Government

C- 61, A Biased Critique

Brewster Kneen

Bill C-61, an act to amend the Copyright Act, was tabled in the Parliament of Canada 12 June 2008.

Any discussion of copyright should begin with an observation and a question:

– Every artist and creator builds on the works of those who have gone before, requiring an active
and respected public domain;
– How is a society to compensate its cultural workers for their contributions to that society and
the world at large?

Chris Hurl

Commons Conference Paper, April 30, 2006

Since 1983, public sector workers have catalyzed large scale mobilizations against privatization in British Columbia. As the immediate producers of the public domain, their struggles have extended beyond specific wage demands, galvanizing popular opposition in defense of the "social wage". In this paper I will explore the roots of public sector struggles in the transition from Keynesian economic strategies seeking the alignment of mass production and mass consumption to neoliberal strategies grounded in the decomposition of these spheres through the creation and management of crisis. I will go on to argue that the recent labour struggles in the province should be seen not so much as a defense, but rather a creation of the commons through direct mobilization at the nexus of production and reproduction.

 Michelle Swenarchuk, CELA Publication #454, October 2003, Canadian Environmental Law Association, Toronto.

On December 5, 2002, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision that a higher
life form, a genetically–engineered mouse, developed at Harvard University for use in
cancer research was not patentable.  The case had been extensively covered in the media,
bringing to public attention the little-known practice of granting patents on living things.
Harvard had argued that Canada needed to follow the patent practice in the United States,
where the mouse and other animals are patentable.  In declining to do so, the Court
opened the door to a wide debate on the role of life patents in public policy, and the value
of a distinct Canadian path.

Karen Bakker
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia

The 1989 privatization of the water supply sector in England and Wales is a much-cited model of market environmentalism — the introduction of market institutions to natural resource management as a means of reconciling goals of efficiency and environmental conservation.
Yet, more than a decade after privatization, the application of market mechanisms to water supply management is much more limited than had been expected.

Drawing on recent geographical research on commodities, this article analyzes the reasons for this retrenchment of the market environmentalist project. I make three related claims: resource commodification is a contested, partial, and transient process; commodification is distinct from privatization; and fresh water is a particularly uncooperative commodity.

Operation Transparency has clear objectives:
* obtain the release of strategic planning documents from Canada Post;
* win a moratorium on the closures of plants and post offices (including the announced closure of a major facility in Quebec City);
* launch a public debate on any plans to reduce, privatize or deregulate our public postal service.

What is Canada Post's Plan?

Which post offices, in which village, in which small municipality, in which urban centre are slated for closure? What levels of downsizing are being planned? How will service be impacted? Are there plans to privatize or deregulate?

Fact Sheet, BC Health Coalition, Feb. 2005

Definition: Privatization is the transfer of public assets or services from public ownership and control to private ownership and control.

Why Not Privatize? Who Loses?
As a public good, health care should be managed for social needs and not for short-term profit. When public necessities like health care are privatized, the public loses.

Who Benefits?
The goal of for-profit companies is to make maximum profit and that profit has to come
from somewhere. For a private company to provide health services at the same cost as
the pub

This preliminary report from the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario discusses, with graphs and statistics, the presence and influence of private commercial interests in Ontario and Canadian schools.

This article outlines key challenges and opportunities facing governments in water management. Policies that address water, essential to life, must address the question: ‘who benefits?’ Choices made by past governments have led to the current state of Canada’s water infrastructure. We share the experiences of a number of American cities and take a closer look at the experience of privatization as it played out in the city of Hamilton, Ontario through a public private partnership (P3). A range of public financing alternatives is offered.

By Paul Moist, President, Canadian Union of Public Employees

A. Tickell and J. Peck
lboro.ac.uk/gawc/rb/rb1029

INTRODUCTION: GLOBALISATION OR NEOLIBERALISM?

Globalisation and neoliberalism are both perplexingly ubiquitous phenomena. The orthodox understanding of globalisation is based on a notion of increasingly borderless market extension, an apparently all-encompassing ‘condition’ in which market rules and competitive logics predominate, while the political leverage of nation-states recedes into insignificance. Meanwhile, the political project of neoliberalism represents a parallel attempt not only to visualise a free-market utopia, but to realise these self-same conditions, as the downsizing of nation-states enlarges the space for private accumulation, individual liberties, and market forces. Perhaps not surprisingly, globalisation and neoliberalism are often elided and entangled. Advocates of both tend to emphasise the need for corporations, governments and social actors to adjust to the new ‘realities’ of global competition; both envisage the role of markets in terms of apolitical, largely benign and integrating forces; both portray governmental bureaucracies and social collectivities as impediments to economic progress; and both actively anticipate world-wide processes of upwards convergence—a ‘race to the top’—culminating in the establishment of a new orthodoxy or ‘era’.