PwC's Constantine Karbaliotis took to social media this week to vent about receiving a spam text message from the leader of the Conservatives. Not hard to figure out why a privacy professional like him would object. After all, Karbaliotis has built a career helping organizations comply with privacy laws and best practices. He knows a bad thing when he sees it.

It is ironic that the blast text message from Andrew Scheer went out this week because right around the same time as the spam message, Commissioner Daniel Therrien was releasing guidance to political parties about how to do privacy better. There’s a story below about this if you haven’t already seen it. Of course, the privacy commissioner’s message is just that. Without any real legal mechanisms in place to enforce against political parties, the Office of Parliament is left with only one recourse: Get on the soap box, and hope that someone listens.

Maybe if there are more Constantines out there willing to shout out and tell our politicians that enough is enough, it will help the privacy commissioner’s message get through.

We can hope, right? I want to promise myself that my vote next fall will largely depend on a party’s position on privacy, cyberissues and moving Canada along with the rest of the world in technologies such as artificial intelligence. Will I have anyone to vote for at all?

On another note, the kind folks at Health Canada in Ottawa have agreed to host a public CIPP/C training May 7 and 8. If you’re interested in taking the class (I’ll be leading the discussion), here’s the webpage to sign up. Seats are limited, so if it’s on your learning plan, sign up quickly.