declaration)
Published: Sep 9, 2008 By: Pembina Institute et al. …we call on Canada's governments, businesses and citizens to take a new approach that gets serious about climate change. In addition, we commit ourselves and our organizations to working together to bring this new approach to reality. … Risk and uncertainty are part of life. Our greatest companies are not those paralyzed by risk, but those that manage it best. … Uncertainty compels us to act now, because delay risks both more serious climate change and less ability to choose our own path.

• 4 former PMs join call for climate change action
• Former prime ministers, business leaders, climate scientists call for tougher climate action by federal government

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
"There are very few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is one of those books." John Gray, The Guardian "Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades" This book looks closely at the economics and consequences to date of globalization, neo-liberalism, neo-conservitivism, as proposed by Friedman originally in the Chicogo School of Economics.

• The Shock Doctrine Short Film: 640x480 Quicktime, Windows Media and Ogg Theora formats,

Money as Debt (47:07)
Video describing the conceptual basis of money.
Reference:

If not for the cat, And the scarcity of cheese, I could be content. :: Jack Prelutsky

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• Economic Disequalibrium: Can you have your house and spend it too?: George Dyson - Make
• The Virtues and Vices of Equilibrium and the Future of Financial Economics: 2008 Santa Fe Institute
• What Economists Can Learn From Evolutionary Theorists: Paul Krugman - MIT
• Some of the most interesting minds in the world: Edge
• Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists: VOX: Centre for Economic Policy Research
• Current Economics Stories: New Mogul
• IDEAS: Economics and Finance Reserch: RePEc 500,000 full text articles freely available
• Jokes about economists and economics: JokEc

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• Sinfest: Comic/: October 12 2008 IMF
• World Economic Outlook (WEO) Financial Stress, Downturns, and Recoveries: October 2008 IMF
• World Economic Outlook (WEO) Data Forum
• Icelandic News in English
• Grain piling up in Canadian ports: October 10 2008 FP Foreign Policy
• Nowtopian: Blog
• Deep Economy: Book

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• The Economic News Isn't All Bleak December 27 2008 The Wall Street Journal
• Baltic Dry Index Bloomberg:
  "...an accurate barometer of the volume of global trade -- devoid of political and other agenda concerns."(The Baltic)
• Protectionist dominoes are beginning to tumble across the world December 22 2008 Telegraph UK
• From Scrooge to spendthrift in a giant leap December 22 2008 The Gazette
• Bernard Madoff Steals 50 Billion From Charities, Banks, Hedge Funds December 17 2008 Care2
• RBC says Canadian economy entering recession December 19 2008 Reuters UK
• Flaherty confirms deficit in 2009 December 17 2008 Financial Post
• Anatomy Of A Meltdown: December 1, 2008 OECD

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• OECD forecasts sharp rise in unemployment as recession: November 25, 2008 OECD
• Bailout costs more than Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, moonshot, S&L bailout, Korean War, New Deal, Iraq war, Vietnam war, and NASA's lifetime budget -- *combined*!: November 25, 2008 BoingBoing
• U.S. Pledges Top $7.7 Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit (Update2) : November 24, 2008 Bloomberg.com
• 76 percent of American middle-class households not financially secure: November 24, 2008 Physorg
• China unveils $862bn stimulus package: November 10, 2008 The Austrialian
• IndyMac (IMB) has failed: November 7, 2008 Gannon On Investing
• The Sun Shows Signs of Life: November 7, 2008 Science@NASA
• Obamanomics: November 5, 2008 The Kirk Report
• Credit-Default Swaps Top $33 Trillion: November 4, 2008 Bloomberg

