Attawapiskat is one of the few bands that posts their financial statements online. I actually just finished a course in reading government financial statements, so I skimmed through them. It turns out that First Nations financial statements are a lot more complicated than, say, the financial statement for the Government of Canada. Here’s a long blog post discussing the problems with First Nations financing with references to Attawapiskat. I wrote up a post with what I thought was the smoking gun but then I realized I had misread the statements (and hid my previous post because it’s embarrassing).

The trick with First Nations funding is that the federal government gives them a bunch of payments earmarked for certain areas of expenditure. This is similar to health transfers to the provinces – I’d argue that both violate the Constitutional sovereignty of these governments. The education situation in Attawapiskat is too complicated so let’s look at the housing fund:

The obvious question is why the hell is a housing fund spending so much on wages, “program delivery” and administration, and so little on capital? Are these euphemisms for repairs or fraud?

The huge jump in spending in 2007 was the year before a new chief and council got elected, which doesn’t make that much sense. The financial statements don’t say where the transfers come from (I believe it’s another Attawapiskat fund), but a big transfer in 2009 got spent on some kind of capital. Then a huge increase in government funding for 2010 didn’t get spent on anything.

Attawapiskat’s financial statements don’t make enough sense to say whether there is mismanagement but I’m skeptical of any organization that has so much variance from year to year. Most organization’s financial statements show steady operational expenses with occasional capital purchases. Insofar as protection of the citizens of Attawapiskat outweighs their right to self-governance, I support the federal takeover of their government. But why didn’t someone at Indian Affairs see this coming a long time ago?

This particular issue is unlikely to undermine many users’ confidence in Google’s results. AdWords results are still featured higher, so a side-effect of this policy is a transfer of wealth from pharmaceutical companies to Google. The Institute of Health’s pages are not always up-to-date, because updates to them must be submitted through some bureaucratic maze.

The UBC researchers found that on Google Canada, the top hits for brand names tend to be the websites of US pharmaceutical companies while generic names get Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s information on drugs is often incomplete, although the actual research paper is more optimistic about Wikipedia’s quality improving than the Canadian journalists summarizing it.

My take is that the Institute of Health is messing with the Internet and could be considered to be vaguely censoring*. The correct government policy is to pour resources into improving the Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia is the market leader for providing unbiased information, so using Wikipedia to inform the public is a form of alternate service delivery. The government doesn’t even need a contract because Wikipedia’s already open to government input and can serve as a platform for engagement with other active stakeholders.

How would Wikipedia change if it became important for providing public services? The government could donate to the Wikimedia Foundation to make sure the lights stay on. Government editors could vote for government representatives on the Board of Trustees and start influencing Wikipedia’s editing policies to work in their favour.

* Not that there’s anything wrong with censoring drug companies in the public interest: I want peace, order and good government, not free speech.

The disfunction of the government Advisory Council was confirmed this year when the ecstasy analog mephedrone took off in Britain. (It was automatically illegal in Canada and the US because our drug laws have analog provisions.) The UK Home Secretary announced that he would make mephedrone illegal as soon as the Advisory Council made their report (ie: waiting for the Council’s rubber stamp, not their recommendations).

As Jack posted, the Independent Committee has done a more sophisticated ranking than Nutt’s previous study. The previous study didn’t include weightings of different factors, which is why I used the raw data to develop my own rankings. This study divides cocaine and crack, and amphetamine and methamphetamine, which is much more useful for these preparations that hold significantly different positions in our society.

The study only assess harm, not benefits (alcohol scores well on the previous selfish scale). Aspects like crime, economic cost, international damage and loss of relationships are based on the current legal status in Britain, not the potential under legalization or decriminalization. This is intended as a criticism of current drug policy – it’s not a complete analysis for setting new policy.

It’s easier to separate out the personal and social harm in this scatterplot:

The raw data isn’t available, but if you stare hard enough at this composite bar graph you might figure something out (CW = cumulative weight):

(The Lancet converts all images to JPG. )

• tax a percentage of price or strength, or set minimum prices
• regulate or require labelling of THC and CBD levels, especially in edible preparations (brownies)
• set a legal smoking age [Netherlands: 18; Prop 19: 21]
• give local government the power to restrict location and hours of head shops [done in the Netherlands & Prop 19]
• don’t allow head shops to sell alcohol or tobacco to prevent polydrug use [done in the Netherlands for alcohol]
• restrict advertising and discourage the creation of brands – pot should only be identified by farm, vintage and varietal
• restrict maximum single sales [Netherlands: 5g; Prop 19: 28.5g]
• establish a market regulator agency like alcohol beverage authorities
• provide accurate health information

Time mentions an alternative policy framework where consumers either grow their own or belong to cooperative growing organizations.

As a society, our approach to autism is still primarily “How do we make autistic people behave more normally? How do we get them to increase eye contact and make small talk while suppressing hand-flapping and other stims?” The inventor of a well-known form of behavioral intervention for autism, Dr. Ivar Lovaas, who passed away recently, said that his goal was to make autistic kids indistinguishable from their peers. That goal has more to do with increasing the comfort of non-autistic people than with what autistic people really need.

…What if we asked instead, “How can we increase the quality of life for autistic people?” We wouldn’t lose anything by that paradigm shift. We’d still be searching for ways to help autistic people communicate, stop dangerous and self-injurious behaviors, and make it easier for autistic people to have friends.

