Archive for the ‘Featured Posts’ Category

Posted on December 21, 2009 - by J Lane

Legality of HST (reprise)

I had blogged previously about whether the HST can legally exist based on the Canadian Constitution. Seems that a few others have noticed this now too, I just received this e-mail from “Fight HST”:

From: Rustad.MLA, John
Subject: RE: Harmonized Sales Tax
To: “jack kortmeyer” < *redacted*>
Received: Tuesday, December 15, 2009, 2:08 PM

Hi Jack,

This is the response from the Attorney General’s office:

This is from the Ministry of Finance:

The concerns which have been raised that the harmonized sales tax is an unconstitutional delegation of provincial legislative authority reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the tax.

The harmonized sales tax is a federal tax. It is imposed by the federal government under the Excise Tax Act. The constitutional authority for the Excise Tax Act is found in section 91(3) of the Constitution Act, 1867 which provides exclusive legislative authority to the Parliament of Canada for “the raising of money by any mode or system of taxation.”

Under section 92 of the Constitution Act, 1967, the province of British Columbia has exclusive legislative authority for “direct taxation within the province in order to the raising of a revenue for provincial purposes.” This is the constitutional authority for the provincial sales tax imposed under the Social Service Tax Act.

Under harmonization, British Columbia is not delegating its legislative authority for direct taxation to the federal government but agreeing not to exercise that authority in exchange for a share of the federal tax. If British Columbia no longer receives that share of the federal tax there is nothing to prevent British Columbia from again exercising its legislative authority and imposing a provincial sales tax.

Sincerely,

John Rustad, MLA, Nechako-Lakes

From: jack kortmeyer [mailto:*redacted*]
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 12:02 PM
To: Rustad.MLA, John
Subject: Harmonized Sales Tax

John

On Oct 14 2009 I attended a meeting with local merchants and yourself at the Chamber of Commerce meeting room in Burns Lake . During this meeting I made a brief presentation on my position as to why I felt the Harmonized Sales Tax in its present form is unconstitutional. With my presentation I also provided you with excerpts from the Lord Nelson Hotel Supreme Court Case, the Statute of Westminster 1931, the British North America Act 1867-1982 and even a comment on taxation by W.A.C. Bennett. You mentioned to me at this meeting that you did not know much about this Constitutional topic, however you assured me you would pass my information onto the Attorney General for his opinion, I have not to date received a reply. When may I expect an answer from the Attorney General on this very important Constitutional question?

As a Citizen of Canada and British Columbia I ask you our Member of the Legislative Assembly, the Attorney General and the Premier of British Columbia as elected officials to be absolutely certain my Constitutional Rights are protected on this subject of taxation.

Regards,

Jack Kortmeyer
Decker Lake

That’s interesting, the HST is simply “misunderstood”. I take issue with the idea that “British Columbia is not delegating its legislative authority for direct taxation to the federal government but agreeing not to exercise that authority in exchange for a share of the federal tax”. Is the Constitution not present to lay out the rights of the people, not legislative bodies? This doesn’t just seem like a different interpretation of the constitution, but rather the Government of BC is choosing to give up rights on our behalf. That doesn’t sit right with me.

This example was given in the e-mail from Fight HST:

Vander Zalm explained, “That is like the Feds agreeing to let BC legalize capital punishment by saying they are not delegating their legislative authority for criminal law to the Provincial Government, but agreeing not to exercise that authority in exchange for a share of the revenues saved from executing criminals instead of jailing them.”

It seems a bit extreme, but those parts of the constitution are there to specifically divide the responsibilities of the levels of government. Personally, I don’t think it’s right that provinces and the feds can choose to selectively exercise authority when it suits them. I would home that the courts would agree.

It might sound silly arguing about “our right to be taxed”, but in implementing the HST, the Government of Canada and the Government of BC are creating a very real problem: BC no longer has control over it’s own taxation that is used to fund real things within the province.Under the terms of the agreement, if the federal government should ever decided to stop transfer payments to BC, then BC will have the authority to once again implement their own PST (Hon. John Rustad said so himself in the last paragraph of his e-mail).

So if the federal government runs a little low on cash (I can’t imagine that ever happening!), and they decide to cut the money that they’re generously collecting and then “gifting” back to us, we can expect to enjoy both an HST and a PST in BC. Either there is a formal delegation of authority going on here, which is most likely unconstitutional, or BC is being sold into a very tenuous position where we’re having provincial affairs decided in Ottawa. Scary stuff.

