Michael Geist:
This is LawBytes, a podcast with Michael Geist.
Navdeep Bains:
We can’t ignore some of these new complex challenges that have emerged. At the heart of these new challenges is the fundamental question of trust. How can Canadians believe in the good of this online world when they’re confronted with a video of 51 innocent people gunned down during prayer in Christchurch and that video goes viral. How can they trust their data will be used to improve their lives when it is used to bombard them with disinformation. Here’s the thing: innovation cannot happen at the expense of privacy and data and personal security. I’m happy today to present Canada’s new digital charter.
Michael Geist:
Years of public consultation on Canadian digital policy hit an important milestone last week as Innovation Science and Economic Development minister Navdeep Bains released the Government’s Digital charter. Touching on a wide range of issues, Canada’s digital charter features 10 guiding principles: universal access, safety and security, control and consent, transparency portability and interoperability, open and modern digital government, a level playing field, data and digital for good, strong democracy, freedom from hate and violent extremism, and finally strong enforcement and real accountability. To help sort through the digital charter and its implications, I’m joined on the podcast this week by Professor Teresa Scassa a friend and colleague at the University of Ottawa. Professor Scassa holds the Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy. She writes frequently on information and data issues at her Web site at teresascassa.ca, appears regularly in the media and before House of Commons committees and serves on several key advisory boards and panels including Waterfront Toronto’s Digital Strategy Advisory Panel and the newly created federal A.I. Advisory Council.
Michael Geist:
Teresa, welcome to the podcast.
Teresa Scassa:
Thank you for having me.
Michael Geist:
It’s great to have you. So we’re recording this at the end of a week in which the innovation science and economic development minister Navdeep Bains has been off selling the digital charter in Toronto and Montreal. It’s been in the news regularly and so I want to talk a bit about the charter and I guess consider whether or not Canadians ought to be buying what the Minister’s been selling. What do we start with a little bit of background though. What is the digital charter.
CBC News:
The Federal Government is launching a new digital charter to protect, they say, Canadians personal data. Ottawa is promising changes to federal privacy laws to give Canadians more control over their personal information when it’s collected by technology companies. The government laid out a series of principles today they say will guide changes to the Privacy Act. The changes will also include penalties and fines for tech and social media companies that breach the new privacy law. So does that mean the government will start fining Facebook right away. When can Canadians expect these new protections to kick in?
Teresa Scassa:
The digital charter is built around 10 principles that are intended to guide the government’s digital strategy going forward. So so they called it a digital charter. They’ve they’ve set out these principles and. And. Yeah. And that’s that’s essentially what it is. And the principles are are somewhat broad principles. But the I guess the issue you hear the hesitation my voice the issue I have with the digital charter is that I don’t like the word the use of the word charter in there because I would see it. I would call it a digital chart. It’s a roadmap right. It’s here are some principles that are guiding us as we develop policy. And that’s fine. And there are interesting principles and they will shape or guide policy but a charter is the charter is a document that confers rights and entitlements and often those are actionable rights. And so there are things in this digital charter that maybe should be rights but aren’t there just principles like Canadians should have universal access not Canadians have a right to access. Right. So so you know it may sound a little bit like quibbling but I think that if we’re serious about ff something like a charter articulating the basic rights that Canadians should have in a digital society. This isn’t the document. This is a roadmap to developing digital digital strategies digital policy. And it may be an interesting roadmap but it’s not a charter.
Michael Geist:
This is a really interesting perspective. So it’s a road map or a charter it sometimes has almost a checklist. Yeah kind of feel on a whole sort of issues including universal access and the privacy issues and open government and those sorts of things so given that it is not that charter in the sense that one mig
