New Year Thoughts

 

Internet

2022 saw what appeared to be a never-ending drama over the Rogers – Shaw merger or take-over depending on your point of view.  And that again brought up the whole issue of internet and particularly cell phone service prices.  Everybody seems to feel that such fees are much too high.  Here again we fall into the trap of comparison with the US and European countries.  The two things that minimize the cost of these services is small area and/or large customer base.  Canada is burdened with neither of these features.  Canada is a large country, significantly larger than any European country and larger that that the US.  And it also does not have a large customer base.  In fact, Canada is probably the least densely populated of any country in the world (with the possible exception of Antarctica and Greenland although I don’t know what their service rates are).  And yet it still takes the same per area infrastructure density to cover our country. In other words, cell phone towers still have to be the same distance apart (about 400 metres for 5G) as in any other setting, there are just fewer customers per tower.  Of course, internet and cell phone rates are going to be higher in Canada.

Convoy 2.0

I see that organizers are having problems in forming Convoy 2.0, another attempt to change government policy for more “freedom”, whatever that is.  One “leader” says he no longer plans on making that effort while others insist it is going to happen with Winnipeg (what did they do to deserve this?) and Ottawa now on the agenda.    Maybe one of their problems is that they are trying to over-organize such an event.  Last year’s event was formed more or less spontaneously based on social media posts.  In my opinion, some of the people who were active in the original convoy should, if found guilty, be sentenced to spend a year in some other countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, or Egypt to see what real “freedom” is all about.

Trump Legal Issues

Donald Trump (Oh, him again) has declared his candidacy for President of the US – quite early as it turns out.  There is some idea that he has done this to avoid facing his mounting legal problems.  This may well be some of his thinking.  This is based on a rule that presidential candidates cannot be charged or indicted for crimes they may be facing.  But this rule, and its potential use by Trump, seems to create possible problems if it is taken to extremes during this period of unofficial candidates.  If you, as an ordinary citizen, had recently committed a crime this rule would suggest that to put off any judicial action all you would have to do is invoke this convention and declare yourself as a candidate for president.  Can you imagine hundreds if not thousands of people trying this approach.  I would suggest that this convention should only be used if and when the person, like Trump, has been selected as the presidential candidate after party preliminary elections followed by confirmation at a party presidential convention.  By that logic, Mr. Trump would still be liable for charges and indictment until at least the summer of 2024.

Guns

In the US, 2022 has been a good year – for mass shootings. There have been far too many, almost one a day.  They have been directed at a number of targets, Afro-Americans (Buffalo, NY), children (Uvalde, Texas), LGBTQ (Florida and Colorado) and just about anyone else that a shooter can think of.  In all cases, gun advocates such as the NRA have said that this shows that more people should be armed, preferably with concealed weapons, to “protect” against these supposed mentally ill shooters.  And yet two truths stand out this year, as it has in years past.  First, in no case has the perpetrator been stopped by a bystander with a gun.  Secondly, if all of these mass shooters are, in fact, mentally ill, why have any of them who survived and were brought to court, not been found not guilty by reason of insanity? And yet, the American public are led to believe that the answers to gun violence are more guns and mental health checks on gun buyers.  Makes you wonder, doesn’t it.

It will be interesting to see how many of these issues are still with us at the end of 2023 (2023! Can you believe it?).