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Canada's federal, provincial and territorial Information and Privacy Commissioners are calling for nominations for the Grace-Pépin Access to Information Award, which will honour and recognize the efforts of individuals or groups who have demonstrated an exceptional contribution to Access to Information rights in Canada. Nominees are judged based on the significance, implementation and impact of their work on the Canadian Access to Information right. The award could not be more timely, as Canada's aging Access to Information regime (which has not been substantially reformed since its introduction over 30 years ago) is in dire need of reform to bring it into the digital age. 

The award also honours and commemorates its eponymous Commissioners, John Grace, former Information Commissioner of Canada, and Marcel Pépin, president and founder of the Commission d'accèss à l'information du Québec. It is typically presented during Right to Know week, celebrated each year in September. Nominations are due August 31, 2015​. More details on the nomination process and requirements are available here (FR). To submit a nominee, fill out this form here (FR).

The Federal Court of Appeal issued its ruling in Bell Canada v. Amtelecom, 2015 FCA 126, which challenged the implementation of the CRTC's wireless consumer protection code. The Code was put in place by the CRTC out of recognition that Canadian customers of mobile services were not adequately protected by the existing regime. It sought to improve the state of affairs by granting customers comprehensive rights, overseen by the CCTS, including an important provision that limited service providers from locking Canadians out of the wireless market for three years at a time and thereby hindering competition. The protections in the Code were to apply to all customers two years from the day the Code was issued, including to those customers who were still locked in to pre-existing three year contracts. However, a number of providers appealed the decision, arguing that the CRTC lacked the power to protect customers until their existing contractual terms expired. Specifically, these Appellants argued that by restricting the length of wireless contracts to two years and limiting the penalties a wireless provider could impose onto customers for switching providers early, the CRTC impermissibly interfered with vested rights retrospectively by preventing them from recovering the cost of subsidized mobile devices.

In its arguments to the Federal Court of Appeal CIPPIC, representing OpenMedia, argued that the Code was actually future-facing (not retrospective) and that, regardless, the CRTC had the regulatory authority to interfere with past vested rights. The switching costs imposed on customers for moving to another provider early -- out of frustration with the service or because better deals emerged in the market -- were in reality penalties imposed on customers for future actions. This is borne out by the record of the proceeding, where a number of service providers testified that these penalties were a means of minimizing churn (preventing customers from moving to a competitor) not a means of recouping mobile device costs. Many of these penalties exceeded the value of any device, which is the reason the CRTC regulated the amount of early termination fees, forcing providers to tie these to device subsidies. More importantly, the CRTC is entrusted with overseeing a comprehensive regulatory regime that requires the balancing of complex policy objectives in a highly specialized environment. It would be impossible if not impractical for the CRTC to carry out its task without the ability to interfere with vested rights. In a carefully thought out decision, the Federal Court of Appeal found that the Wireless Code did in fact interfere with vested rights retrospectively, but that the CRTC was empowered to do so as long as it acted reasonably which, in this instance, it did. As a result, all Canadians, including those who are currently stuck in three year contracts, will be able to benefit from the Code's protections as of June 3, 2015. This includes the ability to leave a service contract without penalty 24 months from the day the contract began. For more information, see our resource pages on the Wireless Code and on our intervention in Bell v. Amtelecom.

Cloudmark's recently issued 2015 Q1 Security Threat Report demonstrates the initial effectiveness of the recently enacted Canadian Anti-Spam & Spyware Law (CASL), SC 2010, c. 23, in reducing the amount of unwanted spam in email boxes in Canada and abroad. In the 8 months following the coming into force of the law, the report notes a 29% reduction in the average amount of spam received by Canadians each month. It notes an even more significant 37% reduction in spam sent from Canada to the United States. The larger reduction in US-bound spam is unsurprising, as Canada (who was one of the last countries in the developed world to finally adopt an anti-spam law) had become a spam haven, with 78% of all Canadian spam being US bound. By contrast, only about 50% of spam received by Canadians is from the United States, which has regulated spam to some degree for many years.

With respect to Canadian-received spam, the report notes that only about 17% of unwanted spam email received by Canadians relates to fraudulent "bootleg pharmaceuticals, diet pills and adult services." This amount of spam was reduced by about 5% in the months since CASL came into force (29% overall reduction x 16% of all spam). The most marked reduction, however, was from 'grey area' marketers, which the report describes as "unscrupulous email marketers" who "grow[] their mailing lists by co-marketing or easy-to-miss opt out checkboxes." The 24% reduction in this brand of unwanted email spam (which the report terms as 'legitimate' because it is legal under U.S. spam laws) affirms that the broader approach to spam adopted by CASL is necessary to make any meaningful inroads in spam reduction. CASL adopted a definition of 'spam' that allows Canadians to decide for themselves what emails they do or do not want to receive, whereas the US anti-spam law relies on easy to abuse 'opt out checkboxes'. And Canadians have taken to the law in droves, with the CRTC receiving an unprecedented 47,000 plus complaints against unwanted emails in just the first month after CASL came into effect.

CIPPIC, OpenMedia and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression have released a primer on Bill C-51, the government's latest initiative to expand its state security apparatus. As the primer explains the Bill, which has been opposed from broad segments of Canadian society, signals a dramatic new direction for Canadian security. Presented as anti-terror legislation, the Bill adopts an excessive approach that will harm online innovation, political discourse and our civil liberties. It will reverse Canada’s rich multicultural heritage and replace it with an atmosphere of fear, distrust and racial profiling – where neighbours are encouraged to turn on neighbours on the basis of ‘reasonable fears’. The Bill was drafted and defended in an atmosphere openly hostile to civil liberties, and this is reflected in every element of it. One element of the Bill even seeks to allow our spy agencies to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – our most vital protection against egregious state intrusion into our lives. It signals a return to a time when our security agencies were empowered to carry out dirty tricks against our citizens – and did so with impunity.

It fails to address long standing and well-documented problems with Canada’s already excessively broad security powers, the misuse of which has led to the torture, detention, flight restriction and privacy invasion of many innocent Canadians since they were introduced post 9/11. Innocent Canadians’ lives have been ruined. This Bill not only fails to remedy those flaws, it replicates and expands the underlying problems without adding any meaningful safeguards to ensure the expansive powers it grants will not be similarly abused. It is little wonder that few who have carefully examined the Bill can fully support it in its current form. In spite of this, the government is currently rushing the Bill through not just one house of parliament, but both.