Canada's Bill C-65 would weaken privacy

Bill C-65, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act, is currently being considered by Canada's House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I testified about the bill's privacy provisions on October 31, 2024 (watch).

C-65 is posed as a strengthening of the privacy provisions of the Canada Elections Act that apply to Canadian political parties. However, the bill falls massively short of the standard principles used in privacy laws.  The B.C. Supreme Court recently ruled that the province’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), which is a full and proper privacy regime, applies to federal political parties. The federal Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Green Party seek to appeal the ruling, and Bill C-65 seems like an effort to undermine or displace PIPA.

My commentary about the bill, "10 privacy violations in the federal government’s proposed changes to the Canada Elections Act," is available here.

Algorithmic Gender and Race Bias: a Canadian Broadcast Policy Concern?

My new article "Discoverability and Algorithmic Recommendations in Video Streaming Platforms:Algorithmic Gender and Race Bias as a Canadian Broadcast Policy Concern" with Fizza Kulvi, Faiza Hirji, Manveetha Muddaluru, Emmanuel Appiah, Leandra Greenfield, Erica Rzepeci, and Christine Quail recently came out.  

Our article examines discoverability and algorithmic recommendation systems in video streaming systems like Netflix or YouTube. We were particularly interested in looking at gender and race bias in algorithmic recommenders, and how concerns about those biases were seen:

1) by creators, policymakers, and industry members, and 

2) by parliamentarians in debates about Canada's Online Streaming Act.

We found that while algorithmic video streaming recommenders are often portrayed as neutral and as responding to users' interests by parliamentarians and video streaming platforms, our interview participants - and research on recommendation systems - are far more skeptical.