National

National


Supreme Court of Canada to look at request for religious records through B.C. law

The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear a case about applications for access to personal information held by Jehovah’s Witnesses congregations. The congregations withheld information from two former members who applied under B.C.’s Personal Information Protection Act for records about themselves, on the basis it was confidential religious communication. After mediation failed, an […]

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School boards caught unprepared in mass student data breach: provincial watchdogs

Privacy watchdogs in Ontario and Alberta issued their findings Tuesday after investigating a mass data breach of a student information system used across Canada, concluding that school boards lacked adequate breach response plans, among other issues. Ontario’s privacy commissioner says PowerSchool, a software and storage company for school systems in the U.S. and Canada, was […]

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RCMP in British Columbia help dismantle global cybercrime network

Police in British Columbia say they have dismantled a local operation involved in global cybercrime activity that used malicious software. Mounties say Canadian police along with international agencies have succeeded in dismantling software and online infrastructure used to steal data from personal devices around the world. They says a main suspect was arrested in Greece […]

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Freeland tasked with tapping Canadian businesses to help rebuild Ukraine

Seven weeks ago, Prime Minister Mark Carney assigned former cabinet minister Chrystia Freeland to be Canada’s new special envoy for the reconstruction of Ukraine. Canadians haven’t heard much about the job since, and nothing at all about how Ukraine can be rebuilt while Russia continues its wide-scale bombing of critical infrastructure. But experts say Canada […]

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Parliamentary committee revises order to share federal grant applicant data

data on researchers who applied for health and science grants. The Standing Committee on Health and Research had originally sought details on student and faculty applications to three agencies between 2000 and 2025 but now says it will accept anonymized, high-level data that better preserves privacy. The motion seeks information collected by the Social Sciences […]

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Man accused of economic espionage tells court he was unhappy at Hydro-Québec

A former researcher with Quebec’s hydro utility who is facing economic espionage charges said Thursday he was applying for work at universities in China as a contingency plan because he was unhappy at Hydro-Québec. Yuesheng Wang, 38, maintained under cross-examination that there was nothing nefarious about his interest in moving back to China. He explained […]

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Ottawa to restore accidentally deleted privacy provision in streaming bill

The Liberal government says it will restore a privacy provision to the Online Streaming Act, more than two years after it was accidentally deleted. The federal budget released this week says the government will make a legislative amendment to “restore the right to privacy of individuals to the interpretation provisions and remove a duplicative provision […]

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Over 5,000 researchers oppose order to share 25 years of federal grant applicant data

More than 5,000 researchers have signed an open letter pushing back against a parliamentary committee order that they say draws parallels with the U.S. government’s crackdown on equity, diversity and inclusion funding in health and science research. The Standing Committee on Science and Research adopted a motion on Oct. 1 requiring health and science grant […]

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Researchers find gaps in environmental impact assessments of mining projects

A new report from Dalhousie University shows flaws in the environmental review process for mining operations in Canada, with researchers finding that data for 20 per cent of the projects they reviewed was incomplete or missing entirely from public records. The report collected all available environmental impact assessments on mining projects dating back to 1974 […]

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Data stored in Canada can be subject to foreign courts, government paper warns

A new government white paper on digital sovereignty says Ottawa can’t maintain full control over its data if its data storage supplier is subject to the laws of another country. It warns the federal government can only maintain full legal control if it delivers the service itself, or uses service providers that operate completely under […]

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PM Carney was advised to push back on Trump if provoked in April call, memo shows

Prime Minister Mark Carney was counselled to push back during an April call with Donald Trump if the U.S. president revived his complaints about border security, fentanyl from Canada or low defence spending, a newly released memo shows. Federal officials prepared the internal memo to guide Carney’s conversation with Trump following the Liberal party’s April […]

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Wait for core Ontario autism services tops 5 years: advocates

When Ashley Ferreira’s five-year-old son was diagnosed with autism in 2020 she never imagined that a five-year wait lay ahead for him to get access to government-funded core therapies. “I thought that the diagnosis came with help,” she said. “It wasn’t until I started joining Facebook groups like the Ontario Autism Coalition that I was […]

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