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Tagged bad ideas

PicApp: Ads for copyright compliance?

February 11, 2008 – 3:26 pm | Posted in Business, Opinion

If you know what Getty Images is, chances are you’ve seen some of their stock photos used on blog posts to add some visual flair. Some times they’re used under a license, other times not so much.

In an attempt to capitalize on bloggers who steal photos without permission, an outfit called PicApp has reached a deal with Getty in which they’ll provide photos free of charge, along with ads to offset licensing costs.

The service is in private beta, but you can see it in action on PicApp’s blog. Basically, it’s a complicated JavaScript/Flash combination that, if you’re lucky, won’t crash your browser. It’s also annoying as hell, but that’s the entire point.

Perhaps I’m just being cynical, but I don’t see bloggers going through setting this up and dealing with these ads just so they can comply with copyright law, something they tend not to care too much about anyway.

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Bye bye, ByeByeLogement

January 21, 2008 – 2:03 am | Posted in Business, Opinion, Technology

Here’s one of those “really stupid business plans” examples: A startup called ByeBye Logement launched a month ago. For the low low price of $7, you can put a classified advertisement announcing an apartment for rent of sub-lease for 90 days on their website. It becomes part of a massive searchable database (a global search reveals they have a grand total of three listings across Canada right now).

Now, you might ask, why should I pay money to add an apartment-for-rent listing to a website nobody’s ever heard of (and whose visitors can’t even get access to my contact info without signing up first) when I can post to Craigslist or MoreMontreal, high-traffic sites with thousands of listings, for free?

And if you’d asked yourself that question, you clearly would have done a lot more market research than the people behind ByeByeLogement.com.

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When 90% just isn’t good enough

January 19, 2008 – 7:23 pm | Posted in Business, In the news

Here’s another stupid idea: Giving small business tax credits for speaking French, something they’re supposed to be doing anyway.

How do you accurately judge something like that without doubling the size of the language police?

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CRTC looking at eliminating top-40 radio restrictions

January 6, 2008 – 4:33 pm | Posted in Opinion, Radio

In one of those “we have a law for that?” moments, the CRTC has decided to (again) take a look at a rather archaic regulation they have that limits FM radio stations on the use of “top 40 hits.”

The regulation was created to protect AM Top 40 stations from the FM Radio Menace that sought to kill them off with their better sound. Sure enough, now AM stations are disappearing, being replaced with talk radio, all-news stations, all-sports stations and some community and student radio stations. Portable music players are being built with FM-only tuners (where radio tuners are built-in at all), which will lead to further erosion of the AM listening base.

What does this law say about our radio broadcasting industry? Sadly, radio stations are failing to realize that having a 1,000-song playlist and virtually no indie content or DJ autonomy means that nobody wants to listen to your stations. Now they’re really starting to feel it as people tune to podcasts, Internet radio and songs they’ve ripped from their own CD collection.

I certainly hope their solution to that problem isn’t “more top 40 hits.”

Deadline for comments is March 4.

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Expensive junk

January 5, 2008 – 10:06 pm | Posted in Humour, Video

From Cracked.com, a list of 10 “laughably misleading” ads, which I would say is more like “top 10 commercials for laughably unnecessary or overpriced products”

A little place to get your revenge for My Lil’ Reminder and its ilk.

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Bell Canada, our Do Not Call overlords

December 25, 2007 – 2:12 am | Posted in Business, In the news, Opinion, Technology

Bell Canada has been awarded the contract to manage Canada’s anti-telemarketing Do Not Call list.

Because when you think “customer service” and “convenience,” the name “Bell Canada” inevitably comes to mind.

No doubt the Bell Canada-run Do Not Call list will be fast, efficient, error-free and in no way a nightmare for thousands of Canadians stuck in customer service hell.

Oh, and the reason Bell won the contract? It was the only bidder.

Can you feel the irony biting you in the ass?

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VISA reports from the future

December 25, 2007 – 1:45 am | Posted in Business, Media, Opinion, Slow News Day

The news outlets were buzzing today about the fact that spending on Boxing Day went down this year compared to previous years.

