Chocolate is a delicious, delicious treat; however, it is far too often tainted with the sweat of child slaves. While slavery in the chocolate industry remains a small portion of the global slave population (~27 million people enslaved today), it is something that can easily be fixed.

Today, the cacao industry employees somewhere between 15 000 and 100 000 children in the Ivory Coast (as of 2002), which represents 40% of the world chocolate production of about 3.6 million tonnes. Hundreds (if not thousands) of children are trafficked every year from Burkina Faso, Ghana and other countries to work in the Ivory Coast, children go for 230 euros or less.

I don’t think anyone argues this is a good thing, so let’s move straight to possible solutions. To eat chocolate produced through slavery is to support slavery. Or as Frederick Douglas once said,

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.

Chocolate is big business and requires a constant flow of cacao beans at low-cost. By making intelligent purchasing decisions and voicing your concern to cacao bean producers, the use of child labour can be addressed.

How can you help? The safest bet is to buy fair trade chocolate, though limited in availability, it does ensure a certain level of verification. Buying chocolate that uses beans from South America should also reduce your exposure to child slave labour.

The alternative is to try to avoid chocolate by the main companies who do not seem willing to enforce child labour laws in their supply chain (though some are doing more than others). Nestle (Nestle contact page), with 12% world market share, should be your first target, also consider Cargill (cocoa@cargill.com), Kraft (Contact Page), ADM (+1-800-558-9958 Contact Page) , Mars (Contact Page) and Barry Callebaut (Contact Page). You can also sign the Avaaz Petition here.

This comprehensive report from Norway lays out details of the chocolate industry in West Africa. A couple of organisations I fell upon include Slave Free Chocolate and work by the Anti Slavery group in the UK with their app (which seems to be down at time of writing) Choco-Coat.com (blog post about it here). Also take a look at this report on the chocolate slave industry entitled Bitter Harvest.

It seems high time to boycott or at least voice your concern to the main chocolate companies we inevitably purchase candy from. Turning a blind eye is no longer acceptable and a short email or tweet is an easy task we can all do. Some dare more.

To expose the truth behind our corner store candy, journalists risk their lives. In 2004, French Canadian journalist Guy-André Kieffer was kidnapped in Ivory Coast and is still missing. Just that should make us appreciate the risks that journalists take when filming these illicit industries. To better understand the situation, take 45 minutes to watch the great documentary “The Dark Side of Chocolate” which lays out the situation quite clearly:

For more information on the current global slavery situation, see this TED Talk by Kevin Bales from Free the Slaves.net

Cicero once said, “Not to know what happened before you were born is to be forever a child.” It is with that spirit that I set out to brush up on my canadian and quebec history. Below are four books that I recently read and highly recommend. After reading these books I have a deeper, though still superficial, understanding of what it took to build our country and the trials all the men and women had to overcome. Canada remains a country unfinished – we lack a finalised constitution and still have strong unity issues – but we need to know where we came from to know where to go.

Champlain’s Dream by David Hackett Fisher

This fascinating book tells the story of Samuel de Champlain, undoubtedly the father of Quebec and by extension, Canada. He was a man who devoted his life to the establishment of a permanent colony in Canada, he regarded First Nation people as his equal, and managed to succeed in the both the politicized French courts and the harsh Canadian winter. What really sticks out is just how precarious Québec was, the French were by no means enthusiastic colonisers and Québec was largely financed by venture capitalists. His efforts to maintain peace with the first nations were instrumental to the survival of Europeans in Canada, his form of peace-building would later be emulated by other Canadian leaders and has become a defining part of what it is to be Canadian. Champlain was also a talented cartographer, manager and seaman, a true renaissance man. If not for Champlain, there would be no Québec and no french speaking people in North America. The book should be mandatory reading for all Canadians.

Extraordinary Canadians – Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin by John Raulston Saul

This excellent, though short, book delivers an insight into the partnership and friendship the two men formed. L-H Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin were the key creators of a bilingual and responsible government in the 1840s. Their efforts to appease sectarian urges in Upper and Lower Canada in the 1830-1850 period paved the way for a peaceful confederation in 1867 and the birth of a nation that included English and French. Their work also set the tone for future generations of Canadians who would continuously face the challenge of national unity. Though not a detailed historical work, it does give you a greater appreciation for the precariousness of the Canadas in the mid 19th century and how we nearly became an American state or an English speaking nation. These two men doggedly negotiated their way through mobs and racism to help birth the nation.

