Canadian here. This publication is one of the radical and sensational ones from my experience. Not somewhere I would get my news from.
There's nothing remotely 'radical' about the NP.
The National Post is has an editorial bias, but the only source that the publication could be considered 'radical' would be the editorial letters from Conrad Black, which are not 'news'.
Otherwise, it's a welcome bit of information from the insufferably poor lack of perspective offered by the CBC, the national broadcaster.
I wouldn't trust the 'National Post' as a 'single source' of news, it's not broad enough, however, it's an important part of the fairly limited diaspora of news in Canada.
The evidence for this is right in the story: however ultimately benign this issue is, it's an incredibly important bit of information for Canadians to have, and the CBC is not giving us this information.
Moreover, the article itself is clear, well written, well sourced and I can't fathom how someone would really characterize it as clickbait other than if they misread the headline.
So you can have a possibly sensational headline (arguably) from a privately owned news paper that has to earn a profit, or, no news at all because the national broadcaster, The CBC, apparently doesn't think you need to know that the government uses this data.
I'm thankful for the NP, and there's a dearth of good journalism in Canada.
The Globe and Mail is equally behind a paywall, the Toronto Star and Sun are rubbish, the Montreal papers are very Quebec focused - and so it's slim pickings otherwise.
Canadian here. I agree completely with the CBC. This is one of the least interesting non-stories I have seen in years.
"Public health agency does job - uses aggregated, anonymous statistics to see how people move and interact in hopes of improving public health." Oh no. Anyways.
> I'm thankful for the NP, and there's a dearth of good journalism in Canada.
Well, there is the CBC :)
In an era of increased government surveillance and arbitrary encroaching powers, this is exactly what news is.
That the government is apparently using the data anonymized for COVID research etc. is obviously important.
Honestly it's a bit odd to think there are people who would just 'look the other way' and trust that the system without information.
Thankfully, we have a news diaspora and other journalist can monitor the program and follow the story with 'access to personal information requests' from them, Telus etc..
The government did not create any new powers here, this dataset was available for a long time, and the public health agency is now using it in service of its goal - furthering the public health of Canadians.
> That the government is apparently using the data anonymized for COVID research etc. is obviously important.
Why is anonymous data important to you? I don't mean this in a provocative way, I'm genuinely curious. I'd honestly submit de-anonymized data to PHAC if asked. Seems like a worthwhile mission.
I have no idea how PHAC could harm me or anyone else by knowing I went down to the Loblaws on MacArthur in Vanier this morning.
> Honestly it's a bit odd to think there are people who would just 'look the other way' and trust that the system without information.
I think it's fair - important even - to ask the questions, but if you find the answer is a non-story, then don't publish it or at least publish it without a negative, suspicious framing. Once they found the data was anonymous and being used under existing authority exactly for the thing it was supposed to be, it's sort of a move along, nothing to see here moment. I know that doesn't sell papers for the grandparent company in New Jersey.
The old Trudeau (Sr.) quote comes to mind.
> "Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt," said the late Pierre Trudeau.
News sources are always a flashpoint for nationalism and I think, and American media has quite a reputation for sensationalism and the "24 hour news cycle." It's also not like the US is some disinterested party in Canadian politics; I wouldn't care so much if Postmedia were owned by say the Swiss or even the Qataris.
Postmedia is a Canadian News Agency it has nothing to do with the US. It's ownership (broadly), origins, headquarters, management, staff, operations, sales, revenue, even stock listing etc. - everything is Canadian. That there might be some incorporation somewhere is notable, but not important.
Trudeau Sr. is not a reliable source of opinion on this, he hugely influenced the CBC charter and re-wrote it in his own parties ideology, influencing a generation of Canadians with his political ideals.
Sure, and that's your prerogative. But how come you get to decide that because you don't see a problem, that no one should see a problem? Privacy is not about secrecy, it is about agency. Regardless of how it's framed, usage of involuntarily collected data is a violation of agency.
I agree that this is a non-story as far as the Canadian Health Authority is concerned. But the data collection itself is not a non-story, so I'm willing to let the story stand because of that. Isn't it funny how "pro-business" (read: sociopathic) news outlets will defend the need for businesses to violate your agency at every turn, but scream bloody murder when a government institution uses that same commercially-harvested data in order to fulfill their function?
I think we can agree on that!
The government did not 'create any new powers' to lock us in our homes after 8m pm.
The point is, governments around the world are creating new surveillance programs.
This is a new surveillance program.
Ergo, it's newsworthy.
"Why is anonymous data important to you? "
Because we've spend 5000 years trying to overcome state surveillance. The reason we have to have a Constitution, where the first line talks about 'Freedom To Assemble'.
... and governments lie.
Are they using the Digital Passport data as well?
Is it really anonymous, and to what degree?
What kind of oversight is there on the researchers?
In the end, if it's above board, I'm fine with it, but there needs to be oversight, 'journalism' is part of that, and the state sponsored entity, the CBC, should be the first place to contemplate the story.
It's not a non-story, and it's not published with negative or suspicious framing, and even if it were, that's within perogative.
By letting the National Post pick up the story, they let the National Post set the tone of the story. The National Post decided to focus most of their attention on the privacy implications of the government purchasing the data. They decided to ignore the privacy implications of private entities collecting and reselling the data. While they did mention why the government purchased the data, they virtually ignore how it was being used.
I'm not going to claim that the CBC would have handled the story any better. Quite frankly, CBC's research is often shoddy and agenda driven. Yet it would likely have been enough to fill in some of the gaping holes in the National Post story.
(On second thought, the National Post story is more of an opinion piece. Perhaps a quarter of the article can be described as news.)
It is more tasteless and characterless than the sawdust served at an IKEA cafeteria. Nothing about it is radical. They raison d’être is to defend the English Canadian way to do government (therefore literally the opposite of radical).
“Radical” NP opposes Quebec’s nationalist laws including the anti-muslim laws, laws forcing immigrant to learn French in six months after arriving (under pain of being kicked out??).
Their founder Lord Conrad Black -the only columnist with an ounce of flamboyance - spent some time in an US jail before SCOTUS declared most of the accusations as unconstitutional. In jail he taught his fellow inmates to read and got them to get their GEDs.
Lord Black has been a tireless advocate of US prison reform, years before it became trendy.
Their religious columnist, a Catholic priest, is Goan and a staunch defender of Pope Francis (those who are Catholic will understand that).
Words that come to mind with NP are:
“mayonnaise”, “boring”, “establishment”, “Multiculturalism promoters”, “Pro-immigration”, “Post-religious Anglican”
That being said, they are critical of Trudeau - a man who wore blackface twice, brown-face (ie Indian) in his first term, fires women who criticize him publicly, etc.
The NP are the antipode of radical.
I wish there were an easy way for outsiders to know this. I have an intuition for reliable vs. sensational sources in specific places and subjects, but am mostly in the dark beyond that.