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• China acts to stem the tide of officials fleeing with cash: October 31, 2008 Christian Science Monitor
• America?s Debt to Income Ratio as Compared with Other Countries: October 30, 2008 Credit Loan Blog
• GMAC Added to Commercial Paper Plan, May Become Bank (Update4) : October 29, 2008 Bloomberg
• Credit Default Swaps ( video ) : October 27, 2008 CBS 60 Minutes
• Europe on the brink of currency crisis meltdown: October 26, 2008 Telegraph UK
• Peter Schiff: The Beginning of the End: October 10, 2008 Peter Schiff, President and Chief Global Strategist for Euro Pacific Capital
• Bush Says U.S. Using `Wide Range of Tools' on Crisis (Update3) : October 10, 2008 Bloomberg
• G7 announces plan of action for finance crisis: October 10, 2008
• 11 Things I Learned While Trying to Figure Out the Financial Crisis: October 10, 2008
• Berlusconi Says Leaders May Close World's Markets (Update1) : October 10, 2008, Bloomberg
• How Harper Gov't Pushed Financial Deregulation Here, Abroad: October 10, 2008, The Tyee
• Why the Big Five are feeling the pinch: October 10, 2008, Globe and Mail
• Flaherty unveils $25-billion mortgage plan: October 10, 2008, National Post
• Canada rated world's soundest bank system: survey: October 9 2008 Reuters
• An Apology From Icelanders: October 9 2008
• The Stunning Collapse of Iceland: October 9 2008
  Iceland had strong financial regulators, a sound economic environment with low unemployment, and a fully funded pension system.
• Canada positioned to weather global crisis: Flaherty: October 9, 2008, CBC
• Bank of Canada cuts key rate in coordinated move: October 8, 2008, Reuters
  by 50 basis points to 2.50 percent on Wednesday in a coordinated effort with other central banks
• U.K. to Inject About $87 Billion in Country's Banks (Update3) : October 8, 2008, Guardian UK
• Global economy in ‘major downturn’ from financial crisis: IMF: October 8, 2008, Guardian UK
• The Behavior Modification Loop of Epic Fail: October 8 2008 Comic Miscellanea
• 230+ of Canada?s leading economists call for action on climate change: Oct. 7, 2008 - The Economics of Climate Change
• The party's over for Iceland, the island that tried to buy the world: October 5, 2008, Guardian UK
• Full of Doubts, U.S. Shoppers Cut Spending: October 5, 2008, The New Your Times
• Bank of Canada Raises Term PRAs to at Least C$20 Bln (Update3) Bloomberg: October 3, 2008
• Canada and EU in free trade talks UPI, September 18, 2008. The talks are scheduled for Oct. 17 in Montreal

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• Canada?s Manufacturing Crisis in International Perspective: September 27, 2008 The Progressive Economics Forum
• This Economy Does Not Compute: October 1, 2008 The New York Times, Economic Ecology
• The Year Of The Missing Sunspot No Sun Spots for 200 days. eWorldView, October 4, 2008
• Foreclosure Alley ( Video ) The Atlantic: Video: Kcet: SOCAL Connected: October 3, 2008
• Survey of IPOs in Canada PriceWaterhouseCoopers: October 3, 2008
• Bush signs $700bn economic bail-out plan approved by Congress Gardian UK: October 3, 2008
• One Hundred Named Economists: To the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate September 25, 2008
  
• The Financial Crisis: Where Do We Go from Here?: September 25, 2008
• The tipping point? - Canadian Economic Commentary Merrill Lynch: September 24, 2008
• A Crash Course In Economics Chris Martenson: 3 hours: September 23, 2008
  The Crash Course seeks to provide you with a baseline understanding of the economy so that you can better appreciate the risks that we all face.
• Paulson must weigh bailout against inflation worries Financial Post: September 23, 2008
• Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way New York Times: World Business: September 22, 2008
• Current Google News Search: Financial Turmoil
• Markets stabilize as central banks pump in billions September 18, 2008
• China paper urges new currency order after "financial tsunami" September 17, 2008
• Review the references. Purchase the DVD

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• Newstopia explains the Reserve Bank March, 2008 SBS.com.au
• German State-Owned Banks on Verge of Collapse February 20, 2008
• Two Billionaires Describe Our Outlook January 30, 2008
• Northern Rock Bank. UK
• Cutting through the normal banking rules
• Call to relax Basel banking rules
• Basel Accord , Basel Accord II
• World food stocks dwindling rapidly, UN warns
• Central banks: A dirty job, but someone has to do it
• Business this week
• Unscrambling the eggs
• Dodge Says Central Banks Expected Faster Loan Rebound (Update1)
• How The Markets Really Work 2007 ( video comedy ) John Bird & John Fortune, ITV: The Last Laugh
• US: National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive May 9, 2007
  Subject: National Continuity Policy
  "(b) "Catastrophic Emergency" means any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions;"