I find that funny because, you know, Boxing Day hasn’t happened yet.

The news, naturally, comes out of a VISA press release, which they based on a survey that asked people what they planned to do. This, I guess, is somehow infinitely better than waiting two days and just finding out what they did.

But VISA knows a slow news day when it sees one, and the news fell for it.

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15 reasons I’m not crazy about Capazoo

December 23, 2007 – 2:43 am | Posted in Business, Montreal, Opinion, Technology

Roberto Rocha has an interesting article in today’s Gazette about Capazoo, a Montreal-based social networking website that wants to take on Facebook and MySpace.

What’s interesting about this project, unlike the thousands of other social networking sites, is that it’s starting big. Millions of dollars big. Before it even has 100,000 users, it’s going to flood the Web with advertising, spend millions on servers, and get as many famous people involved as possible to lure the young’uns on board. In other words, it’s going to use traditional marketing methods instead of the word-of-mouth methods that created Google, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and everything else.

Their gimmick is a social currency (”zoops”) that people can exchange by “tipping” each other. Voluntary contributions toward people whose content you approve of.

I’ll reproduce here some of the concerns I expressed (and some new ones I’ve added) about the project on his blog:

Here’s my issues with Capazoo:

  1. The name. It’s a random nonsense word like every other forgettable Web 2.0 startup. And it tells me nothing about what the site does.
  2. Yet Another Social Networking Site. People assume they put up a website and they’ll get Facebook/MySpace-like success within months. That’s just not going to happen unless their site is much better or they have a distinct advantage with newcomers. Microsoft took advantage of the latter (leveraging its Hotmail and MSN services) to outseat ICQ in instant messaging. Google used the former to build its search engine and Gmail. I see neither as the case for Capazoo.
  3. It’s bad enough for startups that social networks require a large critical mass before they can take off. Nobody wants to join a social network that none of their friends are in. But their virtual currency system requires an even larger critical mass before any content producer sees real money.
  4. I got the same weird feeling as TechCrunch about tying virtual currency to referrals. It sounds like a pyramid scheme. And the value of a Zoop is about equivalent to the value of a Zimbabwean dollar.
  5. Content creators getting money is great and all, but the entire payment process is based on tips. And those tips might be worth a penny or two. I don’t see even moderately popular people making a lot of money this way. And even if they did, wouldn’t they feel obligated to zoop all of their supporters?
  6. What’s to stop someone from stealing a popular video off YouTube, putting it on their Capazoo page and profiting off it? How will they ensure originality of content? Any system that involves money will attract people who will try to game that system.
  7. You have to pay them money in order to get money. Which means you have to make more money. Thousands of these “zoops” just to break even.
  8. Deals with major content producers is a red herring that sadly a lot of people use. MySpace is good for listening to unsigned bands. Facebook doesn’t have any of these content deals (that I know of). Reprinting articles from wire services and major magazines is a gimmick, and isn’t going to overcome problems with the concept.
  9. I don’t like the layout. Facebook took away MySpace people (including myself) because it has a simple uncomplicated layout. Capazoo goes back to a giant mess with no apparent structure.
  10. The walled garden. I know Facebook uses this approach (requiring people to login to see anything), but that only works when the desire to see what’s behind the wall overpowers your frustration at having to register yet another account.
  11. Their terms of use. They have the right to terminate your account and take all your zoops for any reason at their sole discretion. Capazoo claims non-exclusive, unlimited royalty-free rights to your content for anything they want. They’re not even required to inform you of changes or ask for your consent.
  12. They don’t allow people under 16 to use the site. (At least not officially.) That’s going to cause problems if the site gets popular. They also allow only people 18 years or older to earn money. So the site seems to be completely pointless to a key demographic for these kinds of sites.
  13. Even if it’s successful, what’s to stop Facebook and MySpace from stealing the currency idea? Revver was started up as a competitor to YouTube in much the same fashion. So YouTube began compensating its top contributors. YouTube is still king.
  14. The entire premise is based on what I think is a faulty idea: That most users of social networking sites feel they should be compensated for the time they spend there and the content they provide. While there are some people who put up videos and blog posts and other stuff because they’re creative and want the world to see them, most people use social networking sites to comment on friends’ photos, see who’s broken up with whom, or communicate with old high school buddies they lost touch with. Nobody expects to get compensated for this.
  15. And finally, like the others, I think it’s silly to start with such a huge organization before the product is off the ground. Computing gives companies the ability to start small even when they’re starting big. It’s foolish to squander such an opportunity.
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Tonight’s word: … uhh …