A Short History of Canada by Desmond Morton

This is a whirlwind tour of Canadian history from the first European settlement to 2005. It focuses on the national leaders and prime ministers that shaped this country and is a great overview of the formative parts of our history. It sadly skips over certain important treaties and dates, but nevertheless delivers a well balanced overview of our country.

Une Histoire du Quebec par Jacques Lacoursière

Ce bref livre offre une histoire fascinante du Québec, de Jacques Cartier à Charest. C’est un excellent survol de notre histoire nationale, des hommes et des femmes qui ont bravé la neige et les conflits religieux pour créer une ile francophone et progressive dans une Amérique du Nord anglophone. L’histoire reste parfaitement factuelle, M. Lacoursière vous offre un excellent survol de notre histoire pour ceux qui ont possiblement oublié leurs cours de secondaire.

The time has come to re-open the constitutional debate. We have one party who advocates for a small and unimportant central government (The Walrus) while the progressive votes are split amongst four parties, one of which wants to break up the country. This cannot continue.

Canada is a large, diverse and sparsely populated country with unique challenges. Our lack of national unity paralyses us in the face of challenges ranging from the tar sands to asbestos (The Star and Globe and Mail) to healthcare costs. We have failed to formulate and execute a coherent foreign policy and we cannot step away from the shadow of our southern neighbours.

When Trudeau held the constitutional discussions in 1982, he would have expected the country to have grown up by now. Amongst other factors, the influx of oil and mineral wealth has slowed our transition from a resource based economy to one based on innovation, high value products and services. The new money has also slowed the evolution of our social values and development of our national narrative. Like a rich kid who inherits money, Canada avoides facing the music.

Since oil prices started rising eight years ago, we have stalled on social progress. Income equality is good (Gini), but slipping. Gender equality is not great – only 20% of MPs are women. Decriminalization of soft drugs has come to a standstill and few MPs have the courage to discuss the right to end your own life (except the voters). We are dodging the hard stuff.

Canada is a highly de-centralized country where most decisions that affect citizens’ lives, such as education, health, and infrastructure are controlled by the provincial governments. This is both our weakness and strength. The federal government has a role to play in enforcing education standards, healthcare access, and formulating foreign policy, but it is ultimately the provincial and municipal governments who execute. The Federal government is there to set a vision for the country and since Trudeau they have failed to do that.

Unsurprisingly, Canada still faces the same hazardous situation we did in 1867: national unity. As Twain mused, “History doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes”. 1949 brought the Newfies in, 1984 allowed Quebec to table demands and 1995 nearly broke the country in two. This time around, cultural and social values are driving a wedge between oil rich Alberta and the rest of the country.

No matter what happens on May 2nd, the risks are high. A weakened conservative minority government will likely lead to a Liberal, NDP, Bloc party alliance to take power – Alberta will kick up a shit storm. Alberta is already demographically under represented in Parliament and if they see a power grab by central Canada, west coast hippies, and urban hipsters, they might just say ‘enough’. On the other hand, if the Conservatives were to win a majority, we could very well see Quebec sovereignty rise to the surface again as Quebecers proclaim their values too different from Canadians. There are no easy options.

Canada is a country of compromise that was built on French, English, and Native American heritage. Clearly, there are growing economic and social rivalries between the oil rich Alberta (and now Newfoundland), urban socially progressive people, a shrinking working class and more traditional rural communities. We are a country in constant discussion, our constitution is unfinished, numerous treaties are unsigned, and power is not equally distributed throughout. Yet we have never fought an internal war and have always solved our differences through dialogue. Now, more than ever, Canada must breed closer ties between its people.

Let’s start talking. A national exchange program for high school students to send them all over our large country would help. In fact, it should be mandatory for every single Canadian high school student to spend at least 1 year at another school in another province. This will lay a strong and durable foundation for the exchange of ideas and customs between our different cultures.

