Well, start bailing, this ship’s goin’ down.

Late yesterday afternoon word came out that Munir Sheikh, the head of Statistics Canada the body responsible for the national census, had canceled a town hall meeting, previously scheduled as an information session for StatsCan employees about the scrapped long-form census. The fact that the meeting was canceled at the last minute raised more than a few eyebrows, and we all waited to see what would happen next. Then, later into the night, the news came: Sheikh was resigning his position.

And now, the boat begins to sink in earnest.

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I love it, the debate surrounding the long form census. It’s exciting, it’s engaging, and if nothing else it’s great to see (and hear) that this kind of discussion can be had in this great country of ours. It can be, right?

If you’ve read my blog for more than a little bit then you know that I try my best to present a non-partisan view of things. Really, I try, but sometimes honesty can be mistaken for partisanship, I think, if you read me the wrong way. For example, I could say something like, “Stephen Harper runs a tight ship, giving little to no control over to his Ministers, with even the smallest governmental details passing across his desk,” and you could mistake that for a pot shot at our Prime Minister. But, truly, I’m not one for pot shots and when I say something like that I mean it as more of a fact than an opinion. The sentence following that one will be an opinion, but that’s more obvious. And why is this so important? Because I believe that a discussion about scrapping the mandatory long form census should be one that transcends politics altogether, let me tell you why.

Stephen Harper runs a tight ship, giving little to no control over to his Ministers, with even the smallest governmental details passing across his desk. I don’t necessarily agree with his style, but that’s why I didn’t vote for him. Still, while a lot of the time this kind of control factor can be nothing more than bothersome for policy makers and politicians it can be, at times, detrimental to our national health and identity. There are examples of this in the national housing strategy, our international agreements, and key pieces of criminal justice legislation. Harper has the final say and sometimes the only say, it seems. Discussion be damned, and for certain issues this simply does not fly; in my opinion the long form census is one of those issues.

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I apologize to readers who are bored to death by two politically-minded articles in a row, I promise to provide you with the lighter stuff tomorrow.

A little over a month ago I warned you of the upcoming copyright reform proposed by our politicians. I warned you that it imposes certain restrictions on how you own things and what you can do with those things. I mentioned, too, that it wasn’t the first time that the Conservatives tried to pass this kind of reform legislation,

The last time the Tories tried to pass new copyright legislation was two years ago. Jim Prentice was the Minister in charge back then and he was widely seen as being in the pocket of American interests. In fact, the Bill he originally introduced was so backward, so heavily favoured towards huge American media conglomerates that the public outcry was simply impossible to ignore. As a result of the outcry, the Conservatives put the legislation on the back burner and, last summer, went on a whirlwind tour across the country soliciting public opinion and feedback on copyright.

That Bill died, on the table, after Parliament adjourned for the summer because it had no support, because it wasn’t the result of consultation with the public, because it was seen as merely pandering to American big media, and because the government clearly underestimated the powerful and vocal grassroots fair copyright movement in Canada.

Well it appears that this second attempt at copyright reform is also going the way of the Dodo.

After declaring war on the “radical extremists” who were opposed to the new reform bill, Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore is now refusing to comment on the legislation according to copyright watcher, author and blogger Cory Doctorow.

Is this a sign of what happens when an unpopular bill is introduced, and introduced again, largely ignoring public consultation?

Like many, I agree that this most recent reform bill included some of the aspects that came out of the public consultation but at the same time it ignored many important aspects as well. The legislation, like its predecessor, still includes significant rights-impeding digital lock provisions—the same kind of provisions which were protested in the last incarnation of the bill. But despite all that consultation, the Conservative government chose to ignore the rights and requests of the Canadian population and again include those provisions. And again the ground swell of support for fair copyright reform has grown and immediately after announcing the bill, and in the time since, media focus has largely centred around the controversial digital locks.

But, if Moore’s refusal to comment is any indication, this bill is fit for the same destiny as its fore bearer. Let’s just hope that, if this is truly the case, the next time around the government will get things right. This second time around, the media was well informed on how and what to report—they got their focus right by honing in on the digital lock provision—and, as a result, the public has been kept up to date, and kept well informed themselves. If the Conservatives tried to sneak a copyright bill through the House of Commons the first time, they failed. This second time the media and copyright watchers the world over were ready, and they spoke loud and clear. If this bill dies there will be a third attempt, no doubt, and maybe then they’ll finally get it right.

