Tesla shareholders deserve more than a 50-character tweet from Musk

Speaking of Twitter and inappropriateness - and I was - there was a good example recently of the inappropriate use of Twitter in the sphere of business and commerce.

Elon Musk, CEO and largest shareholder of electric car-maker Tesla and undeniable genius as an innovator (even if something of a maverick), dropped a simple little 50-character tweet that has thrown his $70-$80 billion company into chaos: "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured." Basically, Musk is frustrated at the red tape and constant market accountability and oversight involved with running a public company, and wants to go back to operating it as a private company. As a multi-billionaire, he probably has the wherewithal to do just that, although exactly what "funding secured" means is far from clear. The other shareholders are still waiting for some more information.

The audacity of using a short tweet like that for something so major is staggering. One parody tweet neatly put it in perspective: "Am considering going to Chipotle. Funding secured." Surely, the other shareholder deserve a little more than 50 characters.

UPDATE
Just kidding! Musk has changed his mind, after a board meeting in which pretty much everyone warned him against it, and will now no longer be taking his Tesla company private. And this time, he didn't just drop a tweet: he made it much more official and made the announcement in a blog entry on the company's website!
In the meantime, the company's shares have lost about 20% of their value. And all because of an ill-advised tweet!

Twitter is not an appropriate medium for international relations

The Canadian government has reaffirmed its confidence in the use of Twitter as a means of international diplomacy, even as Saudi Arabia continues to ramp up its expressions of outrage and its more concrete retaliations in response to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland's tweeted criticism of the Kingdom's approach to human and civil rights.

The Saudi shenanigans were kickstarted by a single tweet last week, although it was merely a public expression of government views and values, and should not have come as a surprise to Saudi Arabia. Arguably, it was the message, not the medium, that so offended the insecure and oppressive Saudi government. Also arguably, the Saudi response, in withdrawing and ejecting the two countries' respective amabassadors by tweet, was an even more egregious use of the platform, equivalent to firing an employee or breaking up with a partner by Twitter (which apparently also happens).

The affair has served to highlight, though, the potential pitfalls of "Twitter diplomacy" (or "hashtag diplomacy" or the rather awkward label "Twiplomacy"). According to many international relations commentators (and according to me), Twitter is just an inappropriate medium for high-level foreign affairs, and encourages the kind of ill-considered spur-of-the-moment shoot-from-the-hip exchanges we have seen so often from Twitter addict Donald Trump, by far the worst offender in this regard. The tone and childish content of some of his exchanges with North Korea and Iran just beggar belief, especially given the geopolitical import of the communications. But there are many other examples of where Twitter diplomacy, and it's relentlessly public nature, has been all but disastrous.

Proponents maintain that there is something to be said for straight talking and immediacy. But it is at best a blunt tool, and lacks the facility for nuance and precision that international relations require and deserve. Matters of international moment often need detailed discussions in private, preferably face to face. Furthermore, to me, it just seems vaguely disrespectful.

Be that as it may, for reasons that I still don't really understand, Twitter has become ubiquitous in foreign relations circles, with 131 foreign ministries and 107 foreign ministers maintaining active Twitter accounts. Major policy initiatives are first brought to light through 280 word (and often much shorter) tweets. Whole departments have been set up to monitor Twitter 24/7 for anything that might affect governments, politicians and companies, and that might need immediate responses. It's kind of ridiculous.

We may live in an age of short attention spans - and Twitter is only making that worse - but surely we can still deal with an old-fashioned press release, carefully researched, worded and edited, and analyzed for its potential political, economic and social implications. I'm no Luddite or technophobe, but I still maintain that Twitter is not the right place for high-level political discourse.

Cannabis impairment while driving is a real can of worms for Canada

As Canada's legalization of cannabis approaches, and we continue to be inundated with articles and opinion pieces on the various implications (see my piece on Is Canada's legalization of cannabis actually a big deal?), more questions are being asked about how it will be possible (or not) to police driving under the influence of cannabis.

Canadians are clearly worried about the issue: a recent survey shows that a large majority know that cannabis reduces reaction times and the ability to concentrate while driving (although 9% inexplicably believe that cannabis makes them a better and more careful driver!), and a similarly large majority agrees that driving under the influence of cannabis is no less dangerous than driving under the influence of alcohol, and that people often don't realize that they are driving impaired by cannabis. Other research shows that about one in 7 Canadian cannabis users admit to having driven within 2 hours of usage within the last three months. Men are twice as likely as women to drive while high, and daily users are about 4 times as likely to do so as occasional users. Some 1.4 million Canadians have been driven by someone who had consumed cannabis in the previous 2 hours. And all of that's BEFORE legalization!

