How Police Are Responding to a Riot Culture Through Centralized Coordination

"As rampage becomes routine, when any large gathering in any urban setting seems an easy opportunity for street insurgency, police forces across Canada struggle to deal with an emboldened riot culture."

Yup.  So, how do you manage a challenged economy, behaviour issues both from the bottom (rioters) and the top (Chris Mazza, for example) while tackling the mental health crisis and positioning Canada for success in the Knowledge Economy?

But we already know the answer to that...

Police forces are considering standardizing public order units and responses to major events, swapping information and experiences on reconciling Charter rights with public peace, and dealing with the financial impact of burgeoning disorder, as all of that tactical gear is expensive.

In other words, they're looking for centralized coordination, data sharing, specialized collaboration.  They want to work together and create a national system.  Which is what's being called for in tackling mental health, too.  Yet our politicians seem to want to head in the opposite direction.  Which is why the new social entrepreneurs are leading the way.

Funny how that works, isn't it?

Dutch Disease, Canadian Cure: Mental Health and the Knowledge Economy

Even if it were true that one sector were gaining at another sector’s expense, that is not evidence of a “disease.”  It is evidence of the economy.  That’s how it works.

Andrew Coyne, National Post

In the global knowledge economy, a country’s greatest strategic advantage is its capacity to discover and innovate.

Stephen Toope, National Post

Diagnosing the Illness

Canada’s manufacturing sector has taken a beating over the past several years.  The former mill town where I was born and raised (Cornwall, Ontario) is one of many communities across the nation that saw the majority of its jobs, tax base and community life blood pick up and move to greener pastures.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair blames this manufactured migration on Dutch Disease – the focus of the Canadian government on supporting our natural resource exports (ie. Alberta Oil) over other sectors of the economy.  To me, that’s like placing the blame for not having a job solely on the back of an unemployed person.  It’s a simplified interpretation of a far more complex picture.

Canada’s manufacturing loss has been to emerging economies, places like India, China and Brazil.  In these countries, employers have less obligations to their employees around payment, vacation, health and safety.  A rise in Canada’s dollar might be a stick discouraging manufacturers from continuing here, but lower responsibility costs elsewhere is just as much a carrot. 

What Canadians – and these manufacturers themselves – seem to forget is that these responsibility costs in Canada have resulted in a healthier, better educated populace with better access to services, opportunities and each other.  By empowering individuals and creating a more level playing field, Canada has increased the quality-of-life of its citizens.  It isn’t by chance that so many leaders and innovators, people ranging from Don Tapscott to Mike Lazaridis and Jim Basillie are Canadian (not always by birth, but definitely by experience).

Meanwhile, in other countries, the rights that Canadians fought for generations ago are in increasing demand in these surging economies.  Governments are being pressured to support their citizens, a responsibility that will inevitably fall back on the shoulders of industry.  Far from escaping responsibility costs in the Western World, these tumbleweed businesses have actually served to foster labour movements elsewhere.  It’s elegant, really, when you think about it.

Finding the Cure

Despite the positioning of Canada’s Finance Minister, Canadians are past the point of being willing to move to wherever to find work and take any job to make a buck.  Amiable lot though we are, we won’t stand for a return to the labour migrations of the Dirty 30s.  To Canadians, home and dignity will forever have a higher value than our dollar. 

That’s fine, because there is a growing industry out there that is less reliant on location for success.  In the Knowledge Economy, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, only that you have access to the tools and training that foster innovation.  Empowered Canadians – people, again, like the author of Wikinomics and Growing Up Digital or the founders of RIM – are at the forefront of new technologies, new processes and new approaches to success.

Yet, Canada is also undergoing a labour rights movement.  Like many other Western countries, there is a growing focus on mental illness and the social and economic losses incurred by a poor understanding of how mental health works and how mental fitness is accommodated.  This unheralded business crisis has spawned strategies and studies in jurisdictions around the world.  Responses include plans like Canada’s first, national mental health strategy.