British commander says war in Afghanistan cannot be won: Oct 5, 2008 Reuters
"We're not going to win this war. It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army," Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith said.
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• Afghan war may cost $18 billion: report. October 9, 2008 The Canadian Press
• Cost of Afghan mission double Conservative estimate: think-tank. October 9, 2008 CBC
• Cost of Afghanistan War $22 billion according to Rideau Institute October 9 2008 Living in the Country
  "In June 2008 Harper and the Conservatives released their Canada First defence strategy. It calls for $490 billion to be spent over 20 years."
• Afghanistan and the Elections Audio :: Sept 19 2008 The Best Of The Current

Global Warming: How It All Ends
Virual video describing a risk management approach to understanding global warming by "just an ordinary guy".
Reference:

• 230+ of Canada?s leading economists call for action on climate change: Oct. 7, 2008 - The Economics of Climate Change
• The methane time bomb: September 23,2008 - The Independent Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. To put this in context see video: IMF cuts global economic growth projections January 30 2008 Guardian NASA Climate Report on Global Warming 2007
• UN: Climate Change May Cost $20 Trillion: UNITED NATIONS (AP) ? Global warming could cost the world up to $20 trillion over two decades for cleaner energy sources and do the most harm to people who can least afford to adapt, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns in a new report.
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: The Conference, hosted by the Government of Indonesia, took place at the Bali International Convention Centre and brought together representatives of over 180 countries together with observers from intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, and the media.
• Climate Change 2007: The Synthesis Report (IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)) Nov 17 2007: 85 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions is needed to head off potential catastrophic changes that could lead to more floods and famine.
• Statistics Canada: Environment: Canada's National Statistical Agency tracks a wide range of environment information as required by the Kyoto Protocol.
  

GNH: Gross National Happiness:
Perhaps, we need to look at other measures for success in addtion to GDP. Bhutan is unique among all the countries of the world in having a distinctive philosophy to guide its policy making. The four pillars of Gross National Happiness are equitable development, promotion of cultural and spiritual life, sustainable environment, good governance.
Reference:

• The Second International Conference on Gross National Happiness: "...Scant population has two implications: one is that the internal market is very small. Any economic development has to take place on the basis of the purchasing power of the populace, and because there are so few people the aggregate purchasing power is minimal. This makes it very difficult to develop any major industry or do anything on a significant scale. The other implication is that both skills and workers are in short supply. ... Principal finding is that these features can eventually be fully accommodated through an export-oriented economy specializing in low-volume, high-value goods and services, but achieving this requires an interim stage of dependence on exporting natural resources. Conclusion: scrupulous adherence to GNH in the near term vitiates prospects for comprehensive expression of GNH in the more distant future."
• Bhutan Leads the Battle for Environment: The government of Bhutan has made environmental protection a centrepiece in its development agenda. Article 5 of the constitution "...emphasises the need for every citizen of the country to protect the environment, conserve its rich biodiversity and prevent ecological degradation including noise, visual and physical pollution through the adoption of environment friendly practices and ethos."
• World Bank to globally replicate Bhutan's happiness model: "...A staggering 68 percent of the nearly 700,000 people in Bhutan were said to be happy in life with the country's wealth measured by the happiness of its citizens, showed a recent study conducted by the Centre for Bhutan Studies (CBS) and funded by the Japan Foundation, a group that undertakes international cultural exchange programmes."
  

Michael Geist's Blog: Issues For The Information Economy.
Dr. Michael Geist is the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa.
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• Study finds few Internet predators. January 14 2009 Herald Tribune
• Broadband Stimulus Plan: How About Some Data First?. December 24 2008 Epicenter
• Visualizing IPv4 Internet Topology at a Macroscopic Scale. December 24 2008 Caida
• Pirate Party Gets Massive Support in Sweden. December 26 2008 TorrentFreak
• Aussie government's own report trashes 'Net filtering. December 24 2008 ars technica
• Jack Layton on Net neutrality: P2P Power. P2PNet
• Facebook | Fair Copyright for Canada. Fair Copyright
• blog entry.
  
