The craziness of the Trump administration relationship with Canada was on full display this past week as seemingly every day involved some form of policy change on tariffs – first on, then slightly delayed for some goods, then slightly delayed for more goods and by week’s end threats of new tariffs. Given the uncertainty, I recently co-wrote an op-ed in the Globe and Mail together with Dr. Kumanan Wilson that sought to put the spotlight on another issue that could come to the fore if the economic battle moves beyond tariffs to other issues. In this case – privacy, data localization and health data.
Dr. Wilson is a specialist in General Internal Medicine at The Ottawa Hospital, Chief Executive Officer/Chief Scientific Officer, Bruyère Research Institute, a Professor and Faculty of Medicine Clinical Research Chair in Digital Health Innovation at the University of Ottawa and member of the University of Ottawa’s Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss why we should be paying attention to health privacy, AI and the location of our data.
The podcast can be downloaded here, accessed on YouTube, and is embedded below. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify or the RSS feed. Updates on the podcast on Twitter at @Lawbytespod.
Show Notes:
Geist and Wilson, Beware, Donald Trump May Go After Canadians’ Health Data Next, Globe and Mail
Geist and Homsi, Outsourcing Our Privacy?
Credits:
CNN, “What a Mess President Trump Has Created”, Canadian Official on Tariffs, March 6, 2025
Related posts:
Canadian Health Data Requires Stronger Safeguards With Lost Canada-U.S. Trust
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 204: What Could Have Been for the Bill S-210 Hearings
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 217: David Fraser on the Privacy Implications of the Federal Court of Appeal’s Facebook Ruling
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 225: How Canada Can Leverage Digital Policy to Retaliate Against Trump’s Tariffs
This post highlights an important and timely issue—the intersection of politics, trade policies, and digital health privacy is something that deserves more attention. The unpredictability of tariff policies under the Trump administration was already a major concern, but expanding the discussion to data localization and health privacy adds another critical layer to the conversation.