We need more Canadian porn.  That is, according to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the government agency known for imposing strict requirements regarding the amount of Canadian-produced, written, or otherwise Canadian-made content that is aired on TV or radio. The aim of the CRTC is to ensure that Canadian programs get enough airtime, and that foreign, (notably American), TV shows and music do not dominate Canadian airwaves.  Latest on their list of crackdowns is the porn industry.  Specifically, the CRTC is demanding that three X-rated cable channels, AOV Adult Movie Channel, AOV XXX Action Clips, and AOV Maleflixxx, must meet their required 35 percent Canadian programming and 90 percent closed captioning minimums, or risk getting their licenses revoked. The Canadian content requirements, or CanCon regulations, as they are commonly called, are known to be harsh and, at times, nonsensical, but the recent demands of the CRTC have achieved a new level of absurdity.

The regulations in question are aimed at adult cable TV channels.  But with a nearly unlimited supply of Internet porn available at the click of a mouse, how many Canadians are actually paying to watch their porn on TV? Trying to regulate TV porn is futile, considering how many other sources of pornography are available.

Of course, the wealth of online sources of entertainment from around the world is surely a struggle facing the CRTC’s attempts to protect all Canadian sources of entertainment, not just porn. Online platforms for entertainment and music, such as YouTube, Netflix, and unauthorized downloading infringe upon the ability of the CRTC to achieve their goals in many other areas of entertainment. There are, admittedly, still some areas in which the CRTC has significant influence. Some examples of successful CanCon programs include popular shows, such as “Trailer Park Boys” and “Degrassi”.  However, online access to practically any program or clip from around the world makes the work of the CRTC largely ineffectual. Specifically, though, the immense use of Internet porn over any other viewing platform makes the porn industry one of the least logical areas of entertainment to attempt to regulate.

If government regulators are expending effort to ensure that the few people in Canada who are subscribed to cable TV porn are getting their required amounts of locally sourced erotica, it is fair to assume that the regulations are less concerned with providing viewers with domestically produced porn, and more interested in ensuring that Canadian porn producers, actors, and directors have adequate access to the porn market. The battle is not about preserving Canadian culture, but limiting the amount of foreign competition in the industry in order to make it easier for Canadian “artists” to make it in the pornography business. But when promoting Canadian pornographers becomes a priority, the general motives of CanCon are brought into question. If reform of the porn industry is really a priority, there are more urgent matters at hand than ensuring that enough Canuck pornographers have access to the airwaves.  Increasing the number of women directors, or addressing issues of violence and consent on sets, for example, are issues worth more attention.  Of course, these are not matters under the CRTC’s jurisdiction, but maybe that’s just another reason why they should leave porn alone.

On March 30th, Turkey will go to the polls in nationwide municipal elections. After a summer of anti-government protests, an economic downturn, and a corruption scandal implicating prominent members of the ruling party’s inner circle, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become a polarizing figure in Turkish society. Although he does not face re-election until 2015, these local elections are widely seen as a referendum on Erdogan’s vision for the Turkish Republic.

In interviews with a broad segment of Turkey’s population, voters expressed their sentiments towards Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the lead-up to the local elections. Due to fears of a government backlash against critics, the subjects of these interviews preferred only to disclose their first names.

Özge, a biology teacher at an Istanbul public high school, says she worries about the direction of the country under continued AKP rule. “The AKP wants to make Turkey look like it was before Ataturk – an Eastern country with no reference to a Western country and no democracy,” she said over tea at a Turkish restaurant. “What I want, and what many people want, is secularism.”

Her concern is a common one among the secular population in Turkey. Erdogan was raised in Kasımpaşa, a religious, working-class neighborhood along Istanbul’s Golden Horn, and has long supported the introduction of Islam into politics. Early on as prime minister, he was careful to balance the country’s secular political culture with the desire of many for a more sharia-based state. Now, many secular Turks worry that this delicate balance has shifted in the direction of Islamism.

Seljuk, a former member of Turkey’s Communist Party, jailed from 1982 to 1992 for voicing his beliefs, was more critical of the AKP’s authoritarianism than its Islamist agenda. “Erdogan plays a game,” he said from the offices of Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, where he is a volunteer. “[Erdogan] is not a person who is really for democracy. He uses democracy to get what he wants. So he’s a fascist.”

When asked about the specific policies that make Erdogan fascist, Seljuk pointed to the lack of freedom in the press. “The newspapers in Turkey are not journalism anymore,” he said. “Erdogan chooses what they write. This is not normal for a democratic country.”

According to the 2014 Journalists Without Borders Freedom of Press Index, Turkey ranks 154th in the freedom of its press, below countries such as Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. It is a source of much amusement here that during the height of the Gezi Park protests last summer, CNN Turk broadcast March of the Penguins rather than footage of the demonstrations.

More recently, Erdogan vowed to “wipe out Twitter,” following the release of audiotapes on the social media site that implicate his regime in wide-scale corruption. In the conservative city of Bursa, where AKP support is high, Erdogan proclaimed to a crowd of supporters that he is not concerned about the inevitable backlash from the West after his banning of the social media site. “I don’t care what the international community says at all,” he yelled in a fiery speech. “Everyone will see the power of the Turkish Republic.”

Hülya, a women’s rights activist for the CHP, says she is disgusted by Erdogan’s crackdown on the media. “When I see this sort of behavior, I think that Erdogan is a dictator, like Hitler was for Germany,” she said in response to a question about Erdogan’s censorship policies. “I don’t want my children to ask me one day: What have you done with our country? How could you have let Erdogan do that?”