At the same time, we are experiencing the rise of the social entrepreneur – Conscious Capitalists who see profit as a stepping stone towards meaning and legacy, rather than an end in and of itself.  These entrepreneurs, conscious of the impact of their actions on future generations (as they themselves are the first generation of Canadians being told to expect a lower quality-of-life than their parents) are largely focused on reducing our national carbon footprint, not through expensive schemes but as a matter of efficiency.

Mental health and innovation – these two things are inextricably linked.  As the Occupy movement helps spurn mental health protests and as governments and industry increasingly turn to young entrepreneurs to craft tomorrow’s action plans, these two things will merge.

Inoculation

Canada is on the right track and has an opportunity to be a world leader in connecting cognitive ability and creativity, consciously.  While it is highly unlikely our manufacturing sector will ever recover, it is increasingly apparent we don’t need it to.  Natural resources aren’t a long-term sustainable enterprise, nor are current practices in Canada as environmentally sound as they could be.

Natural resource dollars stimulating the Knowledge Economy and empowering social entrepreneurs, however, is a win-win.  These Conscious Capitalists, with greater access to venture capital and partnerships with natural resource extractors, can find new ways to reduce the footprint of resource extraction on the one hand and explore new opportunities in the creative industry.

To fully harness the capabilities of creativity, we need to understand how it works and how to foster it.  That means, understanding the impact of work, home and social environments on cognitive development as well as a less stigmatic view on the underlying genetics.  Occupational Mental Health and Safety, Mental Fitness and a focus on Conscious Capitalism – it’s the same confluence of history we saw during the industrial revolution, only we’ve moved from physical well-being to cognitive well-being.

Welcome to the 21^st Century; welcome to the Conscious Society.

Freedom, Internal

Puzzling Out Society's Problems

Police commanders issuing orders contrary to the democratic fabric of the community they are charged with protecting.

Junior officers blindly following orders they should have known were wrong.

Chris Mazza – on suicide watch but still wanted for questioning  over the real ORNGE crush.

Strict message discipline starting to crack, letting out the steam that’s been building.

Ideology being pursued at the expense of national well being.

To me, all these are all pieces in an emerging puzzle picture; by putting selfish or partisan interests ahead of the Public Good, the so-called Machiavellian strategists are blindly leading us – and themselves – into one rake after another.

This is because they aren’t thinking broadly enough, nor far enough ahead.  Traditionally, there hasn’t been enough real-time accountability for them to put that much effort into long-term, public interest strategy.  Thought, of course, emerges from the mind -  but mental health isn't something we've wanted to talk about, either.

That’s starting to change.

Demographic reality, political and economic reality, social challenges and social media are all forcing us to be more conscious about our actions. 

Go fast, go alone.  Go far, move together. 

Welcome to the 21^st Century.

Jim Brownell: What a Politician Should Be

"If there has ever been an example of someone who works tirelessly to serve virtually every aspect of his community, Jim Brownell is the guy."

I still remember the way in which Jim invited me to work in his office way back in 2005 - he called me up and asked "want to help me make a difference for the folks back home?"

This wasn't just a line.  Jim made things happen that I would never have thought possible.  He advocated for his community and delivered on an impossibly grand scale; three hospital developments and other additions to local healthcare, school developments, all kinds of infrastructure projects, supports for local businesses, local academic institutions, environmental protections, support for farmers, support for initatives in Akwesasne, etc.  You simply can't tick off a ten best-accomplishments list for Jim, because that's too limiting.

Jim didn't just deliver for his community - in support of his riding, Jim delivered for the whole of Eastern Ontario (pushing for and realizing the Eastern Ontario Development Fund) and for the whole province.  My personal favourite was the forgiveness of Cornwall's Downtown Revitalization loan.  When he pushed for this with the Ministry of Finance, he was told they couldn't do it for just Cornwall, because there were a number of other Ontario communities in the same position.  "So," Jim replied, "let's do it for all of them."  Not only did he make that happen - he convinced the Premier to come down and make the announcement in person.

