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CANADIAN PARTY PLATFORMS vs THE INTERNETS

Conservative	Liberal	NDP	Green
Stephen Harper	Stéphane Dion	Jack Layton	Elizabeth May
Tech Sector
Remove barriers to labour mobility, improve foreign credential recognition and Temporary Foreign Worker systems to ease staffing issues. Align the immigration program with the needs of the labour market. In 2007 released new national Science and Technology (S&T) Strategy promising increased impact of business R&D assistance programs: Support large-scale research and commercialization centres in partnership with other levels of government and the private sector. Spend $11 million (2008-2009) to accelerate the creation of new business-led Networks of Centres of Excellence. Spend $350 million over three years to support eight large-scale centres of research and commercialization. Consolidate the roles and responsibilities of the Advisory Council on Science and Technology, the Council of Science and Technology Advisors, and the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee into a single Science, Technology and Innovation Council. This consolidated council will provide policy advice to the government on S&T and innovation issues and benchmark Canada’s S&T performance against international standards of excellence. Improve Canadian regulatory environment by spending $9 million to ensure that efficiency and effectiveness are key considerations in the development and implementation of regulations. Address tax barriers to improve access to U.S. venture capital by Canadian entrepreneurs. Study the transfer of non-regulatory federal laboratories to universities or the private sector.	Liberal Party Platform: Ensure broadband internet access to rural communities.	Facilitate IT staffing by streamlining the recognition of foreign credentials and overseas degrees during immigration process.	Green platform: Committed to network neutrality. Ensure that all new software developed for or by government is based on open standards and encourage and support a nationwide transition to open source software in all critical government IT systems. Reduce the paperwork burden on small businesses by eliminating duplicative tax filings and red tape. Government agencies will share information from the same database.
Copyright Reform
“Improve protection of intellectual property rights in Canada, including copyright reform.” Bill C-61 proposed by PCs (which was then killed by the process of calling an election) has been widely criticized as worse than its American predecessor, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). DMCA has been been acknowledged as a failure by its creator, and likely the same pressures which brought about its creation in the states were also applied during the creation of C-61. Jason Hatcher (Prentice spokesperson): “The Conservatives are committed to modernizing copyright legislation. Bill C-61 represents where we want to go with copyright reform.” He did not say if PCs would re-introduce C-61 as-is.	Liberal Party Statement: We need wide consultation with everyone (including consumers, artists and business community) to ensure we properly understand all of the impacts the legislation. Liberals introduced C-60 which in retrospect is now regarded by its share of critics as superior to C-61.	NDPs Strongly opposed C-61, focusing on its impact on consumers. Their digital spokesperson says the NDP will focus on shutting down the bootleg industry, instead of targeting private users.	Green party’s position on copyright reform: Oppose ratification of the WCT, recognizing both their imprecise definition of obligations and their incongruence with fair dealing. Establish a copyright registry that will facilitate tracking and protecting of copyrights where registration is optional for the original author, but mandatory upon the transfer of ownership or death of the author. Remove the Levy on Blank Audio Recording Media and replace it with private copying exemptions; Introduce a formal notice-and-notice mechanism for dealing with copyright infringement online, thereby affirming common carrier status for Internet Service Providers. Renounce the Crown Copyright applied to all government produced documents, thereby immediately releasing them into the public domain. Hold consultations with music and movie industry artists, producers and distributors along with citizen’s assemblies to address the issues of online peer-to-peer networks.
Democracy 2.0
Conservatives have “Instituted fixed election dates” according to their website. (Fixed election dates starting… Now!)	Stéphane Dion personally endorsed instant runoff voting on CBC’s Cross Country Checkup, although he acknowledged this is not part of his party’s platform.		Green platform on Democratic Renewal: Create a Citizens’ Assembly to study alternative electoral systems against our current “first past the post.” The recommendations of the Citizens Assembly will be presented to Canadian voters as a ballot. Introduce fixed election dates.
Web Gossip
After calling the election, Harper’s campaign site showed an animated bird shitting on his Liberal opponent demonstrating complete mastery of 2002 web technologies.		NDP launched an AdWords campaign targeting keywords “Stephen Harper” and “Stephane Dion”, which is a first for a Canadian federal political party. And a bit risky.	Heavy handed dealing with blogger who posted footage of her saying something she denied saying.