December 21, 2007 – 12:46 am | Posted in Humour, TV

This is a joke, right? Colbert’s just going to ad-lib his whole show?

I can understand Leno and Letterman putting on a bare-bones show without monologues in order to save the jobs of non-writing tradespeople who work for them. But Stewart and Colbert are all about the writers. What the heck are they going to do?

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Cyberpresse putting up 360 photos

December 19, 2007 – 1:46 am | Posted in Media, Montreal, Web design

Cyberpresse (which just started playing music on my laptop without permission) is putting up 360-degree photos on its website: already one of a snowy Gilford St. shovelling on de Mentana St., and a truck accident on Cremazie Blvd.

It’s just another example of how big media companies like Cyberpresse understand the Internet and are prepared to use cutting-edge 1994 technology* to bring things that are cool but uninformative to users. (The last picture is particularly apt at showing the weaknesses of the technology: a truck accident is shown from only one angle — it’s great that I can see out in different directions, but I can’t see the other side of the truck.)

*Actually, it’s a Flash-based emulator of cutting-edge 1994 technology, but otherwise indistinguishable from Quicktime VR (right down to the unintuitive navigation).

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Vaillancourt getting greedy

December 11, 2007 – 2:28 am | Posted in In the news, Montreal, Public transit

Vaillancourt needs MORE METRO!

Laval mayor Gilles Vaillancourt, apparently not satisfied that the Quebec government spent more than his city’s entire annual budget building a metro extension of questionable worth there, wants even more money to close the loop of the Orange Line.

That’s kind of ballsy.

His arguments are as follows:

  • Laval’s population is growing: Yes, but the area around the Laval metro stations is still pretty vacant. Extensions of the blue and yellow lines would be through much more highly-populated areas that are in more desperate need of high-density transit.
  • The metro costs less per person, saving money: I don’t know where he gets his figures, but I’m guessing it’s based on operational costs, not construction costs. Building a metro to nowhere won’t pay for itself.
  • The current extension is a huge success: Its ridership numbers were a bit higher than an arbitrary conservative estimate pulled out of someone’s ass. Meanwhile, the project was almost an order of magnitude over budget. I don’t call this a success.
  • Closing the orange line loop would simplify many transit trips: Almost all Laval bus routes terminate at either the Montmorency or Cartier metro stations, funneling passengers onto metro cars. Creating a western connection would only split that traffic. It wouldn’t add another 40,000 riders to the system.
  • It’s environmentally friendly, and we need to get more cars of the road: In that case, I’m sure you’ll have no problem taking all that cash that’s building a new bridge along the Highway 25 axis and putting it into metro development instead.

Vaillancourt says he wants a dedicated tax for the extension. I agree. But I think he should be the one implementing it. If Laval wants a redundant metro extension for no particularly good reason, they can pay for it themselves.

UPDATE (Dec. 13): The Gazette’s Jim Mennie sees this as a shot across the bow in a battle between Laval and Montreal. And an editorial plagiarizes agrees with my main points.

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We can’t accomodate freedom

December 11, 2007 – 12:50 am | Posted in In the news, Opinion

Leaders of the FTQ and CSN told the Bouchard-Taylor commission that workers in Quebec should be forbidden from wearing anything that indicates what religion they are.

So I guess that means no more crucifix necklaces.

The article (I’m guessing it’s more their position) is a bit confusing, later going on about how they just don’t want employers to have to change any rules about safety or uniform codes in order to accomodate religious minorities.