The science (driving simulations and on-road experience, cognitive tests, and crash collision statistics) certainly agrees that driving while high IS a problem, despite any number of anecdotal reports to  the contrary. For non-daily users, who do not have a baseline blood level of THC already, it takes about 6 hours for the effects of one joint to dissipate. A "15 minute pause" as many people suggest is therefore clearly not going to be much use.

Granted, regular cannabis smokers may be more aware of their impairment status than are drinkers, and crash statistics suggest that drinking is a much greater hazard than joint-smoking as regards road accidents, but the risks (to the smokers and to others on the road) should not be down-played. Cannabis users are typically more cautious drivers than are drinkers, but they still tend to weave around on the road in much the same way, and are much less likely to be able to react to emergency situations than sober drivers. Cannabis combined with alcohol (a common practice) is a particularly lethal cocktail.

Part of the problem in policing marijuana use is the establishment of legal limits. The Canadian government is using 2 nanograms of THC per millilitre of blood as the limit for a summary conviction (a fine of up to $1,000), and 5 ng as a criminal offence punishable by up to 10 years in jail. This is roughly in line with other jurisdictions that have legal cannabis. But, unlike in the case of alcohol, it is not clear to people how many joints or show many puffs that means: it depends on how deeply the smoke is inhaled, the strength of the cannabis, the person's size tolerance and experience, etc. Cannabis in the form of lotions, candies, edibles and drinks presents even more of a challenge.

Even a person's THC blood levels is not always a reliable indicator of impairment, and this is further complicated by the fact that blood levels of THC tend to fall quite quickly after smoking, and then flatten out, although the THC remains in the brain for much longer, so a smoker may feel (and act) high even though their THC levels are relatively low. Some countries, like New Zealand, don't even use a THC reading to prove impairment, relying instead on a subjective assessment if the evidence for impairment (although this has its own drawbacks).

In Canada, the police are likely to employ initially a three-part sobriety test - walk in a straight line, balance on own foot, track a finger - as they do now, before legalization. If a blood test IS required, though, it needs to be administered relatively quickly, because THC levels, as has ready been mentioned, tends to fall quite quickly. A proposed saliva test is still not approved, and may not be distributed to law enforcement officers in time for the "launch" of the new law in October 2018.

The whole issue is fraught with challenges and, although many of these challenges exist even now, before legalization, you can bet that they will become substantially magnified after October. The subsidiary issue of cannabis impairment in the workplace is a whole other ball game, and companies are scrambling to adjust corporate policies to accommodate it. What a monster the government may be in the process of creating!

Ford's "buck-a-beer" legislation is populism at its worst

I can't for the life of me figure out why Doug Ford's proposed "buck-a-beer" legislation is garnering so much media attention. Because that's just what is: an attention grab with very little substance to it.
Ford's plan (and a major plank of his election platform, if you can believe it) is to reduce the "floor price" of beers with under 5.6% alcohol from the current $1.25 to $1.00 a beer for a pack of 24. He claims that it will foster more competition in Ontario's beer market. With a manic grin on his face, Ford giggled, "Ontario, the day you've been waiting for is finally here". It was kind of embarrassing.
However, this doesn't actually mean that all beer is suddenly going to cost $1.00 in the LCBO or the Beer Store - most breweries already charge more than this theoretical minimum, and are not going to (can't afford to) change their pricing no matter what the allowed minimum might be. The change certainly has no effect on draft beer sold in pubs and restaurants.
It is only the big breweries, selling the bog-standard, nasty, basic beers - the Labatts Blue, Molson Canadian, Coors Lights of the Canadian beer world - who will even consider this, and it is far from clear whether even they will want to take up this "opportunity" to make less money - why would they voluntarily take a 25% hit to their bottom line?). The last time the minimum price of a can of beer was $1 was back in 2008, and we have seen about 16% inflation since then.
A quality beer, and certainly a small-batch craft beer, just costs more than that, and many small breweries have already come out saying that this whole circus just does not apply to them. In fact, the little guys will probably suffer, especially as Ford intends to offer "non-financial incentives" to those companies who take up the "buck-a-beer challenge", such as preferential in-store displays, promotion and advertising advantages, etc.
Beer Canada, a major breweries trade organization, has come out strongly against the plan, and Ontario Craft Brewers says that it doesn't expect any of its members to start selling beer at $1. Other organizations warn that the move is likely to encourage already rampant alcoholism, and likely lead to more drunk driving incidents (Ford's response to this claim was a rather callous "I think that people in Ontario are mature enough, they're mature enough to know when they've had one too many"). The opposition NDP has pointed out the callousness of such a move after the government has just cut the basic income pilot project, and they have also pointed out that this will not acgually be revenue-neutral for the government.
It's difficult for me to see why the Conservatives see this as such an important policy initiative. I guess it might help to bolster Ford's man-of-the-people schtick, and popularize him with the poorer and less discerning of the Ontario electorate. But how it can be seen as an important piece of provincial legislation, I am really not sure. This is schlock populism at its worst.