If there’s one thing that Canadian politics is good for (and maybe there is just one) it’s the introduction of new and fun terms to our collective lexicon. Remember our pre-Olympic love affair with the stodgy term prorogation? Ah, those were good times, listening to newscaster fumble over that unnecessarily complicated word, grasping at straws to try and explain how in the heck it was even legal, nevermind moral to just up and cancel Parliament.

But if you’re a political junkie like me you love these kind of moments in the Sun. Your heart skips a beat when the popular press picks up on a new polispeak word and runs with it. Well, friends, it’s happened again.

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Watching the FIFA World Cup this year I’ve sometimes been struck with a bit of a nagging feeling. A feeling that something isn’t quite right. I’ve felt it watching a team like North Korea or the Ivory Coast or Nigeria. The feeling that the presence of these countries, these teams, on the world’s stage isn’t entirely a presence that ought to be celebrated. It was a feeling that I’d been wondering about, and I think I can finally put my finger on it more precisely.

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This afternoon the Conservative government introduced a new copyright bill in the House of Commons.

The last time the Tories tried to pass new copyright legislation was two years ago. Jim Prentice was the Minister in charge back then and he was widely seen as being in the pocket of American interests. In fact, the Bill he originally introduced was so backward, so heavily favoured towards huge American media conglomerates that the public outcry was simply impossible to ignore. As a result of the outcry, the Conservatives put the legislation on the back burner and, last summer, went on a whirlwind tour across the country soliciting public opinion and feedback on copyright.

Lots of us spoke out, hundreds of thousands, during these public hearings and it seemed like the government was truly listening. However, today’s Bill indicates that while some of what we said got through, serious and fatal flaws remain in the law.

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My friend Luke, who doesn’t have a website to link to, tipped me off to an incredible website called Open Parliament.

In a nutshell, Open Parliament aggregates data from around the web to let you know exactly what you’re elected Member of Parliament has been doing on your behalf. It trolls the government Hansard (the official record of the House of Commons), MPs twitter accounts, and other various media sources and lays it all out for you on a very easy to read page. You can see, at a glance, what your MP has been voting on—and what they’ve been voting. You can see where they’ve been, what they’ve been up to and every time they’ve spoken from the floor. In fact, you can even set it up to get an e-mail every time your Member of Parliament speaks. You’ll have a pretty empty Inbox if your MP is a back-bencher though.

Open Parliament is the kind of thing I love about the digital age; it’s the kind of thing that gives me faith in technology—in a technology like Twitter, especially. Here is a great use of that particular medium, for all those naysayers.

Now I know, I’m a bit of a politics junkie and it’s hard not to get all worked into a fit about this but isn’t it the coolest?! Doesn’t this have the potential to revolutionize Canadian politics?!

I mean, I can see, at a very quick glance, that my Member of Parliament, Peter Braid voted Nay on Bill C-241 to remove the waiting period for Employment Insurance. Now this is a topic that interests me, being ostensibly unemployed for a total of 3 months of the year. With this knowledge I can petition Braid to reconsider similar votes in the future. More than that, I can now closely follow his position on this and other matters by following what he says from the floor. I can let him know what I agree and disagree with. We all can.

Remember, these are our elected representatives. While information about what they were doing, how they were voting, and what they were saying in the House of Commons was never secret, even from its inception, it wasn’t always easy information to find. Open Parliament makes it easy and the easier something is, the more likely people are to check it out. Being able to more closely follow what our MPs are doing invites us further into the process of democracy. We’re more engaged, we’re able to be more engaged and that’s a good thing.

In addition, Open Parliament also gives you run downs of what topics were talked about recently in the House of Commons. You can track Bills as they’re introduced, and follow them every single time they’re mentioned with a record of who said what, when, and what they said. You can also track Debates, too.

I whole-heartedly applaud a democracy-strengthening endeavor like Open Parliament. This is truly the perfect marriage of technology and democracy in the digital age. I encourage you to check it out.