To cement this exchange, we should institute continuous travelling town halls and discussion groups to better understand the different challenges facing the country. The groups would be held in person and online, with ideas, comments and feedback being used to generate a popular basis for a reformed constitution that can be signed by all provinces.

2017 will mark the 150th anniversary of confederation and this would be the ideal time to take what have learned about each other and formalize a stronger and united Canada.

Yesterday, I went to vote in the advance polls for the May 2nd Canadian Federal Election. While at the polling station, one of the clerks recounted how she rejoices in seeing people come to vote at every election; exercising their right to have a say in the formation of their government. In many parts of the world, this is not an option.

The elderly clerk went on to describe a middle age man from a North African country who came to vote during the last election. As a newly minted Canadian citizen, it was the first time he had ever voted. With tears of joy in his eyes, he asked the election clerk to take a photo of him at the ballot box so that he might send it back to his brother in their home country.

While these stories are inspiring, far too many Canadians are apathetic about the election. At the last federal election, only 56% of people voted. It is hard to understand.

http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=ele&dir=turn&document=index〈=e

My friend recently took a taxi ride and asked the driver if he intended to vote. The driver, a man from Ethiopia, said “no”, saying he was mostly just concerned with having a job. My friend then asked if he had not come to Canada to escape an oppressive regime where voting was not an option. After a moment of thought, he proclaimed, “I never looked at it that way, you’re right, I think I will vote this time”. It’s as simple as that, just ask people to vote.

Freedom ain’t free. Vote.

That being said, there are real issues at stake in this election and we must make a real and tangible choice with regards to our government. This brief clip from a Liberal rally is perhaps a glimps of what the leaders should be doing more of: putting their foot down and exclaiming, “Enough!”. The progression under Harper towards a socially conservative government, erosion of democracy, and partisan hackery has to stop. Take a look at this clip and then the next one from the famous movie Network, and then, get mad.

Michael Ignatieff

Howard Biel

The booth, shaped with female curves, will attract onlookers from far. Arriving at the booth, they step up to it and insert a dollar – like a vending machine. The slots protecting access to the sleeves open. The participant inserts their arms and feels two artificial breasts with a series of fake tumours in each breast. After usage, the participant must indicate the number of tumours in each breast. A paper receipt with the results, useful information on breast cancer, and ways to donate or help is then printed.

1. The participant would insert 1$ into the booth. (A)
2. This would open the slots (B)
3. The participant would insert hands and arms into the sleeves. (C)
4. The participant would feel the two fake breasts, each one with a different number of imitation cancerous tissues. (D)
5. Participant withdraws hands from sleeves.
6. Participant indicates how many cancerous tissues are in each breast. (E)
7. Answers are revealed and receipt with web address and reminders is printed. (F)
8. Shorter participants can use step (G) to place arms in sleeves.

Resources required:

• CAD drawing of device (which should be open-sourced)
• Artificial breasts with tumours
• Electronic Payment and receipt system

Me, presenting the idea!

Things change quickly. Prior to the 1960s, Quebec was run by Maurice Duplessis and the Catholic Church. Upon his death in 1960, a radical change in government took place as power over health care, education, and much of Quebec society, perviously held by the Catholic Church, was ripped away and given to a democratically elected government. This non-violent revolution took place in the span of one decade and lay the foundation for today’s society. Just as that revolution saw the power move from one shadow government, the Catholic Church, to a more representative government, today’s shift transfers power from the hidden parts of our government back to the people.

Western governments are crippled with debt, which simply means they are trying to do too much with too little. You can argue their management is inefficient, the systems are too old or they are not competent – either way, the people are tired of it and are demanding change. Citizens live in a connected, digitized world with email, Facebook, and other amazing tools. When citizens, especially young ones, arrive at a government website, a hospital or a public school, they fail to understand how they are run so inefficiently. Of course, these institutions have inherited decades of legacy technology and practices, but that is still not a satisfactory answer. The people have expectations and governments are failing to live up to them.

Three major pressures are coming down on governments around the wold – Citizen expectations, Open-Data and Wikileaks.

