The Globe and Mail - 02.11.2019

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2019 | THEGLOBEANDMAIL O OPINION | O11

I

n 1999, the fight against doping
looked bleak. There was wide-
spread institutional denial of
the existence of doping in sport,
despite evidence to the contrary.
There were inconsistent or non-
existent anti-doping rules, and
sporadic testing that was backed
up by inadequate enforcement.
There was no funding and no co-
ordination between sport and
governments.
But this year, the World Anti-
Doping Agency (WADA), formed
in November of that year against

these long odds, will mark its 20th

anniversary at its fifth World Con-

ference in Katowice, Poland. It is

hard to imagine that the fight

against doping in sport could

grow from such humble begin-

nings and generate the worldwide

attention and significant progress

we have witnessed over the

course of the past two decades. It

is, however, a worthwhile endeav-

our.

Those early days were as heady

as they were challenging. WADA

began its work in early 2000, in

the lead up to the Sydney Olym-

pics, only to find the situation to

be worse than expected. A major-

ity of the Olympic sports did not

even have rules that allowed

them to conduct out-of-competi-

tion tests.

The first major challenge for

WADA was to create universal and

all-encompassing anti-doping

rules to replace the patchwork

quilt that involved more than 200

countries and territories, about 50

international federations and 206

national Olympic committees.

After massive consultations

with all stakeholders, the World

Anti-Doping Code was adopted in

March, 2003, and it came into

effect the following year, with

Olympic Movement stakehold-

ers, led by the International

Olympic Committee, agreeing to

then implement the code prior to

the Athens Olympics in 2004.

Governments agreed to adopt an

International Convention under

the aegis of UNESCO in October,

2005, before the Torino Olympic

Winter Games in 2006. That con-

vention has now been ratified by

188 countries and requires gov-

ernments to use the code as the

basis of their fight against doping

in sport. This was the first time in

history that sport andgovern-

ments have committed to such a

common front.

The next challenge was to de-

velop standards for laboratory ac-

creditation, testing and many

technical but important issues

that form part of a comprehen-

sive international anti-doping

program, including scientific and

social research. WADA recently es-

tablished an internal, but

nevertheless independent, mech-

anism to assess stakeholder com-

pliance with code provisions and

to recommend appropriate ac-

tions in the event of non-compli-

ance. This effectively removes

irrelevant considerations such as

politics from compliance deter-

minations.

In addition to ensuring the

sturdiness of the science, WADA

needed to develop and deliver

educational and outreach pro-

grams, to ensure that stakehold-

ers understood their responsibili-

ties under the code so they could

carry them out. The complexities

of co-ordinating so many differ-

ent stakeholders that have di-

verse cultures, languages, re-

sources and expertise to a stan-

dardized implementation of a

comprehensive anti-doping pro-

gram are enormous, and thus this

work requires constant reinforce-

ment. Education will, in the long

run, be particularly important in

the prevention of doping.

WADA’s power to conduct its

own investigations, withheld by

its stakeholders until 2015, has

proven to be particularly impor-

tant. A major probe into systemat-

ic Russian doping, followed by in-

vestigations of biathlon athletes,

Kenyan runners and others that

are currently under way, add im-

measurably to the deterrence ele-

ment of WADA’s mission. Investi-

gations will become even more ef-

fective once sharing information

between the sport and public au-

thorities is improved to enable

the flow to work seamlessly, in

both directions. WADA’s reputa-

tion for thorough, reliable and in-

dependent investigations has

been significantly enhanced.

Of course, nothing is perfect.

WADA remains a work in pro-

gress, evolving with experience –

scientific and otherwise. It needs

to improve its ability to convince

some skeptical athletes that it is

working for them, to create the

level playing field they need for

fair competition and to demon-

strate that it understands their

needs and welcomes their views

on all aspects of the fight against

doping in sport.

And make no mistake about it:

This is a fight. Very little doping is

accidental; it is almost always

planned, deliberate and well-

resourced, expressly intended to

defraud both athletes who play by

the rules and the public at large.

So here’s to two decades of de-

fending the athletes who do

things right – and to the decades

still to come, for as long as the

spirit of fair competition requires

a champion.