The problem for those like Hülya, Seljuk, and Özge is that while Erdogan is altering Turkey’s political culture, away from secularism and toward authoritarianism and Islamism, he is making these changes within a democratic system in which he enjoys broad support. The Western media often neglects just how popular Erdogan is in Turkey. The AKP’s pro-development agenda, paired with its social conservatism and conciliatory attitude toward the Kurdish minority, has won the party support from all segments of Turkish society.

Yavuz, a religious conservative who works as an umbrella salesman in the  vibrant Istanbul neighborhood of Besiktas, said that he supports the AKP because of its social agenda. “In the university dorms, the boys are separated from the girls. That is how it is supposed to be. I don’t want my sister to stay in the same apartment with a strange guy. Would you want that?”

Cengiz, a restaurant owner of Kurdish descent, is more interested in the way in which the AKP has improved the situation for the Kurdish minority. “Before the AKP, the situation of the Kurdish people was so bad. I was not allowed to speak Kurdish in public. It was forbidden.” Now, he says that the rights of Kurds have improved significantly. According to Cengiz, these changes are “because of Erdogan.”

Although the majority of secular Turks do not support the AKP, some more concerned with the economy are willing to make an exception. Since coming to power twelve years ago, Erdogan has improved the country’s notoriously bad infrastructure, slimmed its bloated bureaucracy, liberalized trade, and achieved an eight percent average growth-rate per year. These feats earned the AKP some support among the secular upper-middle class.

Furkan, a student in electrical engineering at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul, finds himself in this demographic. “Turkey has changed a lot in the past twelve years,” he said nearby the Besiktas ferry. “[Erdogan] has so many projects that he plans and succeeds in. For example, in 2002 the streets were shit, but now have a look. They are beautiful, like the Autobahn.”

When asked how these economic or social successes justify Erdogan’s undemocratic behavior, Muhammad, a student at an Istanbul university he would not disclose, preferred to dwell on the pragmatic. “Look, for the last 12 years, the rule was good. That is what matters.”

As voters go to the polls next Sunday, they will have to weigh the AKP’s economic success against its growing authoritarianism, corruption, and Islamism. Many say this election is one of the most important in years.

—Dan Lombroso is a McGill student abroad at Bogazici University in Istanbul. To see his conversations with over thirty different Turkish citizens about the upcoming elections, visit his photoblog Voices of Istanbul. If you are a Turkish citizen interested in taking part in the project, you can contact him at [email protected]. 

On Friday, Mathieu Vandal, head of the election revision board for a downtown Montreal riding, resigned over concerns that large numbers of non-francophones were registering to vote in the upcoming election without proper screening. At a press conference on Sunday, Parti Québécois (PQ) candidates accused “people from Ontario and the rest of Canada” of trying to “steal” the election. Amid these accusations were reports that McGill and Concordia students who appear to qualify as voters according to the minimum registration requirements are being disallowed from registering to vote. Later on Sunday, Québec’s chief electoral officer said there was no evidence of an “irregular increase in voter registration.”

Each time there is a provincial election in Quebec, there is a discussion on campus as to whether or not McGill students should vote in it. This election has raised a more heated discussion than usual, as a result of our widespread opposition to the PQ’s Charter of Values. Passions aside, there are two questions at work here: can we vote, and should we?

On the first question, there are certainly some of us that can—people originally from Québec, for example (though the specific riding in which they should vote is still at issue). For the rest of us, it is much less clear. There are three specific requirements for registration: Canadian citizenship, residence in Québec for at least six months, and intention to make Québec your principal residence. The first two are straightforward; the third is not and needs clarification.

This aside, the more interesting question is “Should we vote?” If you plan on living here permanently, you absolutely should. How about those of us that don’t?

The main argument I’ve heard in the past weeks for students voting regardless of long-term residency is keeping the PQ from a majority government. This isn’t a very good argument, if only because it is currently far from clear that the PQ will form a government at all. Polls are giving the Liberals an edge that varies from two per cent to double-digits.

Moreover, the ridings in downtown Montreal where students who weren’t already residents of Quebec tend to live are basically decided—two are solidly Liberal, two are PQ, and one is held by Quebec Solidaire. These ridings seem unlikely to change hands. Ultimately, whether the PQ forms a government will be decided in the 97 ridings outside the Liberal-dominated island of Montreal. Considering the vote distribution, student-voting won’t make a difference in the ability of the PQ to form a government.

You could also argue for students voting in order to increase the budget of their preferred party through Quebec’s per-vote subsidy of $1.50 (which increases to $2.50 in an election year). While this reasoning has some logical merit, in reality, the impact on any party would likely be fairly small because there are relatively few of us. In my mind, this makes moral considerations more important. Simply put, it is immoral for a person to vote if they will not have to deal with the consequences of that vote. Doing so is unfair to those who will.

We allow people the right to vote because we believe that people should be able to make decisions about the character and the quality of the society in which they live. If they reside in or are leaving to another, with no plans to return, they have no right to a say in this one.

If Quebec is your permanent residence, you should vote. If you are planning on making Quebec your permanent residence after you graduate, you should vote. If you are a first- or second-year student and you will be studying at McGill for the rest of your degree, you too should vote as you will be living here for several more years. But if, like me, you’re an upper-year student from elsewhere in Canada with a distaste for xenophobic populism, it’s not your choice to make.

This article is part of our Campus Conversation on anglophones in the Quebec election.

Click here to return to the conversation.