Posted on October 24, 2009 - by J Lane

HelpMeApp

Keeping with the tradition of writing about my ideas well in advance of them being ready for primetime, my next side project is going to be HelpMeApp.

One of the biggest problems I’ve run into with managing Mailmangr support is keeping a handle on the bug reports, feature requests and inquiries that come in.  I’ve got them scattered between a todo list in Basecamp, my inbox, and an online ticketing system.  I know that there are a million help desk/bug tracker apps out there, but I have yet to find one that’s really easy and great to use from both sides.  I’m currently using Zendesk, but I’m really not nuts about it (it’s just the best I’ve found so far).  I’m going to build HelpMeApp to be exactly what I want it to be, and then if other people are interested in using it, cool.  If not, at least I’ll stop dropping the ball on Mailmanagr requests!

I want something that’s equally easy for people to submit requests to, as for employees that have to respond to and manage those requests.  I had considered building HelpMeApp as another Basecamp/Highrise API project, on the back-end to manage all of the data; but I think there might be too many constraints with that idea.  You need to be able to merge requests, for example, and there’s no easy way to merge messages in Basecamp — so I don’t think the model will work.  There will likely be pretty deep integration though, just because that’s the way I roll (being able to add requesters to Highrise, and keep a history of their requests for example).

I’ve got a couple of other ideas to kick things up a notch or two.  I’ve actually managed to roll a couple of ideas that I’ve had in the past into HelpMeApp, and I think they’re pretty complimentary.  I’m pretty excited about where it’s going.

The bug/feature request list on Mailmanagr is starting to decrease in length now, so I think the time is right.  Any thoughts out there, or “must have” features?  I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I’d like it to look like, but if you’ve got a “it would be really neat if”, I’m all ears.

I’m probably going to do a big of a “live blogging” of the progress, although it could be slow at times.  There’ll at least be the occasional update over at Industry Interactive about how things are going.

Posted on October 24, 2009 - by J Lane

Flu vaccine: to be or not to be

There’s been a pile of debate about whether or not people should get the flu vaccine.  It’s probably been fuelled by the media’s hype of the “life-threatening” H1N1 strain of the flu virus.  Today, I came across this video via. a friend on twitter:

At one point, the reporter tosses out the stat of a “one in a million” neurological disorder.  That might seem like pretty good odds.  According to the US census bureau, the current population of the US is 304 million — so if everyone in the US got vaccinated, 304 of them would no longer be able to talk or walk normally.  Huh.  It would suck to be one of those 304 just because I wanted to avoid getting the flu.

I’m neither pro nor anti vaccines in general.  There’s no doubt that they’ve contributed to wiping out some absolutely horrifying diseases.  That said, I don’t know whether I’d be willing to gamble the inconvenience of a flu with a one in a million change of having a permanent, life-altering condition.  With our first son, we started out getting him vaccinated on the normal routine.  He had a horrible reaction to the first round though (high fever, listlessness), so we opted to hold off on the next few shots.  He’s all caught up now, as is our younger son, but we waited until they were over the age of 1 to finish it off.  I was talking with my Doctor about it at the time (a really great, practical guy), and he pointed out that we live in Canada where the chances of catching most of the diseases you’re being vaccinated against is pretty low.  He asked if we were planning to travel anywhere in the future (no), and said that we were probably fine.  He did say that there is that risk though (one in a million?)

I pretty much get the flu at some point or another every year.  I never have an easy time of it either.  Am I going to get a flu vaccination?  Nope.  There’s a couple of factors in play in that decision:

1. I work from home, and live on an island of about 1,000 people.  Sure, people come and go from the island every day, and I make trips over to the city on a somewhat regular schedule, but I think my risk of exposure is pretty minimal.  I doubt we’ll see H1N1 make an appearance on Mayne.
2. Coughing, sneezing, and flu symptoms suck, but personally I’m not likely to die from them.  I’m not likely to become permanently impaired from the flu.  I might have a couple of weeks of low productivity (sorry in advance clients, I appreciate your patience).
3. A significant portion of people that get the flu vaccine, end up with the flu.  The way a vaccine works is that it actually hits your immune system with a low dose of the virus being vaccinated against.  Your body then generates it’s own antibodies to deal with future exposures to that virus.  If you’re a bit under the weather, or if the vaccine dose is off a bit, you could end up with an all-out flu from the vaccine.

