Canada doesn’t have its own national social media platform, but it does have a media system that is quite different from the US. We follow the European model. So we do have an arms length national broadcaster, (truthfully the US does too with NPR).
We keep that term broadcaster, even though CBC has a really top notch-online presence, because the CBC/Radio-Canada (oui, nous sommes bilingues ) maintains primitive broadcast structures across Canada, which is the second largest country in the world with about 1/10 the population of United States.
Because media requires economies of scale and so is a natural market failure, private companies will not - cannot - find it economically feasible to supply Canada’s far flung tiny population with the basic infrastructure of radio and three TV channels, not to mention even more. So we have a national broadcaster who does it. Then we have private corporations that are hooked at the neck by CCRTC, and they are most hated. I think Canadians would rather get rid of them, but we have that stupid agreement with the USA and Mexico called NAFTA that our stupid Deputy PM Freeland put in while exchanging cosmetics information with Ivanka, or whatever.
This is what has been erased in neoliberal economies. There are natural market failures. They are called economies of scale and this was recognized in classical economics. This is why there were such things as Crown Corporations, because many economies of scale are in the realm of public goods and the private sector is incapable of providing them.
This isn’t a matter of ideology. The failures of economies of scale across all of NA are extensive and some regions have collapsed into the 4th world because of it. The leaders (and others) who slashed the provision of public goods to the residents of our countries are frauds, carpet-baggers and thieves. The whole idea of providing security to people inside national boundaries is not part of their thinking. That’s the “nanny state.” Come on, that was Trump. He made it very clear that as far as he was concerned, he was there with his bib at the table dining and watching dog eat dog.
This isn’t a joke. The failures of capitalism in Canada are definitely visible and becoming more so. BC has witnessed the entire collapse of its social system, including things like policing and parts of its criminal justice system. The province has turned into a drug dealer for the largest and most dense population of opium addicts in North America. And, just recently, on top of everything else, the NDP party just staved off vote-rigging during the election of its new leader.
To quote the movies in a pointedly absurd way, it’s like Gotham City in VLM.
I was walking down Granville St. one evening back from something I was doing and an Australian girl came up to me and asked me if she could walk with me. She was very upset. Said she’d never seen anything like it in Australia. I told her, on Granville you should be fine, don’t involve yourself with them, they won’t involve themselves with you, but don’t go much further east of here.
DTES in Vancouver has actually turned into a no-man’s land. I went to the SFU Goldcorp right in the middle of it, and even I wasn’t going down there, before I left the province.
In Victoria, I had a guy with a white rabbit mask like in the movie the Purge following me and trying to get me to go somewhere with him, and I had to go into a bank to get away from him and have them call the police.
And I had to leave the province in May, because, well … it’s nothing to take someone’s life for $20,000 there among the people who decided they didn’t like me telling on them. There are over 500 gangs operating in VLM and the amount of murders not reported in the media is astounding.
I have a complaint officially accepted by BC’s OPCC against the NWPD because they (many police officers) told me, they can scrawl RAT on your door, they can throw dead birds outside your balcony, they can build a little crypt there, they can track you late at night in their truck and stare you down in it so you can’t go home, they can enter your apartment in a hoodie and mask and threaten to kill you and WE DON’T CARE. Mobster thug buys my nice building starts tearing it apart and muscling everyone out. I say something to the police and all of a sudden I’m not a victim, I’m a perp.
Sorry, personal rant, but I think you should know the true state of Canada’s neo-liberal economy now. There are thousands of people turned out onto the street in VLM and TO because real estate, in particular, is HUGE MONEY, and whatever people tell you about this place, this country, its provinces are no longer following rule of law.
Such a beautiful city…