It’s odd to hear about a trade union arguing for restricting workers’ rights, but then again these hearings are creating a lot of crazy ideas.

So when does the witchhunt begin for determining what constitutes a religious symbol? Does a black top hat make you Jewish? Does wearing a loose-fitting dress make you Muslim? Does a spaghetti-strap top make you a Pastafarian?

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Habs want money for bricks

December 11, 2007 – 12:37 am | Posted in Business, Canadiens, Montreal, Opinion

Habs Centennial Plaza bricks

The Montreal Canadiens, preparing to celebrate their 100th birthday, are redeveloping an area outside the Bell Centre, calling it “Centennial Plaza,” adding some statues and selling bricks.

The bricks, a seemingly a propos metaphor for the team currently (overpriced dead weight that people step on, defined only by the stubbornly unending support by Montreal hockey fans), are being sold at between $175 and $800 apiece (depending on size and location) to raise money for … uhh … the Montreal Canadiens. (With “a portion of the proceeds” going to the Canadiens Alumni Association.)

Some might call it a transparent money grab, but the hard-core fans will eat it up. After all, it’s a chance to be a part of Canadiens history and have your name be forever etched on a brick that you own, on the walkway to the greatest hockey arena in the world.
Provided, of course, your definition of “you own” is “remains the sole property of the Club de hockey Canadien, Inc.” and your definition of “forever” doesn’t last longer than five years.

The terms and conditions of the sale provide you no right to ownership, gives complete veto power to the club over the text you use, makes absolutely no guarantee to keep the plaza beyond 2013, and for that matter doesn’t even guarantee you that they’ll build it where they say they will.

I also note that the website is entirely silent about any obligation to maintain your brick, even for those five years. So if someone sticks gum in it, or scratches it, or takes a jackhammer to it, it’s entirely unclear who will pay the bill to have it replaced.

But hey, who am I to stand between them and your money?

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Family transit fares don’t make sense

December 9, 2007 – 5:46 pm | Posted in Montreal, Opinion, Public transit

St. Laurent’s Alan DeSousa wants the STM to introduce “family” fares, which would supposedly give group discounts if a household buys multiple transit passes. He says his borough offers family prices for leisure activities, and we need to get more cars off the road.

DeSousa isn’t specific about what he means by family fares. It could be discounts (or tax rebates) when buying monthly passes, or it could be discounts when travelling as a group.

Here’s the thing with the latter option:

  • Leisure activities tend to be done as families, because families spend their leisure time together. Public transit tends to be the opposite: Everyone headed in different directions at different times. How often do you board a bus with two or more members of your immediate family at the same time?
  • Even the most fervent public transit supporters will concede that family activities will almost always require use of a car, if only to transport all the food, diapers and other supplies they need to take with them.
  • How do you enforce such a thing? I’ve gone to Ottawa and travelled on their “family” fare with a female friend, pretending she was my wife. The drivers there don’t care, it’s not like they’re going to ask for a marriage certificate. So it really comes down to a group discount, usually for two adults and up to two or three children. And why should group discounts be limited to families?
  • Families travelling together is hardly the most pressing need environmentally. In fact, environmental policies encourage carpooling. What we need to get off the roads are people who drive alone to work during rush-hour, not the family carload heading to the amusement park.

The other option (giving families discounts for buying monthly passes) has its own problems:

  • We already get a federal tax break for buying transit passes.
  • Once again: Why is this treated differently from any other form of group discount? Certainly others, like offering a discount for someone who buys a transit pass for 12 consecutive months, would be more popular and more successful.
  • It increases paperwork, which benefits accountants and civil servants more than it does anyone else. This is especially true if families have to prove relationships before they can get the discount.
  • Unless more people start buying passes as a result, this would decrease revenue for the STM, requiring either more cash from the city, reduced services or higher fares for everyone else.
  • There’s no direct link between number of people in a household and ability to pay for public transit. There are plenty of poor people without families (indeed, for many of them that tends to be why they’re poor in the first place), and plenty of rich people with families (where mommy and daddy both have their cars and drive them to work, coming up with some flimsy excuse why they can’t take public transit).

