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Health Data Liberation! by Daniel X. O'Neil https://flic.kr/p/naPjxW CC BY 2.0

Commentary: Ensuring the Sovereignty and Security of Canadian Health Data

Following on our earlier Globe and Mail op-ed and Law Bytes podcast, I am pleased to co-author a commentary on health data sovereignty and security with Kumanan Wilson and Mari Teitelbaum in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The key points identified in the piece:

Canada’s population-based health data are an invaluable resource that provide economic and health system opportunities through the development of health-related artificial intelligence algorithms.
Concerns about the potential monetary value of these data, access by the United States for surveillance purposes, and how data often reside on cloud servers owned by US companies, make it essential that Canada redouble efforts to ensure the security and sovereignty of data.
We suggest a multipronged approach that includes encrypting health data by design, requiring health data be hosted on Canadian soil (data localization), inserting a blocking statute into privacy laws, and investing in the development of Canadian sovereign cloud servers to host health data.

The full commentary can be found here.

July 30, 2025 — 1 comment — Columns

Silence-Schild auf dem Gelände der Communauté de Taizé by Maik Meid CC-BY-SA-3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taize-Silence.jpg

The Sound of Silence: On Being Jewish in Canada in 2025

Deborah Lyons, Canada’s recently retired envoy for combatting antisemitism, this week lamented that the effort to shine a light on increasing antisemitism in Canada had left her “despondent and despairing about the fact that it was hard to get people to speak up, to speak with clarity, to speak with conviction about what we were seeing happening here on Canadian soil.”

Jewish communities have long known silence. My The Hub opinion piece notes that at its worst, it has manifested in some communities as synagogue floors covered in sand to mask the sound of feet shuffling during silent prayers or by those hidden during the Holocaust to escape capture by the Nazis. In today’s Canada, silence comes in different ways. Some Jews quietly conceal their identity by refraining from displaying a Star of David or kippah, families remove mezzuzahs from their front doors to avoid telegraphing that it is a Jewish home, and the community avoids widespread promotion of events hosted in community centres due to security concerns.

July 25, 2025 — 9 comments — Columns

Tiktok statement on National Security, SXSW, Austin, Texas, USA by Cory Doctorow https://flic.kr/p/2omHwrb CC BY-SA 2.0

What Is the Canadian Government Doing With Its Incoherent Approach to TikTok?

My latest Globe and Mail op-ed notes that TikTok has long presented a thorny challenge for Western governments. The security and privacy concerns resulting from its link to China have pushed some to ban the app altogether. Others, cognizant of its enormous popularity with younger demographics and its support for the cultural sector, have sought to establish regulatory safeguards, required sales of controlling interest, or demanded localized versions that limit the potential for Chinese influence or interference.

Ottawa has faced many of the same issues, yet what has emerged is an incoherent approach that leaves Canadians with the worst of all worlds: less protection against security and privacy risks, less support for the cultural sector, and less certainty about what the government is trying to achieve.

July 16, 2025 — 2 comments — Columns

The Day I Knew I Was Old ;) by artistmac https://flic.kr/p/jnHv7a CC BY-SA 2.0

Risky Business: The Legal and Privacy Concerns of Mandatory Age Verification Technologies

When the intersection of law and technology presents seemingly intractable new challenges, policy makers often bet on technology itself to solve the problem. Whether countering copyright infringement with digital locks, limiting access to unregulated services with website blocking, or deploying artificial intelligence to facilitate content moderation, there is a recurring hope the answer to the policy dilemma lies in better technology. While technology frequently does play a role, experience suggests that the reality is far more complicated as new technologies also create new risks and bring unforeseen consequences. So too with the emphasis on age verification technologies as a magical solution to limiting under-age access to adult content online. These technologies offer some promise, but the significant privacy and accuracy risks that could inhibit freedom of expression are too great to ignore.

The Hub runs a debate today on the mandated use of age verification technologies. I argue against it in a slightly shorter version of this post. Daniel Zekveld of the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) Canada makes the case for it in this post.

July 9, 2025 — 5 comments — Columns

Y U no pay taxes? by Duncan Cumming https://flic.kr/p/j1oNYe CC BY-NC 2.0

Canada’s DST Debacle a Case Study of Digital Strategy Trouble

My Globe and Mail op-ed opens by noting that after years of dismissing the warnings of likely retaliation, the Canadian government caved to U.S. pressure earlier this week as it cancelled the digital services tax. Faced with the U.S. suspension of trade negotiations, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced that the government would rescind the legislation that created it.

July 3, 2025 — 4 comments — Columns