• Unlocking Access Video Lecture Information Futures Forum - 5 February 2008
• Stop Software Patents: World Day September 24
• The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind Excellent Book. Available as free eBook. Dec 1 2008
• Why Congress Needs a Version Control System Tim O'Reilly, July 13 2007

Equal access to public information for all citizens in Norway
"The Norwegian Government has decided that all information on state-operated web sites should be accessible in the open document formats HTML, PDF or ODF. This means an end to the time when public documents are published in closed formats only. From 2009 on, Norwegian citizens will be able to freely choose which software to use to get access to information from public offices. More competition between suppliers of office programs will be another effect of the government's decision... " This is an open standards issue verses propriary standards. Open source is a complementary issue. It appears that Microsoft products allow OOXML-based products to read and save ODF-based documents. It does not allow ODF-based suites to open and save OOXML-formatted documents. The OOXML verses ODF, partly, is an example of vendor capture of an Open Standard.
References:

• Swedish Court Rules Government Email Is Public Domain.
• ODF (OpenDocument Format) Alliance.
• Microsoft Office Open XML(OOXML): ISO (International Organization for Standardization). Canada did not approve Microsoft's OOXML at ISO. Thank you.
• OpenISO starts their OOXML review. "There is already an international standard for XML-based file formats for office documents, known as the "OpenDocument Format" (ODF; standardized as ISO/IEC 29300). Nobody denies Microsoft's right to freely decide that the company does not want to support this international standard in their products, and nobody denies that computer users have the freedom to choose office software which supports this standard, such as e.g. OpenOffice, KOffice or Google Docs. However many people feel that Microsoft's initiative to get their file formats also recognized as an "international standard" is an abuse of the system of international standardization and should in fact be seen as an anti-competitive attack against the company's competitors, especially against Free Software like OpenOffice. In fact when Microsoft chose the name "Office Open XML" for their file formats, they must have been aware that choosing this name must necessarily create confusion with "OpenOffice", the name of the leading competing software package which has been using an open XML-based office documents format since long before Microsoft started pushing Office Open XML. "

The Big Lie: Limits to Privatization: How to Avoid Too Much of a Good Thing:
This letter was written by Corky Evans on November 4, 2007. It is meant to inspire thoughtful dialogue. It has. I have had more people on the street mention this letter to me than any other recent bit of news or information. While it deals with a BC issue in its specifics, it touches a nerve that resonates across the country and around the world. Perhaps it is something worth discussing.
References:

• Limits to Privatization How to Avoid Too Much of a Good Thing: A Report to the Club of Rome 2006:
  
• Legitimacy and the Privatization of Environmental Governance: How Non-State Market-Driven (NSMD) Governance Systems Gain Rule-Making Authority 2002:
  
• Privatization and Corporate Governance: Principles, Evidence and Future Challenges 2000:
  

Free data sharing is here to stay: Cory Doctorow: CBC Radio | Search Engine:
"The information economy is here - but governments and business are still obsessed with 'protecting' information, rather than making it more productive"

The Mega-Lie Called the "War on Terror": A Masterpiece of Propaganda:
This commentary, while a US analysis, provides some doubt as to the genisis of the battles that we are fighting. "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state." --Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

Improving Democracy in BC: (Animations):
The Citizens' Assembly has proposed a new proportional electoral system for B.C. It's BC-STV, a version of the Single Transferable Vote system that's often called "as easy as 1, 2, 3." Wikipedia: Single Transferable Vote. pSTV Good Open Source software (Mac, Windows, Linux) for implementing elections using the Single Transferable Vote includes BC-STV.

Homeless Nation:
"... inequality and homelessness are rising in Canada - despite a sustained economic boom and repeated federal promises to cut poverty. Poverty is rising among children and new immigrants, the middle class is finding it increasingly difficult to afford education and housing, and there are 250,000 Canadians living on the streets, says the study by Social Watch, a coalition of 400 non-government organizations from 50 countries."

Fair Vote Canada (FVC):
"Fair Vote Canada (FVC) is a multi-partisan citizens campaign for voting system reform. Canadians from all points on the political spectrum, all regions and all walks of life are joining FVC to demand a fair voting system a fundamental requirement for healthy representative democracy and government accountability."

Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic:
"The year 2006 promises to be a busy one for federal policy and law-makers, as Parliament and federal civil servants consider ways of dealing with many challenging issues arising from the use of the internet and new technologies. Old issues such as privacy, spam, identity theft, and copyright law reform remain unresolved, while newer issues such as spyware, digital rights management abuse, lawful access, and telecom policy reform are hitting the agenda. Canada's private sector data protection law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, is scheduled for Parliamentary review in 2006. Lawful Access and Copyright law reform were both subjects of government bills in the last Parliament, and are expected to reappear in 2006. The civil service has been hard at work on legislation to deal with spam, spyware, and identity theft. And big stakeholders in the telecom industry are pushing hard for significant changes to the Telecommunications Act.
While they may not make the headlines, these issues have immediate and significant impacts on ordinary Canadians as well as large corporate stakeholders. CIPPIC is posing a few targeted questions on these issues to each party running in the 2006 federal election, so that voters can find out where different parties stand on internet issues that matter to them. Party responses will be posted once we receive them.
We encourage individual voters to pose these questions to their candidates during the campaign."

