This is your Access and Privacy News Summary for Saturday, June 14th.   We’ve got stories from across the country shaped by access to information—from national defense funding to local integrity issues, wildfire preparedness, and controversial provincial actions.  We’ll follow that with a scan of cybersecurity incidents, data breaches, and surveillance concerns that are hitting public institutions […]

Canada’s fentanyl czar says the fight against the deadly opioid would get a boost from proposed new tools for law enforcement in the Liberal government’s recently tabled border bill. Kevin Brosseau, the federal point person on fentanyl, welcomes provisions in the Strong Borders Act to increase inspection powers, give police easier access to information, crack […]

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Illinois secretary of state on Thursday asked for an investigation into a suburban Chicago police department after learning that it violated state law by sharing data from automatic license-plate readers with a Texas sheriff seeking a woman who had an abortion. Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias asked the attorney general […]

When a 21-year-old former student opened fire inside his school in Austria’s second-biggest city earlier this week, killing 10 people, it didn’t take long for the Alpine country’s press council to call on journalists to show restraint when reporting about the victims and their families. The appeal essentially reminded journalists covering the school shooting — […]

Newfoundland and Labrador is owed millions of dollars in fees from green energy companies, underlining growing doubts about whether promises of major projects and multi-billion dollar investments will pan out.  Six companies are vying to create new operations in the province that would use wind energy to produce hydrogen for exports overseas. Figures obtained by […]

Airdrie Mayor Peter Brown provided extensive behind the scenes help to a controversial private health care centre, according to emails obtained by the Investigative Journalism Foundation. The City of Airdrie has publicly claimed it did not help develop a proposal for the centre, which would be Alberta’s first urgent care centre not run by the […]

A man who set fire to a pastor’s family home attached to a Ukrainian church in Victoria has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. Victoria police say Walter Machinski was sentenced after pleading guilty to one count of arson with disregard for human life after setting the fire in the early morning of […]

The BC government spent a decade killing wolves to protect caribou. Now, critics warn that despite questions about its effectiveness, ethics and impact on the rest of the environment, the government is moving to make the wolf cull a permanent part of its strategy.  Launched as a short-term emergency measure in 2015, the decade-long wolf […]

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced Thursday she is investigating whether pharmaceutical giant CVS improperly used customers’ personal information to send out text messages lobbying against a proposed state law. Murrill also said she plans to issue a cease-and-desist letter to the company to stop the messages. As lawmakers debated […]

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government broke its legal, record-keeping obligations amid its now-reversed decision to open up parts of the protected Greenbelt lands for housing, the province’s information and privacy commissioner has found.  Political staff were using code words to thwart document requests and left a surprisingly small paper trail for such a consequential policy, […]

The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to review a ruling that concluded Facebook broke federal privacy law by failing to adequately inform users of risks to their data when using the popular social media platform. Last September, the Federal Court of Appeal found Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, did not obtain the meaningful […]

Updated 2025.06.12 Dear Minister Champagne,  We call on you to withdraw the portions of the Making Life More Affordable for Canadians Act, Bill C-4, that amend the Canada Elections Act. The provisions of the Bill are a serious threat to Canadians’ privacy rights.   Provisions in Bill C-4 Part 4 grant federal political parties sweeping […]