Posted on October 21, 2009 - by J Lane

A little something for the blog

My last six or so posts are Twitter aggregations, so it’s time to post something of actual substance.  Here’s what’s up:

1. Life, kids, family: things are good.  Reilly’s really digging Kindergarten, Parker is really digging not having Reilly around all of the time (he does miss him though, I can tell).

   Rae started up Damage Control and has been kicking ass at that.  She’s pretty busy, and has found something really cool that she’s enjoying doing.

2. Work: Industry Interactive is doing well.  Work has been steady, lots of new clients, lots of local work, which has been cool.  Yeah, things have slowed down a bit, but nothing to get worried about.
3. Mailmanagr: steady growth and improvement.  New designs this year, new features being added all the time.  I’m pretty happy with the way it’s going, and the feedback I get indicates that a lot of other people are happy too.
4. Living here: still love it.  There’s the occasional challenge, but this place is amazing.  I can’t imagine raising my family anywhere else.

And that’s about it.

Posted on September 5, 2009 - by J Lane

Is the PST legal (and can there legally be an HST in BC)?

I’m not a lawyer, but I can read.  Please don’t take this post as formal legal advice or something that is set in stone.  Think of it more as “I’m thinking out loud, and I’d like to hear your thoughts”.

A friend of mine recently shared a link with me on Facebook about whether federal income tax is legal in Canada.  It’s an interesting read, but I think that the argument is wrong.  If you go back to the Canadian Constitution, the sections that this person references say entirely different things from what the author alleges.  For example, section 91 which talks about the Powers of Parliament states:

…it is hereby declared that (notwithstanding anything in this Act) the exclusive Legislative Authority of the Parliament of Canada extends to all Matters coming within the Classes of Subjects next hereinafter enumerated; that is to say,

…

2. The Regulation of Trade and Commerce.

3. The raising of Money by any Mode or System of Taxation.

…

And section 92 which discusses the Powers of Provincial Legislatures says:

In each Province the Legislature may exclusively make Laws in relation to Matters coming within the Classes of Subjects next hereinafter enumerated; that is to say,

…

2. Direct Taxation within the Province in order to the raising of a Revenue for Provincial Purposes.

…

Based off of the generality of point 3 in section 91 and the specificity of point 2 in section 92, I’d wager that it is indeed constitutional for the Government of Canada to collect income tax.  But that took me to the next step in my thinking — based on the Canadian Constitution, provinces are only allowed to collect direct taxes.  Additionally, because the regulation of trade and commerce fall under the federal government’s jurisdiction, shouldn’t any type of sales tax or value added tax only be payable to the Canadian Government?

Another point made in the original article, that I’ve actually been able to verify as true, is that the Supreme Court (case ref [1951] S.C.R. 31, [1950], 4 D.L.R. 369) has ruled that the various levels of government are limited in their ability to transfer their various powers between them.  So it’s not okay for the federal government to just give permission to the provinces to start printing their own currency (as an example).  I’d think that it also wouldn’t be okay for one level of government to assign their tax collection to another level of government, as is proposed by the HST.

I’d love to get some actual legal opinions on this.

Posted on August 31, 2009 - by J Lane

Thinking about new projects

Maybe it’s because summer’s almost over, or maybe it’s because I haven’t started something new in a while, but I’ve been thinking about starting a new project.  I thought that I’d post about it here just to get the idea off my chest and see if there’s any neat ideas/feedback out there.

The gist of the project is to offer an local, online farmer’s market.

One of the things I enjoy most about the summer is the farmer’s markets here on Mayne.  It’s easy to find fresh, seasonal, local produce on Mayne Island.  Besides the farmer’s market every Saturday, a lot of the local farms will also do sales right at their gate.

In the winter months, it can be difficult to get fresh produce.  The stuff that the grocery store brings in is at best not so fresh, and at worst decomposing on the shelf (seriously).  I’ve heard that because we’re a small island and a small store, that we usually get the leftovers when it comes to produce distribution.

The first winter we lived here, one of the local farms offered a box program.  Weekly produce boxes full of fresh greens, kale, radishes and other tasty treats were a godsend.  Why can’t we have that year-round?  What do local growers do to sell their stuff in the off season?

Even during the summer months, I heard some local growers saying that they had huge amounts of certain things, with nowhere to sell it.  They could only move so many cucumbers every Saturday morning.