PLoS Medicine: Open Source Pharmaceuticals:
"The idea behind asking sponsors to subsidize developing country purchases at a guaranteed price is that this will prop up drug prices and restore incentives for developing new drugs [2,3,4]. In other words, it is a way of fixing the patent problem. However, subsidies have an important weakness: it is almost impossible to determine correctly how large the subsidy should be. In principle, the most cost-effective solution is to set a subsidy that just covers expected R&D costs. But how large is that? R&D costs are very poorly known, with the published estimates quoting uncertainties exceeding $100 to $500 million per drug. If the subsidy is set too low, companies cannot cover their R&D costs and nothing will happen. Set the subsidy too high, and the sponsor's costs skyrocket. To date, no sponsor has tried to implement these proposals.
In the Virtual Pharma approach, governments and philanthropies fund organizations that identify and help support the most promising private and academic research. Examples include the Institute for One World Health (www.iowh.org), a not-for-profit pharmaceutical company funded mainly through private sources and the Gates Foundation, and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (www.dndi.org), a public sector not-for-profit organization designed to mobilize resources for R&D on new drugs for neglected diseases."

Canadian Geospatial Data Policy Stifles Productivity:
"Canada's policy of cost recovery has been in place for approximately 10 years. It was justified, in part, as a means to fund ongoing geospatial data collection and maintenance, and to ensure that Canada had the best geospatial data to support its economy. Reality has been the opposite. Many data programs have been abandoned. In other cases, funds allocated to create new geospatial data have expired, and additional funds are unavailable to maintain created data. Data that can't be supported through cost recovery have been abandoned, leaving to ruin tens of millions of dollars worth of data. Public and commercial access are hampered by high costs and a poor data infrastructure (e.g., standards and access mechanisms), constraining information-based economic activity.… The U.S. government is convinced that there are more economic benefits in making geospatial data freely available than in charging fees for them, and studies conducted in the United States and Australia support this view. In addition, the U.S. government, through the Federal Geographic Data Committee, has created standards to simplify access and geospatial data use. Other levels of government also are encouraged to follow these standards in distributing their data. "

The Work Less Party of British Columbia:
"The Work Less Party stands for the idea that a human being's worth is inherent and not dependent on a job. We believe that working less is indeed a positive contribution to society, and it's definitely more fun!" While not running in this election different perspectives have a way of changing things.

The Fraser Institute: Marijuana Growth in British Columbia:
"The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian economic and social research and educational organization. It has as its objective the redirection of public attention to the role of competitive markets in providing for the well-being of Canadians. … This paper raises several issues that have the cumulative effect of suggesting that in the long term, the prohibition on marijuana cannot be sustained with the present technology of production and enforcement.… Using conservative assumptions about Canadian consumption, this (government taxation) comes to revenue of over $2 billion. " This is an interesting paper because of the timing of the release and the source of the report. The Frazer Institute would not normally be associated with advocating legalization of marijuana. see also Canadian Government Debt 2004: A Guide to the Indebtedness of Canada and the Provinces

Table for Three, Please Looking beyond the two-person relationship:
"As the debate over gay marriage continues, coupling has become a hot topic for those on both sides of the issue. Whether asserting the right for a same-sex couple to wed or maintaining that marriage is between a man and woman, most agree on the fact that marriage is meant for two. In her article, "Table for Three, Please," Ellen Ann Lindsey looks to expand this premise for life-long love."

Intelligent Design:
Advocates of intelligent design, who hold that the universe is so complex it must have been created by a higher power. Proponents of the idea are seeking to get public schools in the United States to teach it as part of the science curriculum.
Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism -- a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation -- camouflaged in scientific language and does not belong in science curriculum.

