When St. Catharines residents pay their municipal taxes, they expect those dollars to finance services, infrastructure and council supported programs that are deemed to be in the interest of the community. What they do not expect is for those funds to be spent in ways that are difficult to trace or buried in broad budget […]

Internal federal documents reveal that Health Canada is seeking exemptions from the federal government’s mandatory 5 per cent Indigenous procurement target, citing Indigenous capacity gap in scientific and mental health services.  Since 2021, federal departments have been obligated to award at least 5 per cent of their annual contracts to Indigenous businesses to support economic […]

LONDON (AP) — OpenAI said Monday it’s adding parental controls to ChatGPT that are designed to provide teen users of the popular platform with a safer and more “age-appropriate” experience. The company is taking action after AI chatbot safety for young users has hit the headlines. The technology’s dangers have been recently highlighted by a […]

LONDON (AP) — Harrods, the luxury British department store, has warned some customers that their personal data may have been taken in a breach of its online systems. The company said late Friday that some names and contact details of its online customers were taken after one of its third-party provider systems was compromised. “We […]

On a bright and clear September morning, drivers squint when they enter the most-ticketed school zone in Winnipeg. The 30 km/h sign on Talbot Avenue that warns oncoming traffic about a reduced speed limit behind River Elm School is harshly backlit, making it difficult to see. “I see people get ticketed all the time,” said […]

This is your Access and Privacy News Summary for Saturday, September 27th.   We hope everyone’s had a great Right to Know Week.  It’s been a big one — with privacy commissioners at both the national and provincial level releasing major findings, and a wave of stories that give us plenty to dig into.  We’ll begin here […]

The Township of Wellesley will likely approve the installation of a permanent camera system at the Wellesley Recreation Complex for the livestreaming of Wellesley Applejacks games after a streaming deal was reached between the Applejacks, the Provincial Junior Hockey League (PJHL) and NBC Sportsengine last year. At Wellesley council’s Sept. 16 committee of the whole […]

Fort William First Nation residents will have three days next week to unload unwanted electronic equipment at a special depot. The depot at the community’s youth centre parking lot will accept computers, printers, mobile phones, light bulbs and electric cables, a FWFN community event bulletin says. It’s going be available Monday to Wednesday, the bulletin […]

The Nova Scotia government has tabled legislation that could weaken a key section of the province’s transparency law. If adopted, the bill would remove what a provincial watchdog described as a crucial portion of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The bill would also extend deadlines for the release of government records […]

Despite years of congressional hearings, lawsuits, academic research, whistleblowers and testimony from parents and teenagers about the dangers of Instagram, Meta’s wildly popular app has failed to protect children from harm, with “woefully ineffective” safety measures, according to a new report from former employee and whistleblower Arturo Bejar and four nonprofit groups. Meta’s efforts at […]

The federal Bureau of Prisons said Thursday it is canceling a collective bargaining agreement with its workers and stripping them of union rights, the latest move by the Trump administration to gut labor protections for federal employees. Director William K. Marshall III told the agency’s nearly 35,000 employees that the union, the Council of Prison […]

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department sued six more states on Thursday, saying the states are illegally blocking the agency’s wide-ranging effort to scrutinize detailed voter data in a brewing court fight over what states say is the private, protected information of residents. The Justice Department also accused the states of failing to […]