NEWS
14 Obiter Dicta
Facebook
Trudeau
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and mental health centres, lack of language centres,
and processing delays. While I sincerely hope that
Trudeau does keep his promise to welcome more
refugees into Canada, 25,000 by the end of the
year seems like a number that will be impossible to
implement.
Legalizing and regulating marijuana
Likelihood: 4
ê Photo credit: PC World.com
Before everyone goes running in a panic to their
computers to check their posts, Facebook does have
a privacy checkup, and you can change your setting
on all your old posts in bulk. Also, it is important to
regularly run a privacy audit on your account, so you
can ensure you are retroactively protecting all those
things you have ever posted.
While the solution seems quite simple, the
alarming aspect is that many people are not aware
of these changes. Facebook has not made significant
efforts to inform the public about their changes, and
in our age this transparency issue is problematic.
Social media has become such a powerful tool of
empowerment at times of social change, but also
a form of surveillance—it is this aspect which law
students specifically should be aware of.
Many people may think they have nothing to hide
anyways, as they have always been respectful on
Facebook. However, the reality is that when looking
for jobs, what you may think is acceptable could
provide an alternate image of you to your potential
employer. The competition within law school is
already extremely high, and no one wants to give
their potential employers a reason not to hire them.
It is not uncommon for potential employers to search
for applicants online.
This surveillance aspect of social media not only
applies to law students, but also when we emerge as
employees of various firms, branches of government,
and other organizations. There have been many news
stories where someone’s bad behaviour was caught
online and posted on social media, which resulted in
them being fired from their job. Employers view their
employees as a reflection of their company, and do not
want to risk negative associations.
Where this has become a norm within workplace
relationships, one can wonder what responsibility
there is between student/school relationships.
This area has not been explored as of yet, but it
would not surprise me that as the power of social
media progresses, schools—especially professional
schools like Osgoode—may choose to intervene. An
Osgoode identified student on Facebook could be
understood as a reflection of Osgoode, so what does
that mean when an Osgoode student posts something
discriminatory or negative, out of line with the
school’s beliefs – does the school have the ability to
step in? We will have to see how these questions and
competing rights play out in the future. For now, the
power of social media does not seem to be plateauing,
and it is important to recognize the power behind
your posts on any social media outlets. u
Don’t take out your bongs just yet: Trudeau’s plan
to legalize and regulate the sale of marijuana will be
challenging and take a long time to implement. Since
Trudeau said that he would tackle this issue “right
away,” I suspect that decriminalization will be on the
books in the near future, but there are a lot of political
and social issues to consider before full legalization
occurs. In the US, the movement to legalize marijuana
took decades, and didn’t see any success until
referendums to legalize recreational usage in Colorado
and Washington passed in 2012. Furthermore, it took
two years after these referendums for legalization
to actually be implemented. While I do think that
Trudeau has every intention of speeding up the
process towards marijuana regulation—the way
things are going it’s almost inevitable—it will take
time. If Trudeau doesn’t get re-elected, it’s very
possible it won’t even happen during his tenure.
Increasing arts funding
Likelihood: 7.
Trudeau, a former drama teacher, has made some
big promises in terms of renewing investments in
the Canadian arts scene. He has pledged an increase
of $150 million in annual funding to the CBC, whose
resources have been drastically cut in the past
decade, as well as doubling the investments made to
the Canadian Council of the Arts from $180 to 360
million. Normally, I wouldn’t trust promises from
politicians involving large sums of money, but this
seems to fall in line with Trudeau’s overall economic
platform of running a deficit in order to spend more
on infrastructure, in an attempt to spur growth.
And since the arts are something near and dear to
his heart, I think that the long-struggling CBC, and
Canadian artists everywhere, have a reason to be
cautiously optimistic on this issue.
bonus promise: Ending the MSM blood
donation ban
Likelihood: 8
t humbs up
Rememberance Week in the City of Toronto.
Under the current law, men who have been sexually
active with other men must be celibate for at least five
years before being eligible to donate blood in Canada.
With an incredibly rigorous process in place to screen
donations of blood and organs, it’s hard to view this
ban as anything but outright discrimination. Let’s
hope that this will be one of many promises kept by
Trudeau that elevates science over stereotypes! u