So the idea is this:

1. Local growers set up a profile page with contact info and a map showing their location on the island.
2. They select from (or add to) a list of products that they have available.  They can indicate whether they have “Lots”, “Some”, or “Little” of any particular item.
3. People can then log on and see what’s in season, where they can get it, and get in contact with growers to arrange to buy some.  I’d love to work in some type of electronic payment setup too so that cash wasn’t so important, but I’m not sure that this particular market is ready for that.

Down the line (version 1.5), I’d also like to build in a recipe tie in so that if you’ve never had (for example) kale before in your life, and you have no idea how to prepare it, you can get some ideas.  I don’t think that building yet another epicurious.com is called for, but maybe a short note/link database for recipes.

A key to this will be marketing it locally.  It’s the same story as with any online marketplace — you have to hit a critical mass of buyers and sellers before it’s useful to anyone.  It will be free to list and free to search (I haven’t figured out whether there’ll be any sort of revenue model to this site – I can’t see advertising being that big?)

Posted on August 15, 2009 - by J Lane

Say no to the HST!

I received an e-mail from Chris Delaney today about the Citizen Initiative to oppose the HST.  Here’s the contents:

SAY NO TO THE HST!

Former B.C. Premier, Bill Vander Zalm,
together with leaders from business, labour and politics,
will speak at a rally to oppose the HST:

Saturday, September 19th

12:00 noon

Vancouver Art Gallery

Mr. Vander Zalm is calling on all British Columbians
to help organize a “Citizen’s Initiative” to rescind the HST.

Details on how you can help will be given out at the rally.

Come and show Gordon Campbell
and the BC Liberals what you think
about their HST!

Please pass this message on to all your friends,
relatives, contacts and associates.

If you’re available to help hand out information and sign up volunteers, please contact chris@chrisdelaney.com with your name, address and phone number.

Posted on August 9, 2009 - by J Lane

Apple Mail’s Handling of Attachments

When Apple said “Think Different”, they weren’t kidding.  Especially as it relates to their handling of certain types of attachments in Apple Mail.

The Background:

My company, Industry Interactive, produces Mailmanagr.  Mailmanagr lets people post messages, todos, milestones and files directly to Basecamp from their e-mail.  Among other uses, if you’ve got a client that just can’t get used to logging into Basecamp and posting stuff there, you can just forward the messages they send you through Mailmanagr.  Works great, unless you’re using Apple Mail.

While most mail clients (like Gmail, or Outlook) will handle files as attachments, Apple has decided to include them inline in the message.  This is true for any type of file that Apple things is an image — so JPGs, GIFs, PNGs, PDFs — anything that displays within Apple Mail and doesn’t require a third party application to view.  There are ways to get around it, and to force Apple Mail to deal with them as attachments, but that’s messy.  As far as I can figure, it all comes down to this:

–Apple-Mail-14-963253153
Content-Disposition: inline;
filename=image004.jpg
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Type: image/jpeg;
x-unix-mode=0644;
name=”image004.jpg”

Instead of the standard:

Content-Type: image/jpeg; name=”image001.jpg”
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
X-Attachment-Id: 0.0.1

The problem here is that certain types of clients can’t figure out that there is an attachment on the message.  Mailmanagr suffers this problem and so “image” attachments forwarded from Apple Mail don’t get sent through to Basecamp.

The Solution:

There is a workaround, but it’s extremely messy.  In Mailmanagr’s case, I have to write a completely different way of dealing with file attachments for Apple Mail than for any other e-mail client.  It’s a pain – I’ll have to sniff the “X-Mailer” and then handle accordingly.  So far, only one customer has had this problem so I’ve been putting off developing the fix.

Posted on August 7, 2009 - by J Lane

What BC needs for leadership

There’s been some great discussion going on here and elsewhere about the HST.  I’ve seen some pretty good traffic on my posts about the HST, and getting involved to oppose the HST with excellent comments left by readers.  As many have pointed out, however, there is a greater issue at play here — trust and credibility.  Gordon Campbell and his party have lost it.

The BC Liberals, in no uncertain terms, stated during the election campaign that they would not be pursuing an HST.  Even their budget did not forecast any increase in taxes.  I understand that things can change in a year, or even six months later, but the HST was very clearly in the works during the election campaign.  I am not aware of some event that can account for the complete reversal of campaign promises in this case.

