Bragging about times when I Did Good / Gave Heck

Today I am reminiscing on some minor successes as I think about what I want to do with my time and energy, which are finite.

Once upon a time I pointed out some inaccessibility in a document posted to the Senate of Canada’s website and they fixed it promptly. Didn’t ignore, didn’t argue, just fixed. Good job, the Senate of Canada.

There was also that time when I bullied a CBC radio program into making amends for some egregious sexism. This took more effort on my part than I expected, including a bunch of statistical analysis. If I remember correctly, their first response was defensive crap, but more objectors joined in and eventually they made amends. But: I haven’t done a statistical analysis of that show’s episodes since then, so who knows about broader impact.

My proudest professional success, though, is making Canadian law slightly less heteronormative.

Before I objected, everyone who applied for a social insurance number was required by law to provide (2e) the full name at birth of their mother and (2f) the full name at birth of their father. The law said the application “must contain” this information. No exceptions were provided for.

This is obviously bad law because not every person applying for this important document can identify one “mother” and one “father.” Why would you prevent someone from getting a SIN on that basis.¹

Now, instead, the Social Insurance Number Regulations require applicants to provide (2e) “the full name at birth of their parents.” I personally think “the full name at birth of their parent(s)” would have been better still (maybe also “if known”), but anyway it’s a clear improvement.

(Law-makers took the opportunity to brag too: “Furthermore, [these amendments advance] the Government of Canada’s agenda on gender equality, diversity and inclusion, as well as supporting LGBTQ2 rights, by … taking action to reflect diversity … by rendering the requirement for parental information gender neutral.”)

My current Do Good / Give Heck projects are more ambitious than these examples. We’ll see…

1. A friend commented, re: my last post, that my use of question marks confused him, so I will explain.
   
   There’s no question mark at the end of the in-body sentence that starts “Why would you” because, although it at first looks like a question, an answer would be a waste of time. There is no valid reason to do this.
   
   But, as seen in my last post, I will sometimes add a question mark in places where there’s no clear question. I do this when I’m less confident about something, so that readers can confirm or correct the information. In last night’s case: the question mark was whether a press conference for a (month-long!) strike was cancelled because police arrested a union leader / speaker for “mischief.” ↩︎