It’s a gimmick, and I doubt it’s going to do anything to help public transit. Instead, more buses, lower fares and more investment in things like reserved bus lanes will bring people out of their cars. It’s boring, but it works.

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Private security giving speeding tickets sounds like a bad idea

December 8, 2007 – 6:58 pm | Posted in Business, In the news, Montreal, Opinion

Playing the Bianca Leduc card with little shame, western off-island mayors want the Quebec government to give them the power to give private security firms the power to hand out tickets for moving violations (such as speeding). They say the SQ is insufficient at the job, partially because their officers are paid so damn much.

Currently, with two notable exceptions, only police officers (municipal police, SQ or otherwise) can hand out legally-enforceable tickets to people. The two exceptions are Stationnement de Montréal (the green onions), who hand out parking tickets (but cannot ticket motorists for moving violations like going through a red light or making a wrong turn), and private security inspectors who patrol the public transit system (like the inspectors AMT hires to check proof of purchase on commuter trains), who can ticket for failing to pay a fare or other minor violations. In neither case are the agents armed, and they cannot make arrests or otherwise forcibly confine citizens.

What the mayors want is a system more like we see in the U.S., in which private companies have a limited role in law enforcement, and their actions are under constant scrutiny (to the point of having video cameras record alleged infringements).

Only one mayor, Michel Kandyba of Pincourt, has stuck out as having reservations about the idea:

Pincourt Mayor Michel Kandyba said he doesn’t agree with the other mayors that it’s a good idea to create a new category of unarmed agents to issue tickets for moving violations. More SQ officers doing more Highway Code enforcement is the better way to go, he said.

“Just imagine all the things that could go wrong with unarmed officers, given the lack of respect people have for authority in Quebec,” he said. “Imagine someone unarmed, who is not a police officer, saying to you, ‘Hey, you’re speeding, I’m giving you a ticket.’”

I think his point is very important, not because I think people are going to pull guns on these unarmed enforcement agents, but because being a police officer is more than just putting on a uniform with a big belt. There’s a reason that SQ officers are paid more than these glorified bouncers that work for private security firms, and that reason makes them much more qualified to handle the high stress situations that will arise when you stop someone for speeding.

Another reason I have reservations about this idea is because of the inequities it creates. Cities with big budgets and rich property owners will be able to afford better security. And then what’s next? Their own private court system? Private hospitals? Will their citizens get a discount on tickets compared to visitors from out of town? 2-for-1 deals?

Maybe I’m just being paranoid and silly. But can SQ officers just be replaced on the roads of Quebec’s small towns with private security officers who are paid half as much?

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Compass needs a needle

December 4, 2007 – 2:23 am | Posted in Blogosphere, Business, On the Net

Just what we need: Another Internet marketing blog has been launched. Because Internet marketing is woefully underrepresented in the blogosphere already, with only 10% of the top blogs having that as a subject.

Now all we need are more celebrity gossip blogs and blogs filled with pictures of pretty girls.

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Québec à la une: An advertorial in three parts

December 2, 2007 – 11:56 pm | Posted in Business, Media, Montreal, Opinion

I was tuning into TVA this evening to catch the series finale of Vlog, when I stumbled on a documentary about the Journal de Montréal called Québec à la une.

The documentary is an interesting look at the history of the newspaper known for its attention-whoring headlines, spending its first episode concentrating on the October Crisis that brought it into the mainstream and launched its Sunday edition.

But I can’t get over the fact that this is airing on TVA, which is owned by the same company that owns the Journal. In fact, Quebecor is run by Pierre-Karl Péladeau, and his father Pierre Péladeau is the guy getting a posthumous public blowjob in this rather one-sided documentary. (No mention of the Philadelphia Journal here.)

The appearance of the younger Péladeau on screen after the end of the documentary talking about how great Quebecor and the Journal de Montréal are sealed the deal. I’m still not sure if that was a paid advertisement or part of the documentary. Of course it doesn’t matter, because Péladeau would have just been paying himself.