UPDATE
One week into Ford's much-touted buck-a-beer program, all of three breweries have taken up this tempting retail opportunity, and one of those is aparently regretting it. Barley Days Brewery, Cool Beer Brewing Company and Presidents Choice are the only three breweries to chose to sell beer at $1 a can, and Presidents Choice owner Loblaws is to stop it's promotion after just one week, claiming it was only ever intended to be a temporary measure.

Canada should not fear Saudi Arabia's blustering

Should we really care that Saudi Arabia has taken umbrage against Canada for its criticism of the repressive monarchy's human rights record? Probably not.
The Saudi reaction is to a tweet last week by Foreign Affairs Minister Christia Freeland in support of Canadian-Saudi citizen Ensaf Haidar and her husband civil rights activist Raif Badawi and sister-in-law Samar Badawi, who are under arrest in Riyadh for criticizing the Saudi regime, along with several other women's rights activists who have been recently arrested without due process. The offending tweet reads: "Very alarmed to learn that Samar Badawi, Raif Badawi’s sister, has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. Canada stands together with the Badawi family in this difficult time, and we continue to strongly call for the release of both Raif and Samar Badawi."
Almost immediately the Saudi government issues a strongly-worded statement (on Twitter of course), chastising Canada for its "overt and blatamt interference the internal affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" (I am unsure how such criticism in the form of a tweet constitutes internal interference). They summarily ejected Canada's Saudi ambassador and withdrew their own ambassador to Canada, and vowed to close down trade between the two countries. Most recently, they have cancelled all flights between the countries and signalled their intention to pull out all Saudi students studying in Canadian universities and place them elsewhere in more pliant countries (although that might not be quite as easy as they think).
To her credit, Ms. Freeland has doubled down on the Canadian position, and not just crumpled in the face of this attempted intimidation, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has publicly backed her up, with no sign of the public apology Saudi Arabia is insisting on.
Despite a few recent examples of liberalization like allowing women to drive (oooh!), the kingdom is still considered one of the most repressive countries in the world. It is also engaged in a nasty war with neighbouring Yemen that has attracted a lot of international criticism. Canada has made no secret of its criticism of the regime's human rights attitudes - indeed, the Canadian parliament unanimously called for the release of Raid Badawi over three years ago - even if the Liberals did still see fit to go ahead with a controversial sale of armoured vehicles to the country that was originally brokered by the previous Harper government.
Some Middle East commentators have posited that this outraged response to some pretty tame criticism by Canada is essentially a bit of posturing on the part of Saudi Arabia, which wants to send a message to other western countries that it will not tolerate any criticism of its civil rights record, choosing Canada specifically because the two countries do not have a large trading relationship, so that closing down trade would not cause too great a disruption for itself, but would still send a message to others. It is certainly an easier option than taking issue with Britain, which has also criticized the regime, but which has large numbers of very well-heeled and influential Saudi citizens living there.
Trade between the two countries amounted to about $4 billion last year, which might sound like a lot, but in the world of multinational finances is paltry. A good portion of Canada's exports to the kingdom is "tanks and tank parts", much of it due to the abovementioned controversial combat vehicle deal, which a good proportion of Canafians would happily see recinded. Most of what Canada imports from Saudi Arabia is, inexplicably, oil: apparently we buy some 75,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil each year from Riyadh, which seems kind of ridiculous for a major oil-producing nation, although experts argue that this could easily be replaced if necessary. In international trade terms, though, Canada's commerce with the kingdom is small potatoes, and neither of the countries is actually reliant on trade with the other. Indeed, there has been more than one article in the business press recently bemoaning the poor trade between the two countries.  The withdrawal of Saudi students in Canada is expected to affect about 15,000 (up to 20,000 including accompanying family members), and might have a financial impact on Canada of some hundreds of millions of dollars).
One has to wonder whether the whole thing has not been deliberately concocted by the Canadian government in order to allow them a get-out from the unpalatable armoured vehicle contract, which has left a very bad taste in the Liberal government's mouth, but which they feel obliged to honour for political / public relations / local employment reasons, even if there are many reasons why they would actually prefer to abandon it (I too would happily see that particular contract cancelled, and what better opportunity will we ever have). Maybe I am reading too much into it, but this would certainly be an ideal time for Canada to distance itself from an odious regime, and probably without offending (and possibly even extending) its voting base.
Either way, the Saudi overreaction to a bit of criticism of its human rights record (nothing new), has blown the whole issue up and highlighted for the world what Saudi Arabia would almost certainly prefer to keep hidden.