But the current bias in treatment — which measures progress by how non-autistic a person looks — would be taken away. Instead of trying to make autistic people normal, society should be asking us what we need to be happy.

The interview also mentions Autreat – it’s like the opposite of Burning Man! (Although I find the background of that webpage to be “inescapable sensory bombardment”.)

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

The Supreme Court of the US has interpreted the 10th Amendment to be almost meaningless because Article 1 of the constitution says that the federal government can pass any laws necessary to execute its powers. So in practice both countries have similar divisions of power. In particular, the federal governments may tax heavily and then give transfers to the provinces/states with strings attached; eg:

• US highway funding requires a 21-year drinking age
• Canadian health funding requires public healthcare

In the US, the Tenther Movement is part of or connected to the Tea Party. It disagrees with the wide interpretation of the “necessary and proper” clause in Article 1 and calls for enforcement of the 10th Amendment.

A lot of commentators have been looking for Tea Party-like activities in Canada pointing to things like the HST initiative in BC and the Wild Rose Party in Alberta. Well, Maxime Bernier just articulated Canadian Tenthing – it’s not a new ideology, but he’s obviously trying to tap into a trend.

I didn’t actually read the CBS court case, I just made the assumption that the point of having an independent board of directors was to set transfusion standards. It turns out that transfusion standards are set by the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) in a document called Z902-04, which I don’t have access to. Apparently Z902-04 specifies the standard that blood donations must be refused from MSM.

The CSA is an independent organization, except that they are accredited by a crown corporation, the Standards Council of Canada. I would assume that the Standards Council certifies that the CSA’s transfusion standard is the only standard used in Canada (or else what would the point of a standard be?). Héma-Québec implies that Health Canada requires them to follow Z902-04, whereas the court ruling states that CBS uses Z902-04 as a guideline and does not meet the standard. On the other hand, the ruling says that Health Canada must approve changes to CBS’s Donor Selection Criteria.

It seems we cannot say that the government has actively chosen the policy of discrimination, but non-governmental discrimination is locked in by the government. This could be a case where the Charter, reflecting its Judeo-Christian roots, covers sins of commission but not omission. Does the government have an obligation not only to not infringe rights but also to promote freedom in its dealings?

It turns out that money CAN buy you happiness, and that happiness is cheaper if socialized. Scary thinking that I’d be getting happiness meds from the gov, but I’m dosed enough to no longer be THAT paranoid

As it is I get my happiness from a combination of private vendors and insurers and it’s effing ‘spensive.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms only applies to governments. The Ontario Superior Court recently ruled that CBS is not part of government, and therefore they are permitted to discriminate against gay donors. (Human rights codes prevent them from discriminating on things like hiring gay employees.)

Simon tells me that McKinney v. The University of Guelph is the key precedent. In that case, the Supreme Court majority ruled that an organization is not part of government just because they perform a public purpose. The ruling doesn’t propose any better tests of governmentness (organizations that aren’t obviously part of government aren’t?). Bertha Wilson dissented based on three tests:

1. does the government exercise general control over the entity?
2. does the entity perform a function that is traditionally or contemporarily recognized as a responsibility of the state?
3. does the entity have authority specifically granted to it to further a broad public interest?

CBS fails test #2: The Canadian Red Cross ran Canada’s blood system until 1998, when the federal government decided that the Red Cross couldn’t make the public feel safe about the HIV. CBS is on the fence for test #3: their authority comes from a monopoly contract, not law. I believe CBS fails test #1: the governments could not pass a law forcing them to accept gay donors without significantly changing the structure of the organization.

So yes, the government could set up the “Correctional Service Corporation of Canada”, which would be free of the Charter, but the government loses control with that independence. If you don’t like it, write your Member of Parliament and tell them to nationalize the blood service. Or do what you’d do with any private charity: don’t donate.

The Climate Reports

Given that the Net is now full of data visualization toys like Gapminder, visualizing single datasets in a PDF is fail.

MathTappers

Your app demo is a video?! Fail.

The Dictionary of the Climate Debate

Why is this an app? Fail.

Rain Caddy

I love that the app loudly recommends using a tin can instead of this fail.

Save the Rain

Cool trick to calculate roof area, but this app doesn’t really do much.

GreenMoney

First fail for requiring sign-up. Second fail for not understanding anything about economics.

Etho App

Vaporware. I hope they failed their course.

Smoggy

This game sucks and just has some data bolted on. Fail.

Waterly

Looked pretty good until it told me I should consider watering my lawn today even though it’s illegal. Fail.

Canadian Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Industrial Sector

This isn’t an app. Fail.

ShowMeBC

Requires Microsoft Silverfail.

Vancouver Bike Routes

Useful until Google Maps rolls out biking directions for Vancouver. Fails to use climate change data as per contest rules.

BCEmissions.ca

They don’t use the best visualization for some of the data, but the real fail here is the lack of comparison to other municipalities.

VELO

This commercial app was launched in fall of 2009, which is allowed by the contest but lame. The app also fails to make sense.

The Effects of Rising Sea Levels on Vancouver due to Global Warming

An amaturely low amount of effort went into this failapp.

VanTrash

Wonderful app and receiving lots of great press, but it clearly violates the terms of the contest by not using climate change data.

My #1 pick goes to Save the Rain followed by BCEmissions.ca. No other apps deserve anything. Given that the top prize is $5500, I’m surprised that the competition was so weak. (I was ineligible to participate.)