A pretty slick ad that’s pretty hard to find fault with.

I’ll skip over the fact the title needed a copy-editor* and who’s listed as the media contact** and instead focus on the fact that the latest post on their website is calling for donations for a billboard campaign that has been approved in Vancouver:

CBS Outdoor has accepted our ads, and they will be up in the Vancouver area in the next few days.

Within a week of Pattison rejecting an ad, CBS approves it and plans to hang it. This sounds to me like both companies were approached at the same time. This would imply that Pattison may simply have a policy to only run exclusive ads (something I could believe).

Let’s assume with CFI for a second, though, that the rejection was solely motivated by the content of the ad. The argument that CFI is making seems to be that since Pattison maintained an effective monopoly over advertising in Metro Vancouver, their rejection amounted to censorship. This is would invoke the 2009 Supreme Court of Canada case involving the BCTF.

But apparently another advertising agency is willing to host the ads, which seems to take some of the steam out of that argument. I mean, if you are still able to get your message out, you can’t really say you’re being censored. The right to freedom of expression does not necessarily guarantee one the right to a stage to promote that speech.

Nevertheless, I still agree that Pattison shouldn’t be rejecting the ad, especially without providing cause (benign or otherwise). So it will be interesting to see if CFI does pursue the human rights complaint and the results of that.

Finally, I also take exception with the last line of the press release, where CFI President Kevin Smith argues against “the use of human rights apparatuses as tools of censorship.” This line plays into the hands of the right-wing bigots and fear-mongers who promote the idea that the Human Rights Tribunals are kangaroo courts designed to persecute Christians and Libertarians. When, in reality, they are legitimate tools to achieve justice for marginalized communities that can’t afford to access the traditional justice system. Mostly they deal with issues of employment and housing but even their far less frequent use in defending victims of hate speech is laudable. But that’s an entire post on its own (see Joyce Arthur’s arguments in favour of hate speech laws for a start).

To summarize: Good luck to CFI with the complaint and the billboards. They look sharp and it’s good to see both genders (and hopefully some racial diversity in the next round). Just try to be a bit clearer on your messaging next time.

—

*Apparently you can say “New Round” twice in the same sentence if it’s the title.

**I thought he was leaving CFI Canada months to years ago now.

Take for example, this new piece in the Vancouver Sun which blames the local tax system for “scaring off potential businesses.”

Author Roslyn Kunin notes that 46 new businesses were licenses in the City of Vancouver between 1999 to 2012 when the population grew by 80,000. Never mind that no context (or source) is given for this number, we are merely supposed to be shocked that this number amounts to a mere 4 per year. In a quick search, I couldn’t find any comparables*, which makes the number meaningless. Perhaps this is high, perhaps it is low, I don’t know.

The author then makes the leap that it is local corporate taxes keeping businesses away from the city, even noting that “both business and residential properties are taxed, but residents vote.” A fact that is true now but for a long time businesses were guaranteed a vote under the peculiar BC Corporate Vote scheme.

No actual proof is offered linking Vancouver’s corporate tax rate to the number of licenses issued or that lower tax rates would actually increase the number of Vancouver start-ups (many argue that the city is actually low-taxed and great for start ups). I could easily make the argument that Vancouver’s high real estate prices and low office vacancy rates equally turn away new businesses. From one real estate analyst:

Downtown Vancouver’s office market typically has one of the lowest vacancy rates of any metropolitan core in Canada. … Lease rates in Downtown Vancouver are among the highest in Canada and are anticipated to experience upward pressure until new office towers come on stream in 2015.

…

Retail space in Downtown Vancouver remains in demand but a lack of supply is impeding further investment in the market.

…

An overall lack of supply restrains deal and dollar volumes and contributes to the highest valued industrial real estate in North America.

But go ahead Kunin, keep spouting your anti-tax apologetics and pursuing that race to the bottom.

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*I was able to access Open Data sources for business licenses in Vancouver and Calgary, but it wasn’t clear when these were first issued. Vancouver, for example, lists each license which must be renewed annually. There are some 60,000 licenses in that list. Calgary has just over 30,000 licenses listed over a wide range of dates.

It’s a common trope that atheists and Humanists don’t give as much (or frequently) as the religious. Lacking formal structures and congregations, there’s less of a culture of philanthropy, both in terms of regular tithes or even to secular charities.

However, these trends are changing.

The Foundation Beyond Belief is working with freethought groups across North America to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Light the Night Walk. As of this morning they have raised nearly $305,000 toward their goal of $500,000 – which will be matched by the Stiefel Foundation for a total gift of $1 million to fight blood cancer.

Here in Vancouver, the BC Humanist Association’s team has raised over $3,500 between our 15 team members (comprised of BCHA, Vancouver Skeptics, and UBC Freethinkers members).