Here’sto20yearsoffightingdopinginsports

TheWorldAnti-Doping

Agencyhascomealong

waysinceitbeganin

1999,anditsworkis

justasvitalnow

RICHARD POUND

OPINION

LawyerinMontrealforStikeman
ElliottLLPandwasthefounding
presidentoftheWorldAnti-Doping
Agency

M

ore than five decades
ago, Marshall McLuhan
argued that media are
ecosystems, extensions of hu-
man consciousness. The famous
adage that the medium is the
message also means, as the of-
ten-misquoted title of McLuhan’s
famous book notes, that the me-
dium is the mass age. We are all
immersed in media and technol-
ogy.
Media have changed a lot since
McLuhan wrote: less broadcast,
more diffusion and unruliness.
But his basic insights remain rel-
evant.
The social media of today are
“social” in only a very specific
and narrow sense, and their ef-
fects on public discourse are
mostly deleterious. Twitter, for
example, is a force multiplier of
disinformation, outright lies and
escalating vitriol, especially as
wielded by certain holders of
high office.
Facebook, meanwhile, is a
right-wing corporate entity that

nevertheless parades itself as a

champion of freedom. Media

critic Jacob Silverman, writing

this week in the digital magazine

The Baffler, notes: “That [Face-

book] has come to so thoroughly

dominate our public sphere is a

tragic indictment of American

civic life and American techno-

capitalism, which has confused

the pitiless surveillance of to-

day’s internet with utopian em-

powerment.”

Ouch. People may disagree

with these judgments, but what

stays constant is the need for crit-

ical reflection about how media

work. As McLuhan himself said,

even the evolving skills of read-

ing and writing are not, to par-

aphrase Winston Churchill, the

end, or even the beginning of the

end, of literacy. They are at most

the end of the beginning.

Media literacy is therefore

more urgent than ever in our day,

as is the need for deeper forms of

cultural and technological litera-

cy. These are the real font of free-

dom and democracy, not any co-

zy relationship between Zucker-

bergian bromides and anti-regu-

latory government feebleness.

I spent last weekend with col-

leagues at the University of Col-

orado discussing artificial intelli-

gence and ethics. This may seem

a long way from literacy, but as

the discussions wound on, I real-

ized that every aspect of our con-

cerns, some fairly technical, were

implicated in critical ideas about

technology and society. This is

the new techno-capital literacy,

and we’re all still learning it.

The Colorado project,

STEM+C, works to integrate eth-

ical and political concerns into AI

and robotics curricula. The key

word is “integrate.”

So far, my own experience

with the ethics of AI has been

that computer-science research-

ers too often view ethical issues

as window dressing, hasty add-

ons to help secure grant money.

But this project is led by comput-

er scientists, and its advisers in-

clude a skeptical law professor

and a neo-Luddite philosopher

(that would be me).

The initiative has unique

properties. First, it’s aimed not at

high-school or college students

but students in Grades 6, 7 and 8.

Second, the main delivery vehi-

cle for ethical discussion – the

medium bearing the message – is

storytelling.

As McLuhan would have con-

firmed, narrative is essential to

understanding human con-

sciousness. It might even be the

basis of selfhood, a sense of iden-

tity over time. Certainly, stories

are everywhere around us, from

children’s books to podcasts to

the latest (two) winners of the

Man Booker Prize. Narrative con-

veys ideas – and also shapes

them.

Two samples will give you an

idea of the project. The first is a

tale of an AI that functions to

match families with pets, like a

dating app but with no swipe-left

option. The second is a near-

future dystopian story about an

algorithm-dominated society

where programs choose which

children will live or die based on

environmental degradation and

resource depletion. The latter

strikes me as a version ofLogan’s

Run– only it’s kids, not 30-year-

olds, who get terminated.

These are clever designs be-

cause they aim directly at things

humans aged 11 to 14 probably

already care about. A lot of great

young-adult literature does simi-

lar things, although not always

with a focus on algorithms and

how they might come to influen-

ce people and societies. In a way,

there is nothing new here.

Aesop’s fables do the same thing,

as do fairy tales and horror sto-

ries. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t

have ended up in philosophy if I

hadn’t spent a lot of my adoles-

cent years reading reams of sci-

ence fiction and weird crossover

authors such as Kurt Vonnegut

and Philip K. Dick.

But the world changes fast,

and the tech speculation of yes-

terday is the reality of today. It

was hot and sunny on the Satur-

day afternoon when we had this

confab in Boulder. We broke off

at 3 p.m. to enjoy the weather.

Overnight, the temperature

plunged, and in the morning,

there was snow on the ground.

Our plane out of Denver was de-

layed for several hours.

That’s mountain weather. The

tech landscape of today is just as

variable. We all need to learn to

read the techno-skies. Our pre-

dictions will often be wrong.

That’s media meteorology, not

nearly as accurate as the real kind

but just as important to daily life.

KONRADYAKABUSKIwillreturn.

ThenewliteracyinanAIworld

MARK KINGWELL

OPINION

Professorofphilosophyatthe
UniversityofToronto

Medialiteracyis

thereforemoreurgent

thaneverinourday,as

istheneedfordeeper

formsofculturaland

technologicalliteracy.