UPDATE
The limits of Saudi Arabia's outrage were made very clear just a few days later. Their Energy Minister made a pretty unequivocal statement that Riyadh's oil sales to Canada will not be affected by the ongoing political row: "the Kingdom's petroleum supplies to countries around the world are not to be impacted by political considerations" - i.e. if it's going to cost them money, they are not that interested. It doesn't get much clearer than that.

Canada's legalization of cannabis - is it actually a big deal?

I am getting heartily sick of reading about cannabis in Canada's newspapers. The hype is huge. In today's paper alone, there was advice on how to grow it, how to drink it, how to cook with it, how to buy it, how to bring in tourists with it, how to invest in it, and more. There is something pretty much every day, especially in the business pages, as investors rush to inflate what looks to me suspiciously like a bubble of astronomical proportions.
Yes, I understand that we, here in Canada, are about to legalize marijuana, and that this is a big deal for some people. But it's really not a big deal for me, as I am as little likely to take up smoking pot as I am to take up smoking tobacco. And I have to wonder whether it is actually a big deal for the country as a whole. Perhaps the best way of estimating that is to look at a state like Colorado, which now has four years of experience of legalized marijuana under its belt.
So, how is the cannabis industry in Colorado looking? It turns out that marijuana sales account for just 0.55% of the state's total consumer spending. So, in the scheme of things, not a lot. Cannabis businesses make up less than 0.7% of new businesses since 2014, and the industry employs about 0.7% of Colorado's workforce. Where it does come into its own, though, is in taxation: cannabis sales are heavily taxed, and total taxes collected from marijuana make up 2.3% of the state's tax revenues.
So, it's kind of a big deal, but not, I still maintain, enough to justify the blanket media coverage it is receiving in the Canadian press.

Why is Trump so intent on destroying environmental safeguards

I confess that I have never really understood Donald Trump and his administration and, in particular, their push to specifically negate any environmental advances that have been made in the last few decades.
The latest such move is to rescind a ban on GMO crops and insect-killing neonicotinoids in national wildlife refuges brought in by President Obama. Notice that this is not a general ban, but a ban in national wildlife refuges - you know those places that are designated as areas to protect wildlife.
Incomprehensibly, the Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman justified the move by the need to maximize farmland production in those NWRs that include some farmland in order to ensure adequate forage for ducks and geese, the favoured victims of hunters (hunting on public lands appears to be a particular priority of this administration). And all the science behind the initial ban done by the previous administration? Well, that's just science.
Other than a desire to encourage hunting (why?), the only other reason that I can see for a move like this and others, like the recent initiative to abandon Obama-era car fuel efficiency requirements (and even to stop progressive states like California from establishing their own fuel efficiency rules), is an almost pathological libertarian desire to do away with all (and I mean ALL) regulations of any kind, no matter how sensible and justified. Oh, and that other pathological imperative to undo anything that Obama built during his time.
I tell you, psychologists will have their work cut out for years to come analyzing the motivations and psychic underpinnings of this government.

Ontario Tories cancel basic income pilot because ... er, why?

Fresh from a petulant little tiff in the Ontario legislature yesterday, in which the Conservative caucus refused to answer any questions during Question Time because of an alleged slur against one of their own, a slur that the Speaker of the House did not hear, and the recording microphones did not pick up, Doug Ford has returned to doing what he does best, and what is beginning to be the defining characteristic of his administration - cancelling things.
The latest such cancellation, after a slew of cancellations of Liberal initiatives like the province-wide cap-and-trade system, energy efficiency projects, wind farms, etc, is particularly egregious, as Ford is on record as specifically saying during his election campaign that he would NOT cancel the Liberals' 3-year basic income pilot project. So it came as something of a surprise when, yesterday, the Conservatives announced, with no real explanation, that they were cancelling the Liberals' 3-year basic income pilot project after just one year.
Poverty reduction is a stated goal of the new Conservative administration. Without a full-scale pilot project of this type, we will never really know whether a basic income system, such as has caught the attention of many different governments across the world in recent years, would be an effective means of reducing poverty among the most needy in our society. That was the point of the small-scale pilot project. So why then cancel it part-way through, leaving the participants in the lurch, wasting all the money it has cost thus far, and breaking a firm campaign promise in the process?
It may be futile to look for logic or consistency in this particular government, but this particular move seems entirely baffling. Unless, of course, it is just a case of "anything the previous administration did must, by definition, be bad, so let's cancel it". This is going to get old