It’s unfortunate, because a look at the big Montreal newspaper upheavals of the 1960s and 70s makes for interesting storytelling.

Québec à la une airs Tuesday, Dec. 4 and 11 at 9pm on TVA. The show is also available for free for Videotron Illico digital TV subscribers on its video-on-demand service (Channel 900, under “TV on demand” -> “TVA on demand”).

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Canoe.tv: Clueless

November 29, 2007 – 4:09 am | Posted in Media, Opinion, Video, Web design

For the first time ever, a Canadian company is going to be broadcasting videos on the Internet.

At least that’s what Quebecor would have us believe. They’re calling their new service Canoe.tv Canada’s first Internet broadcaster. In its newspapers, it clarifies that it’s the first Canadian web broadcaster “to feature specially commissioned programs in English and French“, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

The service, available in French and English, is basically a YouTube clone, only without any of that user-generated content junk that nobody wants. It also includes live content from networks like LCN, though the live feeds use Windows Media instead of Flash like the rest of the site.

On the French side, its content includes Prenez garde aux chiens, as well as interviews from Larocque-Lapierre, Denis Lévesque and others. Curiously, no Vlog despite the fact that Quebecor Media owns the show and the show is about online video.

The English side is even stranger. There’s more content from CBC (Just for Laughs, Rick Mercer, Peter Mansbridge, etc.) than there is from Sun Media’s crappy SUN TV. There are, however, plenty of Sunshine Girl videos.

But aside from their arrogance proclaiming to be the first to do something everyone else is already doing (in fact, the entire site was designed by a company called Feed Room), here’s why I don’t like the site:

  1. There’s no way to embed individual videos in blogs
  2. There’s no way to comment on videos
  3. Videos are referred to as “stories” in the “bookmark” page (that’s how you find out how to link to individual videos), and have 81-character URLs (just long enough to get cut in emails — YouTube’s URLs are half that length, and they have a lot more videos)
  4. Navigation uses some sort of proprietary Flash/JavaScript system which breaks just about every tool my browser has (opening links in new windows, the back button, scrolling)
  5. Videos are undated (probably deliberately, since most of them are old)

If I wanted to design a web video portal that was doomed to failure, it would look something like this. It might get some traffic, thanks to exclusive video (though anything worth watching is available straight from the source), but it’s not going to take off.

In short: FAIL.

UPDATE (Nov. 29/30): Some more reaction from the blogosphere:

InfoPresse points out that the site has virtually no fiction content, because of licensing issues. Le Devoir also has an article with detail about the problem.

UPDATE (Nov. 30): Pierre-Karl Péladeau does a very awkward-sounding presentation of Canoe.tv. In it, he says it’s a “totally Canadian” site, which is laughable because it was designed by an American company.

He also says that Sun Media can do a better job than the Canadian Television Fund at producing Canadian programming. The CTF funds things like Degrassi: TNG, The Rick Mercer Report, Slings and Arrows, ReGenesis, Intelligence and Little Mosque on the Prairie, all of which won Gemini awards this year. Sun Media funds sucker-generated-content show CANOE Live and … uhh … that’s about it.

Also, the Sun Family blog points out that 24 Hours Toronto didn’t even bother to rewrite the press release announcing the network so it conforms to its style.

UPDATE (Dec. 6): CBC tech guy Bruno Guglielminetti (whose name I can spell without looking it up first) interviews Peladeau for an article in Le Devoir.

UPDATE (Dec. 11): Intruders.tv has an interview with Dominique-Sébastien Forest, who has some long title at Canoe.tv. In the overly long interview that sounds more like a press release until the last few minutes, he notes:

  • They’re working on getting a real-time Flash encoder for live feeds, which are currently displayed through Windows Media.
  • Quebecor doesn’t consider CBC as competition online. They’re just another content provider who will share in the revenues.
  • The site is focused on professional content only (you know, like the Sunshine Girls I mentioned above).
  • It doesn’t offer embedding because their content license agreements don’t permit them to.
  • Nobody apparently noticed that there are no dates on the videos.
  • They’re working on adding comments to videos, like Espace Canoë has
  • He’s confirmed that Vlog will be coming back as a web-only show on Canoe.tv.
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Molson flub was about marketing, not Facebook

November 26, 2007 – 4:55 pm | Posted in Media, Opinion, Slow News Day

Molson, the U.S.-owned company that wants to make us feel Canadian, has pulled the plug on a Facebook campaign that encourages college students to submit photos of them drinking the company’s beer.