‘T

his is the new normal,” a
friend in the San Francis-
co Bay Area texted to me
this week after I asked about her
air quality (“not terrible, but still
unhealthy”). It’s wildfire season
in Northern California, when
news reports are filled with imag-
es of choked highways surround-
ed by towering flames,
underneath skies darkened by
smoke and ash.
The “new normal” phrase has
been repeated by residents, jour-
nalists and frustrated climate sci-
entists for the past month. Cali-
fornia suffered its most destruc-
tive wildfire ever in 2017, which
was followed by a bigger one in

2018. Ever since, the state has
      been trapped in a cycle of fires, at-
      tempts to rebuild and further in-
      fernos.
      The fires over the past few
      years have had multiple causes.
      The utility Pacific Gas & Electric
      (PG&E), which neglected to clear
      dry vegetation from around its
      transmission lines, can be
      blamed for a few. Human care-
      lessness is often a factor. And cli-
      mate change is absolutely a factor

• according to scientist Michael
  Mann, excessive dry brush is just
  one way that longer, hotter sum-
  mers have contributed to this
  year’s situation.
  As 2019 draws to a close, Cali-
  fornia is a clear example that,
  having failed to prevent climate
  change, humanity is now official-
  ly in the coping stage. The state’s
  situation holds lessons we’d all be
  smart to absorb.
  To start: It isn’t just small, poor
  island countries that are becom-
  ing uninhabitable. Too many Cal-
  ifornians live too close to fire-

prone areas, and some with the

means to move have begun to do

so. The fact that more people are

leaving than moving to the state

is mostly because of housing

costs, but this week, a number of

people told The New York Times

that the fires are what’s uprooting

them after 50 years there.

Others were clearly on the

verge, such as wine-country resi-

dent Erika Rivas, who was evac-

uating for the second time after a

blaze two years ago. “We all

agreed as a family that if that re-

built house burns down again, we

might just move out of the area,”

she told the Times.

But the coast’s spiralling

homelessness problem shows

that hundreds of thousands of

people don’t have that option.

Another fact no longer to be ig-

nored is that stronger, more fre-

quent natural disasters are high-

lighting the gulf between classes.

On Monday, the Los Angeles

Times told the heartbreaking sto-

ries of Latino housekeepers and

landscapers who went to work in

“one of the city’s most affluent

neighbourhoods,” only to find

that it had been evacuated. Many

said that their employers hadn’t

let them know.

“I need the money, I need to

work,” a 72-year-old gardener

told the reporter when asked if he

was scared of nearby fires.

Firefighting is a clear example

of the disparities. At one end,

some wealthy homeowners are

paying private firefighting teams

up to US$3,000 a day. At the oth-

er, some of the public firefighters

are inmates from state prisons,

paid an average of US$2 a day,

with an extra US$1 an hour dur-

ing active fires.

Another frustrating, fascinat-

ing aspect of California’s situa-

tion is the absolute mess unfold-

ing around PG&E. Faced with

US$11-billion in settlements over

fires in 2017 and 2018, the state’s

private utility service filed for

bankruptcy in January.

In an attempt to prevent new

blazes this year, PG&E imposed

last-minute blackouts on millions

of people. The strategy caused

chaos: Unreliable refrigeration

alone has damaged scientific ex-

periments, spoiled lots of food

and put users of some medica-

tions at risk.

It also didn’t even work – PG&E

said this week it was likely re-

sponsible for several October fires

anyway.

Politicians have had it with the

long-troubled company. Gover-

nor Gavin Newsom is trying to or-

ganize a corporate takeover,

while one mayor is discussing

taking it public. And yet PG&E ini-

tially declined when Mr. Newsom

suggested it give small rebates –

US$250 at most – to blacked-out

customers.

Because what these fires are al-

so making clear is how resistant

corporations are to change. Al-

though General Motors, Toyota

and Fiat have all made pledges

around climate mitigation and

green energy, they all also an-

nounced this very week that they

were siding with the Trump ad-

ministration in its battle with Cal-

ifornia over fuel-emissions stan-

dards.

The state’s refusal to co-oper-

ate with weakened targets is like-

ly to be decided at the Supreme

Court – as I wrote last week, far

too many climate decisions are

being punted to judges in lieu of

forward-thinking governments.

This, then, is the new normal.

California’sdeadlywildfiresholdlessonsforeveryone

DENISE
BALKISSOON

OPINION

A firefighter sprays water

on a levelled home as

the Hillside fire burns in

San Bernadino, Calif.,

on Thursday.

NOAHBERGER/

ASSOCIATEDPRESS