Privacy Minister Ralph Goodale: ‘Canadians must take more personal responsibility for what they put online’
Friday, August 24 ~ from NANAIMO
EXCLUSIVE: by Mary P Brooke, West Shore Voice News
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“We work very hard to ensure the security and safety of our own countries. But that obviously makes a major contribution to security around the world,” Goodale told West Shore Voice News. “As a middle-size country, Canada has a very constructive broker role to play in the middle to try to find consensus, to find practical solutions to very difficult safety and security issues. It’s an ongoing dialogue that takes place among these countries every day, but once a year the ministers get together to meet in person.”
WSV: Should Canadians be concerned about loss of privacy? It seems to be almost gone. Goodale: “It’s a product in many ways of technology. Canadians will have an intense debate about what information is known or not known about them by a government agency, but they’ll give all their personal information over the Internet to a commercial entity or to someone at the other end of a tweet that they don’t even know. So there’s a very large element of personal responsibility that comes into play here. People need to recognize in this day and age of information technology that’s changing and innovating quite literally many times a day, that the old assumptions about what’s private are being challenged. And when the government is involved we work very closely all the time with the privacy commissioner who is very proactive and very assertive (and that’s a good thing!) to make sure that the government is respecting the privacy of Canadians and that we’re following all the appropriate laws and codes.”
WSV: Is this something that cabinet deals with top of mind? Goodale: “Privacy is quite often a very important discussion. The privacy commissioner is there to be the ever-present watchdog but Cabinet ministers are very alert to this too.”
WSV: On cannabis legalization, are there any recommendations for the public? Goodale: “The law doesn’t change until the 17th of October. This is not an instantaneous event. This is a process that is transforming a legal regime that has existed for 100 years, to something that’s entirely different. So it’s a massive undertaking. People need to respect the process as it goes along. You can understand people wanting to anticipate all the what-if’s. But make sure you’re following the law in the mean time. Don’t jump to conclusions before the law actually changes.”
WSV: How quickly will the legal system give pardons for simple possession? Goodale: “We’ve undertaken to examine that as soon as the law does change. The discussion will be ongoing to make sure that people are being treated fairly. Obviously the old law is still the old law and all of the rules apply. When that changes on October 17th then the government will turn its mind to what steps need to be taken to treat people with fairness.”
Back in April 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said threats of cyber attacks will continue to grow as the world becomes more digitized. He had met on the sidelines with the prime ministers of Australia, New Zealand and the UK during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London, to solidify their position on Russia’s persistent cyber warfare attacks on businesses and government institutes.
The upcoming August 2018 meeting will serve to significantly advance transnational security collaboration across a broad range of functional problems and mission areas, said Australia’s Home Affairs secretary back in June.
>> This article was first published on page 3 in the August 24, 2018 issue of West Shore Voice News.
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