Roundup: A StatsCan privacy check

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While the ongoing issue of Statistics Canada looking for financial transaction data continues, the actual privacy practices in the institution aren’t being adequately explained to Canadians – and they certainly aren’t being represented accurately by the opposition. So with that in mind, here’s professor Jennifer Robson to explain just what she has to go through in order to access data for her research at StatsCan, in order to give you a better sense about how seriously they take this kind of thing.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1059641954021990400

This is why the complaints that the data won’t be secure as it’s being anonymized is pretty specious, and the pearl-clutching that StatsCan would have a person’s SIN is also overblown considering that they already have it – they matched up people’s tax returns with their census forms to ensure that they had accurate data regarding household incomes, and lo, nobody made a peep about that when it happened. Again, this overblown rhetoric around what is being planned about this financial transaction data is not only risible, but it’s actively mendacious (particularly when Conservative MPs keep saying things like this is a project by the Liberal Party or by Justin Trudeau himself). And yes, StatsCan has done a woeful job as to explaining what it needs these data for, and this government is largely too inept to communicate any of that information either. And yet here we are.

Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne points out that while the Conservatives have been spending years attacking StatsCan, the real privacy threat comes from the unregulated use of personal information by political parties, not the country’s statistical agency.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau will be heading to France to mark the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the First World War.
  • Trudeau spent yesterday in Montreal meeting with business leaders ahead of the autumn economic update.
  • There remains no answer from the government on what absent MP Nicola Di Iorio is up to on his secret mission from the prime minister.
  • Amarjeet Sohi has personally met with the leaders of 22 First Nations communities as part of the engagement over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
  • After veterans’ benefits underpayments were discovered, the government announced it will reimburse the $165 million by 2020.
  • The government also said they’d support the NDP Supply Day motion on lapsed veterans’ funding, but considering it’s based on a false premise, that means little.
  • The government indicated that they are in talks around possibly relocating a Pakistani Christian woman under threat because of blasphemy accusations.
  • The government bought more than 600 new cars for use at the G7 (the most cost-effective option, apparently), and is now trying to offload the majority of them.
  • It turns out that National Defence was misleading journalists as to the true costs of a VIP flight that turned bad.
  • It turns out that former GG Adrienne Clarkson may have been billing for more than initially reported, which again, is because of the lack of transparency in those filings.
  • Senators Batters and Joyal found a pretty damning hole in the government’s Access to Information bill, and how it treats the Senate and the Commons.
  • Harjit Sajjan penned an op-ed for Maclean’s about remembering the sacrifices of veterans, speaking as one himself.
  • Here’s how one Liberal MP is trying to balance supporting dairy farmers in his riding with supporting the government on the New NAFTA.
  • The Bloc are looking to not only rebuild, but rebrand their party following the mess left by their last leader.
  • Here’s a look at how the ranked ballot system introduced for the London, ON, municipal election didn’t do anything it was promised to do.
  • Blake Shaffer explains the large emitter program for carbon pricing, and why it’s designed the way it is, and why it may undermine carbon pricing in the end.
  • Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column looks over what’s coming down the pipe for private members’ business, and evaluates their chance for success.
  • Kevin Carmichael walks us through Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz hitting back at his critics that the Bank’s forecasts are “too rosy” in raising interest rates.

Odds and ends:

From me in Law Times is a look at the political risk of green projects following the change in government in Ontario, and how that may dissuade new business.

It was the Maclean’sParliamentarian of the Year awards last night (list of winners here, photos of the event here).

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