• Richard Dawkings - The God Delusion: Part 1 Part 2 Video, UBC Center for Microbial Diversity and Evolution, April 29, 2008
• Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (FSM) is a satirical parody religion created in 2005 to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to allow alleged problems with evolution to be taught.
• Science Creative Quarterly based at UBC.
  A recent judgement in US Distict Court refutes the validity of teaching Intelligent Design as science. Commentary:
• Scientific American
• Intelligent design? No smart engineer designed our bodies, Sherman tells premeds in class on Darwinian medicine
• A Special Report from Natural History Magazine
• Vatican Cardinal: Listen to What Modern Science Has to Offer
• Pope Weighs in on Evolution Controversy
• Google News: evolution & intelligent design
• L'Osservatore Romano: English
• David Brin carries Intelligent Design creationism to its logical conclusion

NASA Chief Backs Agency Openness
"In interviews this week, more than a dozen public-affairs officials, along with half a dozen agency scientists, spoke of growing efforts by political appointees to control the flow of scientific information.… Starting early in 2004, directives, almost always transmitted verbally through a chain of midlevel workers, went out from NASA headquarters to the agency's far-flung research centers and institutes saying that all news releases on earth science developments had to allude to goals set out in Mr. Bush's "vision statement" for the agency… In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang. The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator." It continued: " This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

CAMBIA: Center for the Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture:
"Our institutional ethos is built around an awareness of the need and opportunity for local commitment to achieving lasting solutions to food security, agricultural and environmental problems. We envision a situation in which the broadest community of researchers and farmers are empowered with dramatic new technologies to become innovators in developing their own solutions to the challenges they face - solutions for which they feel ownership. A clear vision of what aspects of the status quo we wish to change and what positive outcomes we wish to see guides our activities. CAMBIA wishes to see a vibrant public and private sector contributing myriad solutions to the diverse challenges of food security worldwide. This vision requires the development and delivery of new enabling technologies and skills that can break the logjam that is stifling creative business and public initiatives. This in turn will allow diverse players to regain and appropriate measure of control over research, breeding, utilization of genetic diversity and management of agricultural systems."

Underground: The Green Emperor Gets Naked, Part V:
"The biggest problem with sustainable development and environmental justice is that since the most appropriate orientation of practitioners is on small- and intermediate-scale community levels, it has never been easy to amalgamate all the various groups into a recognizable movement per se. In fact, the strength of these groups is indeed their disunity and devotion to neighborhoods and community over broader policies and allegiances. This is where global warming comes in. In fact, this is where the entire global economy comes in. Those in the movement I am proposing, what for want of a better term I will call Global Community Development, understand that everything is integrated. They have chosen their fields because they took the idea of Think Globally, Act Locally to heart. They understand the butterfly effect. They have made it real."

Public Nudity:
Perhaps because of a sense of freedom, or because the media carries the embedded message the raise of public nudity as both celebration and protest has interesting implications. It begins from an economy of plenty, everybody has skin. It works perhaps because in the same way that we are hard wired to recognize faces and smile when we do, we also are hardwired to recognize a normal human form. Nothing salatious here. The recognition, that broken, fuels the fashion industry, intact becomes normal for most people in about ten minutes. Once discovered it is hard to forget. So politically clothing, or lack there of have historical implications for control of a popluation. Laws that exist in this regard are the few that remain where the concept of harm is entirely in the eye of the observer. While this may appear at first to be a religious issue, and there may be various religious views, from a christian perspective there appears to be augument on both sides of the issue. Not only a political issue it appears that there is increasing research that links moderate sun exposure to improved health outcomes in regard to a wide range of common health problems. Recently we have seen research which indicates localized effects in the body of sunlight exposure. Historical myths about sunlight requirments presist in the media.

Sunlight Robbery: Health benefits of sunlight are denied by current public health policy in the UK.
Health Research Forum, 2004

"I think the document is excellent. I like it and I believe it."
Dr Reinhold Vieth, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada

From The Summary:
"7. Casual exposure of the hands and face to the sun has in the past been thought to provide enough vitamin D for good health. But this exposure is now known to be insufficient in the UK climate. Active exposure of the skin to the sun by removing clothes and sunbathing is necessary to provide healthy levels of vitamin D that will provide a reserve for the autumn, winter and early spring (October to March or later) when the sun is not strong enough to induce synthesis of vitamin D. Vitamin D has a half life in the body of about six weeks and so high levels must be achieved in summer to provide levels in the body which remain sufficient at the end of winter."