I have to admit that I didn’t vote for the Campbell government in the first place.  I am one of the 49% of eligible voters that did find their way to the polls on election day, and I cast my vote for the NDP.  It’s not that I actually support the NDP and what they stand for; in fact, during the campaign I was sick of their constant negativity and attack ads doing nothing but talking about how bad things are and everything that the Liberals were doing was leading to the destruction of British Columbia.  They didn’t appear to offer any new ideas, or solutions to many of the issues they were dragging into the spotlight.

It’s one thing to say (from the NDP web site):

“…since the election the premier has backed away from his commitments to protect vital public services like health care and education and is hiding the true state of B.C.’s finances.”

It’s another to offer a plan to actually protect or improve health care and/or education in the face of a recession.  Money is in short supply.  Revenues are down.  What can you do?  You can make cuts, but that could make the situation worse.  Ultimately, you look for the inefficiencies in the system, and fix them.  I realize that this is an extremely simplistic solution for the problem.  I’m not an economist, or an expert in this area.  There are a lot of people who are experts though, why not get them involved?

Others would argue that making cuts to eduction is the worst thing you can do.  Funding education is an investment in the future.  Funding health care is essential (read up on the current debate in the States if you doubt this statement).  What can we do to ensure the long-term viability of these (and other) essential services?

What is the answer?

Ideally, I think we need another alternative here.  I know that BC has more than just two political parties, but in reality, the only real players in the game are the Liberals and the NDP.  The green party is really just the NDP part 2 — great at splitting the vote on the left, but ultimately they’re not bringing much of anything new to the table.  There are a lot of single issue parties out there as well — they drive me nuts.  We the electorate are not going to put you in office so that you can legalize marijuana, or create a constitution for the province.  While the latter may be a long-term solution to some of our problems, we have a number of short term problems that need addressing.  Trying to cram everything into your narrow view of the world isn’t a viable option.

We’re having trouble with voter apathy because there is no party/candidate that captures the heart and the imagination of the voting public.  I almost didn’t vote because I didn’t want any of the alternatives (but that’s shortsighted).  We need somebody who is willing to stand up in this province and acknowledge that there are problems, but to offer actual solutions.  Driving the province deeply in debt to fund massive social programs isn’t the solution. Offloading costs to working people, isn’t a solution either.  It’s easy to show a profit if you’re offloading all of your operating expenses to your customers.  I’ve never understood the draw toward governments having surplus budgets — you’re not trying to make shareholders happy.

Ultimately, however, we need to stop being lied to.  If a political party promises that they are or aren’t going to do something, they need to actually do it (or not).  It’s a massive cop-out to get elected on a platform of lies.  Give us hope, but don’t give us false hope.

Posted on August 1, 2009 - by J Lane

Proposed HST in BC – reprise

The BC Government’s proposed HST will, no doubt, devastate a number of businesses and industries in BC.  The most telling indicator I read was an interview with a restaurant in Kelowna, BC saying that after the introduction of the GST, their business dropped 10%.  That was a 7% tax, this is a 12% tax (or if you will, an increase of 7%).  Best case scenario is that they can expect the same thing, another 10% drop in business during a recession when sales are already off in tourism and hospitality.

After my last post went over pretty well, I thought I’d write a quick follow up post on what you actually can do in opposition to the HST.  While it’s probably a complete waste of time writing to your MLA, send them an e-mail anyhow because if they start getting flooded with messages, they might put two and two together and realize that the HST may be impacting their chances of re-election.

That aside, there’s a couple of other routes you can go to make your voice heard:

1. Facebook is providing a home to a number of groups opposing the HST.  The largest has over 10,000 members.  Go join.  The first group I got involved with has over 400 members (don’t know how many overlap).  Personally, I’m going to try to stay active in both.
2. Former Premier Bill Vander Zalm is coming out of retirement to lead the charge in opposition to this issue.  I’ve only lived in BC for a couple of years now, but honestly, Vander Zalm seems to have his head on straight and knows what he’s talking about.  He’s building a list of people interested in the cause.  To join, drop an e-mail to chris@chrisdelaney.com (I think this is our best bet so far)
3. The BC NDP has started a petition to stop the HST.  Sign it, even if you don’t support/didn’t vote for the NDP.  This is an issue that affects us all, forget your party loyalties for a moment.

British Columbians should feel betrayed by the Campbell Government.  They are on the record as having said “there will be no HST” prior to the election.  This tax will affect us all.  It is not a matter of just combining the PST and the GST and nothing else will change.  There is more to it than that, get informed and make your voice heard.