Because it uses the bloody F-word, this story is getting all sorts of attention from the blogosphere. Thanks to a Bloomberg wire story, it’s getting attention in international media as well.

Molson, for their part, blames this whole new social media thing and how unpredictable it is because it’s so new and stuff.

Oh please. Encouraging college kids to take photos of themselves partying and drinking is obviously going to lead to excessive drinking. For that matter, everything beer companies do encourages the party atmosphere of excessive drinking (not that college kids need much encouragement in that area). To claim that this was some sort of shock is a lame face-saver that all these new media bloggers are eating up because they want to turn this into something more important than it is.

Contests gone embarrassingly wrong is nothing new. (Whether this actually went wrong or not is a matter of judgment — I think they knew exactly what they were doing, and it was the media coverage that caught them flat-footed.) Either way, there’s nothing about this situation could not have happened if it didn’t involve Facebook.

But don’t let that stop the media and blogging firestorm that is ensuing, followed by analysis piece after analysis piece about the dangers of advertising in a medium you have no control over.

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Gas company critics are hypocrites

November 23, 2007 – 1:30 am | Posted in Business, In the news, Opinion

Think the Quebec government isn’t doing enough with its time to pass meaningless laws that don’t change anything?

Well, I give you Bill 41: “An Act to foster transparency in the sale of gasoline and diesel fuel.” This bill will do two things:

  1. Force gas companies to justify increases to gas prices at the pump
  2. Force gas companies to display the minimum gas price calculated by the Quebec Energy Board at the pump.

This will accomplish two things:

  1. Waste a lot of time
  2. Waste a lot of money

It’s a stupid solution to a stupid problem. You see, Quebecers (and most North Americans) hate the sky-high gas prices they see at the pump every day when they fill up their car to go to work. They reject the idea of supply and demand and want the government to do something about it. Change the laws of economics I guess.

But they also care about the environment and want the government to step in to do something about that too.

News flash folks: the No. 1 deterrent to carbon-emitting wasteful motor vehicle use is high gas prices. It’s fair, it’s self-regulating and it’s transparent.

Yes, it’s a bummer for suburban soccer moms who use their gas-guzzling minivans to bring kids to school. And it sucks for the transportation industry, which will increase the price on goods (and especially fruits and vegetables). But it’s still the best method available.

The ADQ has quickly panned on the idea (not because they don’t pander to the lowest common denominator, but because they can easily criticize a plan without offering any better solutions). If they can convince the PQ, that’ll put an end to the bill.

Greener doesn’t mean green

Meanwhile, a think tank has argued that a federal “freebate” program, which offers economic incentive for people to buy less-polluting cars, needs to be extended to pickup trucks.

This program isn’t as obviously stupid as the Quebec gas plan, but it’s based on a faulty assumption: That the economic incentive will cause people to buy vehicle X who would otherwise buy gas-guzzling vehicle Y. That may be true for some people, but others will probably choose to buy a cheap hybrid car they can afford instead of not buying a car at all. That will have a net negative impact on the environment.

The problem is that while many of these cars are better for the environment than their non-hybrid, fully-gasoline powered cousins, they are not good for the environment compared to public transit, biking, walking and other methods of getting around.

If you’re interested in a zero-emissions car, you can look at Zenn Motor Company, which builds zero-emission, no-noise cars in Quebec. But their cars weren’t even legal in Canada until this month.

These are the kinds of vehicles that have to be promoted, not Toyota’s slightly-less-emissions hybrid car or a bus that runs on 3% biodiesel.

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