The Green Party Of Canada Current Approved Policy 2004 :
"Resolved to work for repeal of the nudity section of the Criminal Code." page 38. While this policy appears to be missing from Vison Green 2007 perhaps because just doing this might enable a patchwork of legislation down to the municiple level regarding this issue.
Reference:

• In The Supreme Court Of British Columbia: Skinnydipper Services Inc. v. City of Surrey: page 11: Date: 20071108
• In The Supreme Court Of British Columbia: The Corporation of the District of Maple Ridge v. Linda Anne Meyer: point 151: Date: 20000608

CBC Cinema Real Documentary: Naked:
"Naked is a thought-provoking and humorous one-hour documentary by Mary Bissell about people who use nudity to affirm their values and fight for their beliefs. From anti-war nude protestors in Marin County, to nudist bicyclists in North Carolina and breast cancer survivors in Calgary, this show reveals the political reasons beneath the very personal act of taking it all off."

World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR):
"Why is the world so afraid of naked people?" he asked. "There is nothing more peaceful than a naked person on a bicycle. We are more afraid of naked people than we are of cars and global warming and nuclear missiles. Nobody worries about these things, but people are worried about naked cyclists." Conrad Schmidt -- "Nudity is being used as a symbolic ploy to protest conformity on the one hand and suppressed as counter to established culture on the other." I have included this event because I think that Schmidt has a point. This event will get more coverage than many important issues in the election.

Nude Calendar Watch:
Since Calandar Girls there have been hundreds of similiar calandars created raising millions of dollars for various charaties. The single joke that makes these calandars work is that everyday mundain social nudity is normal. So much so, to it matters not how you look or how old you are. There appears to be a broad based appitite for this joke. The calandars without this joke do not appear to fly. Perhaps this succeeds because it deals with normal folks, a little humor and feelings of freedom to which everybody can relate. I love getting old!: Commentary from Winnipeg Free Press.

Drugs are big business, Sunlight is Free:
This page attempts to reconcile two opposite views of sunlight - sunlight causes cancer vs. sunlight prevents cancer. "Total-body sun exposure easily provides the equivalent of 250 ug (10000 IU) vitamin D/day" Am J Clinical Nutrition, Vol 69, No. 5, 842 May 1999

Sometimes fear drives legislation to avoid potential legal harm while missing the health benifits and the pre-conditions ( gradual exposure, no burns and diet ) that reduce potential harm. "Dr. Zane Kime, a brilliant medical doctor and researcher, points out in his excellent book, Sunlight, that sunlight is very healthy for the skin and whole body metabolism when the body is nourished by sufficient nutrients. However, when hydrogenated oils and other toxic nutrients are consumed, the skin becomes imbalanced and sunlight exposure can produce toxic skin reactions." "Sunlight on your skin also results in the production of inositol triphosphate, INSP-3, which regulates the extraction of calcium stored in cells. When not enough calcium is consumed, then INSP-3 is triggered to supply the cell with calcium from elsewhere in the body. If insufficient calcium is stored within cells, then the parathyroid hormone, stimulated by the deficiency of vitamin D, induces the extraction of calcium from the bones. Finally, if the calcium deficiency continues, over time the bones may become severely depleted by continual extraction of their calcium. Then, as a last resort, the body begins to extract calcium from proteins that regulate key cell functions. This, in turn, can lead to poor cell function. The real solution is to get enough high quality, natural vitamin D." ref

Wikipedia; Canadian Humor:
"Canadian humour is an integral part of the Canadian Identity. Canadians have excelled at comedy and humour in many domains. There are several traditions in Canadian humour in both English and French. While these traditions are distinct and at times very different, there are common themes that relate to Canadians' shared history and geopolitical situation in North America and the world."

You Have A Choice: A Song ( mp3 )
Avaaz.ca is the 300,000 strong Canadian community within Avaaz.org -- a new global web movement with a simple democratic mission: to close the gap between the world we have, and the world most people everywhere want. Avaaz.ca is a community of citizens who take action on the major issues facing Canada and the world today. The simple democratic aim of Avaaz (our name means "voice" in many languages) is to ensure that the views and values of the world?s people shape the decisions that govern them.

Rick Mercer:
"Perhaps an occasional rant or blather from Rick Mercer. Everyone is doing it right?"

Canadian Political Comedians:
"MCP Talent is your preferred source for quality entertainment for corporate, association, and social events! We have serviced The North American market since 1972 and we have the necessary experience that is essential to aid your group in the successful execution of your event. We pride ourselves in partnering with your group, being there every step of the way to handle all details from the initial booking to the completion of your engagement to follow up."

dmoz: Open Directory Project:
Category: Top: Regional: North America: Canada: Society and Culture: Politics: Elections
Description: contains non-party websites dealing with Canadian election campaigns.

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