Last week, CBC journalist Neil Herland was reportedly pulled from the air and brought before a disciplinary hearing after posting a tweet thread about being taunted on his way to the Song Shul’s Yom Kippur services at the Meridian Arts Centre in Toronto. The thread included video of the protesters shouting “Zionist alert,” “you’re going to hell” and “baby killer” at people walking in to pray as well as context on the rise in antisemitism, the terror attack at the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Belleville the night before, and the presence of a guest speaker at the service. Herland’s tweet thread sparked opposition, with some defending the protesters on the grounds that the location is a public facility and not a full-time synagogue and that the speaker was Mark Regev, who once served as a spokesperson for the Israeli government. I tweeted about the response last week, noting that the thread was accurate and that I did not understand the concern. That tweet has been viewed over 280,000 times, leading to plenty of angry responses. This post unpacks the arguments and explains why I still don’t see the issue with the tweet thread. If anything, the focus should be protesters who may have violated the Criminal Code.
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Buried in Bill C-39: The Enabling Digital Trade Act Brings Canada Its First Federal Electronic Trade Documents Law
The government introduced Bill C-39, the Building Canada Strong Act, last week, and while it emphasized faster project approvals, public discussion has focused almost entirely on the implications for collective bargaining rights. Given those twin issues, it is perhaps unsurprising that the creation of an entirely new digital trade statute has gone unnoticed. Buried toward the end of a 232-page bill, the Enabling Digital Trade Act would be the first federal law on electronic trade documents such as bills of lading, an issue with real implications for bringing digital technologies to shipping and supply chains. Because these digital issues are unlikely to attract much attention, this post unpacks the provisions and their implications.
A Definition That Meets the Moment: Federal Government Recognizes Antisemitism Includes Anti-Zionism
Public Safety Canada released its summer progress report on the National Commitments to Combat Antisemitism yesterday, days after the Yom Kippur attack on the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Belleville. Most of the report tracks activities related to police training, funding programs, and provincial initiatives. But what makes the report consequential is the government’s clear recognition in a pair of statements that antisemitism includes anti-Zionism. The statements are sure to attract criticism in some quarters, but anti-Zionism is too often thinly veiled antisemitism, as if substituting the word Zionist for Jew renders the unacceptable acceptable. Given the rising antisemitic violence, culminating in this week’s terror attack, combatting antisemitism requires definitions that safeguard the Jewish community while remaining consistent with protecting freedom of expression. The government’s approach, which relies on a definition of antisemitism based on the lived reality of the Jewish community, does just that.
Nobody Can Say They Weren’t Warned: Canada’s Threat Assessments Predicted the Belleville Yom Kippur Attack
The shooting outside the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Belleville on the eve of Yom Kippur should not have come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the government’s own threat assessments. For the past year, CSIS’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre has been sounding the alarm, warning that a violent attack targeting the Canadian Jewish community was a realistic possibility. Indeed, the ITAC warnings predicted that the most likely scenario was a lone actor with a simple weapon at an easily accessible target fuelled by the normalization of antisemitism. On Sunday night, a 29-year-old former soldier fired repeatedly at the synagogue with congregants inside, with only a brave police officer averting a potential massacre.
An AI Transparency Act for Canada: My Submission to the Government’s AI Transparency Consultation
The government’s consultation on AI transparency closed yesterday. My submission builds on appearances before the House of Commons Industry committee, the Senate Transport and Communications committee, and the Senate Social Affairs committee, and recommends an AI Transparency Act built on three pillars: mandatory public disclosure of AI corporate safety and escalation policies, an issue I raised in the aftermath of Tumbler Ridge, transparency on the works included in AI training data, and annual transparency reports on government and law enforcement demands for user data. It addresses each of the discussion paper’s five areas, including why Bill C-36 (the government’s privacy reform bill) is unlikely to facilitate better transparency in automated decision-making before at least 2030 and why Bill C-34’s synthetic content labelling obligation does not fully address the issue of identifying such content that can mislead. The full submission is posted below.
Recent Posts
The Wrong Target: Why the CBC Should Be Asking About the Yom Kippur Protesters, Not the Journalist Who Reported on Them 
Buried in Bill C-39: The Enabling Digital Trade Act Brings Canada Its First Federal Electronic Trade Documents Law 
A Definition That Meets the Moment: Federal Government Recognizes Antisemitism Includes Anti-Zionism 
Nobody Can Say They Weren’t Warned: Canada’s Threat Assessments Predicted the Belleville Yom Kippur Attack 
An AI Transparency Act for Canada: My Submission to the Government’s AI Transparency Consultation