Some pundits and opposition Members criticized Jim for some of his other pursuits; a Heritage Day (which eventually morphed into Family Day) or the commemoration of the gravesites of former Premiers of Ontario.  These critics missed Jim's subtle genius - by serving as a conduit for the public expression of Ontario's proud, rich history, Jim continuously brought the focus back to his riding and its pivotal role in that story.  In the same vein, Jim's constant invitation of Ministers to the riding and of constituents to Queen's Park literally changed the way people looked at Eastern Ontario.  Few folk in the Legislature could have recalled the riding name of Stormont, Dundas and South Glengarry before Jim - by the time he left, everyone could ryhme it off without hesitation.  Then, there were things he did just because they were the right things to do and someone needed to do them.

His community respects him; his colleagues admire him; staff love him.  There are more people out there who look at Jim as a second father (or grandfather, for some of the young'uns) than are currently working at QP on whole.  How many politicians get their own night named after them?

Jim Brownell's legacy will last for a long time to come - a tribute to the leadership, fellowship and the strength of character he embodies as a politician and as person committed to making a difference.

Of course, legacy is a thing to think about when you're done - Jim's still at it.  We're all better off for his dedication.

Family Impact

Stephanie Zubcic PhD‏@BeingUncosmo

#FUCKcancer That's what I'm learning! RT @__CCE: @BeingUncosmo Never let an experience pass, though, without learning something from it!

That's taken from my Twitter feed.  Stephanie and I (who don't know each other personally, but that's the way social media rolls) had just started following each other.  I saw a tweet from her about "this too shall pass" and answered, starting the thread.

Stephanie's answer got me thinking about my own experiences with cancer; I lost an aunt to lung cancer and my father-in-law to non-Hodgkins lymphoma.  Both were terrible experiences for the individual to go through but they were hell on the family, too.  I still remember my grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, watching his daughter waste away - hard enough as it was, but her physical condition kept giving him flashbacks to Buchenwald.  How he found the strength to keep going and holding her hand, I'll never know.

My father-in-law wasted away over years; there were moments of crisis, uncertainty, but the end was never in doubt.  The ten years of tribulations my wife's family went through took a tremendous toll on all of them, impacting their lives in ways they aren't always conscious of.  When I go through any trial - for instance, my recent run-in with an ignorant driver - my wife goes into "it's all unravelling" mode.  There's no feeling worse than knowing you are causing distress for someone else.

So, I sympathize with Stephanie.  I sympathize with the family of Tori Stafford, with Lisa Raitt, and with all the families of everyone going through challenges personal, professional or physical.  The families are victims just as much as the person directly impacted.  It's not enough for us to tell these people to "tough it through" or "stay strong" or at worst, "suck it up;" there's a big difference between surviving an experience and learning to live again after.

Experiences of hardship will shape you, one way or the other, but it's the love and support of others that will help you move forward.

Could China be Harper's Achilles' Heel?

"Unfortunately, the PMO is very nonchalant when it comes to security," said the intelligence expert. "They have an agenda, a political agenda … and they disregard some of the warnings coming from the official agencies."

Socialist and Separatists? They'll destroy our country.  Environmental advocates?  They're fundamentally un-Canadian, backed by foreign capital.

But Huawei and China?  They're just good partners.

Canadians are an open people, but they value their security.  Harper should know - he's spent his entire time as Prime Minister fanning the flames of fear.  He needed more control, the argument went, to defend Canada from radicals like Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff.

Now, his own security apparatus - the people he has listened to unquestioningly (F35s, cough cough) as they supported the Harper Agenda are telling him that same political agenda is going to hurt Canada.  Not only that - the US is now wondering whether they need to worry about Canada becoming a security threat, a pawn in China's broader game.

So, having consolidated power, Harper is becoming the embodiment of every threat he has warned Canadians about, time and again.

What do you think - is Huawei a Trojan Dragon?  Will China prove to be Harper's Achilles' heel?