I know everyone has the right to some time off work. I take some. Or rather, I take advantage of our new "work from hill" program, which involves juggling work and fun from Mont-Tremblant.
Although rest is important, I'm starting to think our elected lawmakers might be taking too much time away from their important jobs of fixing many of our outdated and, quite frankly, sometimes broken, laws. And, I know we focus on privacy, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity issues, but there are many others out there as well.
I think the Parliament of Canada needs to re-think its annual schedule and prioritize the reason for being elected in the first place — and, no, the reason to be elected is not to be reelected the next time. It's to make some good laws.
The parliamentary committee reviewing Bill C-27 — which is a crucial bill to modernize privacy and AI laws in Canada — had its last hearing months ago. At the time, it was clear the committee had dozens, if not hundreds, of issues to work through before getting to a law it would put forward for a vote of the full House.
If I can manage to squeeze work in during the slower days of summer, I think lawmakers should be doing the same too. How about virtual meetings if travel is too expensive or difficult? After all, their meetings are never more than a couple of hours long — most of which is spent on partisan bickering anyways. All this to say, it's early August and I wish our lawmakers would show some initiative and start changing the way they do things on those hallowed grounds in Ottawa.
I read an article recently about the benefits to having a shorter summer break for schools. Spread out the breaks throughout the year. Apparently it has a ton of benefits. If we are imposing this on some of our school-aged children, let's insist on it for the people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year via our tax dollars and get them to work a bit more.
So, this is clearly not a privacy-focused rant this week … but it is the dog days of summer, and perhaps a time when fewer of you are reading this. But, if you do, consider reaching out to the Bill C-27 committee members with your thoughts on how crucial it is that they get back to work. Maybe even stress they should do so without partisan games getting in the way.
To make up for the lack of privacy-related content, I'm also going to try to get your summer-time brains to start thinking about all the great conferences the IAPP will be hosting starting in the fall. The events and deadlines for submitting proposals are coming sooner than you might think. Choose a conference that suits you — and your budget — and make a plan of it. And, consider speaking at an upcoming conference. Get creative. Think of lessons learned. There's so much in our industry to talk and learn about, I'm quite sure you have something to contribute.
Kris Klein, CIPP/C, CIPM, FIP, is the managing director for Canada at the IAPP.