Our walk is this Saturday, so if you can spare a few dollars, why not chip into my campaign. Remember that every dollar you donate is being matched and Canadian donations over $25 are eligible for a tax-receipt.

Every gift, big and small, is appreciated and helps highlight the compassion and charity we all have.

On Tuesday afternoon, I’ll be on CITR’s Radio Freethinker show talking about all the latest news from the BC Humanists.

The show runs for a full hour, so if you have ideas for what I should talk about, drop them below (obviously soon so that I can be somewhat prepared).

The show will be available as a podcast afterwards and I’ll link to it here when it’s online.

This morning the trend of increasingly successful BCHA meetings continued, with just over thirty humanists gathering at the Oakridge Seniors’ Centre for a discussion on Neuroscience and Memory. Four-year-old Addysen was perhaps one of the youngest attendees to one of our meetings yet – although I think she was too advanced for the discussion and preferred to go to the Lego Store.

Afterwards, I headed to New Westminster for a new Skeptics in the Pub meetup, organized by Peter Naugler. This event was organized on about a week or two notice, yet still brought out another thirty skeptics (with very little overlap from the BCHA meeting) due to the convenient location.

Peter didn’t realize how successful this event would be, otherwise he would have called ahead to ensure that The Met Pub had adequate staff. Still, the one waitress that was working was quite efficient and patient with our large and loud group that descended on her Sunday afternoon without warning.

It was fantastic getting to meet so many new people and I got a number of new ideas for programs and events to try to reach broader and wider audiences in the future. It’s going to be an exciting summer!

This is why I’m excited to be working with some great parents to start a secular parenting meetup group in Vancouver through the BC Humanists.

The group will kick-off after our Sunday, June 17th meeting (Father’s Day), at which we will be discussing Dave McGowan’s Parenting Beyond Belief. The meeting is from 10am-noon at Oakridge Seniors’ Centre. Following the discussion, we will move to the nearby Columbia Park (42nd Ave and Columbia Street) for a barbecue and picnic.

This informal meeting will help gauge the interest in this type of group and allow us to determine what kind of programming to put on later.

With luck, we can hopefully set up a freethinker summer camp next year and maybe I will get to polish off my DiscoverE science presentation skills.

After word of this was picked up by the pro-choice community, a counter-protest was hastily thrown together, but managed to attract a similar sized crowd to the pro-lifers. We ended up out-lasting the pro-lifers, both in terms of energy and time on the Art Gallery steps.

Cars were generally supportive of us, with a number honking in support of women’s rights.

Take a look through the photos below for more.

Last night, the council held further hearings on the issue and by the reports from a couple skeptics who attended, the presenters were predominantly misinformed and anti-GMO. Two people spoke against the motion (in favour of GMOs), out of more than twenty. One of the pro-science advocates was a farmer, but by the reports it sounds like their pleas for rationalism fell on councillors that had already made up their mind.

Most of the anti-GMO crowd conflated their disgust at some of the extreme and unethical business practices of Monsanto with genetic engineering technology, which unfortunately disposes of all the advantages offered.

I don’t have much more to add to this story. It would have been nice to have had more warning that this issue was coming up but given the recent disarray of Centre for Inquiry Vancouver, the local skeptic movement has lost much of its organizational ability. While I strongly believe that skepticism is a vital branch of Humanism, to date the BC Humanist Association has not had much involvement in these types of campaigns. Furthermore, moving into this realm would be an expansion of our mandate, which may water down our core mandate – i.e. trying to be all things to all people.

I’ll have some thoughts on the leadership race and my preferences soon. I got a call from NDP HQ today that voter packages are heading out next week.

First, we’ve finalized the date and location of our new book club. We’ll be meeting the first Tuesday of each month at Our Town Cafe at Broadway and Kingsway in Vancouver. The discussion starts at 7:00PM and our first book will be Hitch-22 on February 7th. RSVP to the meetup group here.

Next, we have agreed to give two scholarships to students or low-income BCHA members to go to the Northwest Freethought Alliance Conference in Renton, WA featuring Richard Dawkins. If you’re interested in learning a bit more about the scholarships or interested in applying, just fill out the form here.

We will also be helping to sponsor the Imagine No Religion 2 Conference in Kamloops. This was a very successful conference last year and this year the speaker’s line up is headed by astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss. If you register for both conferences you can save 15%.

We have also created a tentative schedule for our Spring Series of Sunday morning meetings which includes speakers on Secular Meditation, Canada’s Race History, Darwin Day, and Occupy Vancouver.

Between March 15 and 17, Secular Student Alliance speaker and award-winning journalist Ted Cox will be doing a whirlwind tour of the Lower Mainland, speaking for the UBC Freethinkers, the BC Humanists, and SFU Skeptics (in that order). Details are still being finalized for his tour.

Finally, we’re also going to be advertising aggressively online and streamlining our fundraising so that we can keep this pace up well into the future.

It should be a good start to 2012!