Citizen expectations are born out of their daily lives. They communicate through email, Facebook and Twitter, see photos and have access to amazing tools. They consequently expect governments to rapidly embrace these same tools to improve the standard of living and better deliver existing services. However, governments are often burdened with so much responsibility they cannot easily pivot and change according to new technology. It is thus important for governments to begin offering the raw data so that third parties – citizen’s, non-profits and business can help deliver services to society. This raw data feed is a new trend that is rapidly growing into the global Open-Data movement.

The Open-Data movement, of which I am part, requests that governments offer their information in a format that can be reused and turned into practical tools. Advocates of open-data want governments to open up their databases of information so that citizens can peer inside, see problems and help fix them. Citizens want governments to embrace crowd-sourcing, leverage experts in their communities and be more efficient. While many governments resist, we should remember the cries of outrage when parliament was first required to publish the Hansard, it is now consider obvious that parliament would act in a transparent manner for all citizens to see.

The third force acting on governments today is fear, fear of Wikileaks. Wikileaks illegally takes information from governments (and corporations) and exposes it for all the world to see. Even in democratic countries, governments have little experience with full and complete transparency. In many ways, the elected government is a superficial level of a shadow government which runs continuously through election cycles and whose power is out of sight of most citizens. It manages the society through meetings, diplomacy, statistics and more. In fact, Assange and Wikileaks want to pull the structure of secrecy out from underneath government bureaucracies. By removing the secrecy of their communication, Wikileaks forces them to either revert to secrecy, which slows down their operations, or open-up, which forces them to act in a moral and appropriate way. The best summary of Wikileaks’ motivation can be found here.

The traditional, semi-closed, hierarchical bureaucratic government institution has served well for over 40 years, but it is time to change. Citizen expectations, Open-Data and Wikileaks will change it by increasing transparency, efficiency and fundamentally making it more representative of the citizenship. Make no qualms about it, society is undergoing a revolution, but a quiet one. The power structure we have now will radically change as citizens and organizations push for honesty through transparency.

To show our fellow citizens the potential power of open-data, I convinced the amazing Jeff Wallace to build Resto-Net.ca. The site that takes the health inspections, currently available on the city website, and presents them in an easier to use format – along with some great analytics prepared by James McKinney. So, what is missing? A lot. The city should be doing the following:

1. Publish the information in a machine readable format
2. Create an API to get real-time updates of health inspections
3. Publish warnings, inspections and other information – not just fines (which is what they currently do).

On November 11th, 2010, CTV News is airing a special report on health inspections in the city of Montreal and yours truly will be featured. Tune in at noon or 6PM.

To give you an idea of the fines our there, take a look at this chart:

This year (2011) I will have 100 white poppies, I’m in Montréal, Canada – contact me to get one. For white poppies in Vancouver, click here.

After many years of patriotically wearing a red poppy, I have stopped. Why do we wear a poppy? The Canadian Legion considers it the utmost sign of remembrance for the sacrifice of our ancestors – 37 million casualties in world war I and over 60 million killed in world war II. Did the young men, women and civilians die for our freedom or for the politicians who gallantly led them into the muds of Europe from their armchairs in state capitals?

The dead did sacrifice, often with the best of intentions, but if we are to remember something, we should remember the good instead of the bad, the living instead of the dead. Peace, not war.

I firmly believe in the power non-violence and non-cooperation, it changes history – from Gandhi to Jaurès to Schindler to King to Mandela. Do not confuse non-violence with pacification; non-cooperation is the active battle against injustice through peaceful means. The Danes saved far more jews through non-violence than many countries did through violent action. We must honour the dead by reminding ourselves the folly of war; wearing a red poppy does not accomplish this, it simply propagates our reverence for military solutions to problems. This year, I will be wearing a white poppy, in vehement support of peace.

The Canadian Legion must recognize the power of the white poppy, because it has tried to ban it, claiming it infringes on their trademark. The power of peacekeeping is evident in Canadian history, we are a country born out of negotiation and one who embraces non-violence. Without descending into a history lecture, remember that Lester Pearson had the courage to send peacekeepers, instead of arms, to the Suez Canal – and it worked.

