I’m writing this week’s introductory remarks from an airport again. I’m traveling back to Ottawa after spending the better part of this week in St. John’s Newfoundland. It’s becoming an annual event for the public service out there to enlist a cohort of students to take CIPP/C training. Yesterday, they all wrote the exam too. I hope them well.
Special thanks goes to Sonja El-Gohary for her leadership and organizational skills for organizing the event. I applaud the commitment being made by her and, more generally, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Ontario, British Columbia and the federal government have done similar things. It would be great to get the rest of the provinces and territories on board with their own training programs. And, I’m not forgetting the private sector … where are you guys? It’s time to step up.
During the training this week, the topic of consequences came up a few times. We spoke about how slowly, but surely, people and organizations are starting to get hit where it really hurts if they do privacy badly: the bottom line. We are still widely inconsistent, but with significant fines being levied under CASL and with pretty serious fines being dished out to those who illegally snoop into people’s personal health information (read the latest story below), I can’t help but feel that it’s just a matter of time before other types of privacy violations will garner more serious consequences than the far too often wrist-slapping that still takes place.
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