Goodale: Answering the tough questions on Bill C-83 and reforming our approach to corrections
The Senate’s Social Affairs Committee is nearing the end of its study of Bill C-83, legislation that creates a new way of dealing with inmates who need to be separated from the general prison population for safety reasons. Currently, such inmates are held in administrative segregation, where they are confined to their cells for 22 […]
If this week’s dumb shrieking battles are any sign, this election won’t be pretty
OTTAWA—The past week provided a sadly predictable look ahead at this fall’s federal election. Dynamism was eschewed for dumb shrieking battles that we have seen a million times before and ultimately advance nothing but the same old partisan pepper spray. Sprinkle in the silly and you get a feel for what is coming our way. […]
Canada should weigh in on the crisis in Central America
OTTAWA—The history of United States’ intervention in Central America is a long, bloody, and depressing story. How many tens of thousands of civilians—mostly peasants—were tortured and killed by U.S. soldiers and their proxies and the right-wing dictatorships Washington has backed for a century in the region is unknowable. But the record of atrocities and suffering […]
Privacy watchdog proposing rule change that could see firms revise data-use policies
Companies could soon be rewriting their privacy policies to fit a change the privacy commissioner is contemplating that could mean getting a person’s explicit okay in all cases when their data is to be transferred across the border. Though the proposed change isn’t final, it has some interested people and groups saying that they’re now […]
Social media companies that violate new political ad rules, even inadvertently, will be fined, minister suggests
Canada has a new regime for online political ads heading into October’s election, but in an interview last week the minister responsible expressed some frustration with certain social media companies’ approach to the new system. Instead of agreeing to implement a registry of all campaign ads, as is required by the newly passed election-reform law […]
Stop the chest-thumping over China
The Japanese know a thing or two about dealing with China. A long and checkered history between the two neighbours has made it so. A prominent Japanese politician once explained to me that China’s authoritarian government exists to maintain order and unity in a country of highly competitive individualists. Its domestic habits of control spill […]
The EU and Canada: a transatlantic partnership with a strong digital dimension
Relations between the European Union and Canada are probably stronger now than they have ever been before. The Strategic Partnership Agreement and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, both signed in October 2016, show our mutual commitment to an open, democratic, sustainable, and progressive international order. I am delighted that an EU-Canada digital dialogue is […]
How computers kill people, or let’s not ‘move fast and break things’
The idea that our technological creations may harm, or even murder us has been a theme of fiction from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein to the 1915 silent film The Golem. Isaac Asimov’s 1942 short story Runaround proposed the oft-quoted First Law of Robotics: A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, […]
The step-by-step guide to legally manipulate the 2019 Canadian election
First, I feel obligated to say this is not serious advice, or intended as an operating manual, but it’s intended to demonstrate how easy it would be to manipulate the Canadian elections this year. Second, while I am associated with a political party, I would go under oath stating that I have not participated in […]
Confessions of a former digital utopian
Consider this a confession of a former digital utopian. When I was first elected as an MP, I believed that Parliamentarians needed to protect the “open” internet and embrace what we thought of as the digital commons. I swallowed the Silicon Valley line that government regulation would impede innovation. What was at stake was the […]
