Roundup: Ignoring the broader privacy concerns

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The House of Commons Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee met yesterday to discuss the Public Health Agency of Canada’s use of anonymised mobile phone data to assess the efficacy of public health orders. As expected, this was little more than a partisan dog and pony show wrapped up in a bow of concern trolling that ignored the actual privacy issues involved in favour of trying to score points. Which is pretty much how we knew this was going to go down.

There could be actual privacy issues that they could discuss, and summon witnesses from telecom companies that sell this data, or the health companies that use it and track it, but no, they’re going to bring in the minister and Chief Public Health Officer to grill them about the programme, because accountability. And yes, the minister would be accountable politically, but that solves none of the actual issues that might be at fault here, but hey, this is about putting on a show rather than doing something useful, so good job with that, guys.

Good reads:

  • It turns out that the vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers is going ahead, and that someone at CBSA was giving wrong information to the media. (Seriously?)
  • Health Canada says they are seven to ten days away from making their determination on Pfizer’s antiviral COVID treatment drug.
  • Canada and Mexico plan to team up to challenge American country-of-origin rules for duty-free cars and trucks, citing that it’s inconsistent with the New NAFTA.
  • Surprising absolutely no one, Indigenous inmates are facing higher rates of COVID infections in federal prisons, because nobody learned a thing from previous waves.
  • Canadian troops in Ukraine say they are carrying on with their training mission in spite of the current concerns about a potential Russian invasion.
  • Here’s a look at how faith in medical officers of health have been waning as the pandemic continues to drag on, and messages become more contradictory.
  • An International Energy Agency report cites that Canada will need much more electricity generation capacity if it wants to meet its climate targets.
  • Erin O’Toole continues to go to bat for the unvaccinated, opposing the Quebec plan to tax the unvaxxed (even though he can do nothing about it federally).
  • Stephen Harper is calling on Conservative donors to help Peter MacKay pay off his leadership debt, citing his role as helping to found the party.
  • Colin Horgan dissects the use of misleading and inflammatory Twitter posts for the strategy of “dunking engagements,” which further poisons the political discourse.

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