The white poppy is not a new idea, it dates back to 1933, when the Co-operative Woman’s Guild brought about the idea of commemorating peace instead of war. In his famous poem, “Flanders Fields”,  John McCrae challenges us to take up the torch from the fallen and continue the battle with the enemy – but is the enemy the man across the mud or war itself?

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Is the quarrel to be taken up with the unknown German soldier or with the people who send the patriotic citizens to their deaths? In WWI, over a quarter million people died or were wounded on the fields of Verdun in a matter of a few days, during WWII six million taking Stalingrad, and millions more continue to perish in conflicts today. We must stop the cycle of violence. There is great injustice in the world that must be fought, and it must be fought will all our bodies and souls – but not with guns.

Only resolution brought through non-violence can be lasting, war leads to war, just as WWI led to WWII. It was only through peaceful measures of post-WWII such as the Marshall plan, mass migration, the UN and the EU that peace in Europe was finally established. War begets war, peace begets peace.

Violence across the world has been steadily declining and while the tasks ahead remain daunting, a white poppy will help us remember that we must honour and remember peace, not death. Mahatma Gandhi prophetically said, “Non-violence is a plant of slow growth. It grows imperceptibly but surely”. We must fertilize the soil upon which it grows and that is why I will be wearing a white poppy this year, I hope you join me.

Last week, a superior court of Ontario struck down a series of federal laws that were designed to criminalize prostitution (Globe and Mail Article, Big Think Article). In doing so, they have opened up the doors to brothels and the legal status of sex workers. In his decision, judge Himel makes clear that the decision is based on concern for the safety of the sex workers, not the morality of the practice. The two sides brought together 12 years of studies and data and the judge unequivocally decided that the safety of women in the sex trade was better protected if the trade was done in brothels, not on the street.

My thoughts on this issue have changed somewhat. I used to be in favour of judge Himel’s view, I felt that the current criminal system pushed sex trade underground and compromised the safety of the prostitutes. By making it legal, the trade could be monitored by the government and the health and safety of the people involved would be better cared for.

However, while my views on the safety of sex workers remains the same, the immorality of the practice is a serious consideration. By permitting prostitution, we indirectly (or directly) encourage the objectification of woman and their subjugation to the desires of men. While decriminalization may be done for the safety of the workers, a society that decriminalizes prostitution implicitly says it is an acceptable profession. I think the majority of Canadians would agree it is not a moral profession, so herein lies the rub. (Scary stats here).

A perfect society would certainly be free of prostitution, if we are not working towards that, what are we working for? The question becomes, how do you eliminate or reduce prostitution? Clearly, criminalizing prostitution does not work – there is prostitution everywhere in the world and its illegality endangers the very women you are trying to help. Criminalizing the client does help; in Sweden, the Sex Purchase Law has dramatically reduced the prostitutes and clients that trawl the streets.

As with most problems, prostitution needs to be tackled from the side. The root of the problem is that when the deals are done under the table, out of view of society, bad things happen. So, why not make the entire system transparent? If the people involved in the trade, both client and supplier feel their trade is a legitimate one, they should have nothing to fear. In Sweden, when men are caught with prostitutes, their names are published on a shame list. Prostitution has dramatically dropped in the country.

People who frequent ladies of the night should not be ashamed of it. I would say that those who support legalization of prostitution should be equally in favour of listing all the names of the patrons. I have no qualms with endorsing a baker I frequent or a plumber that helps me, so people in favour of open and legal prostitution should have no issue declaring who they frequent.

We can then use the reduced enforcement costs (courts, police, etc.) to fund education programs and job placement for women. As with anything in society, it is very hard to isolate factors – why do people frequent prostitutes? Surprisingly, many do it for companionship – which indicates another failure in society and in their own relationships. So, perhaps we might offer counselling to some of the people who frequent prostitutes for companionship rather than purely sexual reasons.

Why not let judge Himel’s decision stand, but institute a law that states, “The names of all prostitutes and all clients will be published on a website managed by the government.” Who could possibly be opposed to this? It might just solve our problem and help move society towards greater equality between men and women.