Bill S-210 has an arresting title compared to the majority of those passing through the various levels of government in order to become law: “Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act.”

“The title of the legislation sends a fairly powerful message. There is absolutely no doubt about that,” said Kevin Lamoureux, parliamentary secretary to the leader of the government, in the House of Commons during a reading of the bill.

Bill S-210 is a federal, private member’s bill. As of June 2024, the bill has passed second reading and is in the report stage. It is meant to protect children and teenagers from exposure to age-inappropriate content. On paper, that seems like a good idea that most people would support. Protecting children is important, and much of the discussion during the House of Commons readings focused mainly on that—not the issues with privacy the bill poses. The details surrounding how age verification would work are nebulous, and the ones that are known raise privacy concerns.

During the readings, Liberal and NDP members of parliament mentioned some of those concerns alongside the ones about children. Conservative and Bloc Québécois representatives mainly focused on controlling who is able to watch pornography.

“Canadians want their children to be protected, but they are also wary about invasions of their privacy. Canadians have very little trust in the ability of the web giants to manage their information and private data,” said Anju Dhillon, a Liberal MP who represents Dorval-Lachine-LaSalle, in November 2023 when the bill was being discussed in its second reading, a rare stage to reach for a private member’s bill. People are also fearful, she said, of deliberate violations of privacy and data security breaches.

The Privacy & Access Council of Canada has pointed out that the sweeping provisions in the bill could endanger all Canadians’ privacy, not just underaged people. Currently, age verification could entail forcing people to upload pictures of their faces and government-issued IDs to watch porn online. Some of that data could be stored long term, creating easily found trails online. The bill does not set out clear terms to prevent this from happening.

Age verification technology has been criticized as immature and not adequately developed at a technological level. A recent report from France’s National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties found that six of the leading age verification solutions did not respect users’ rights.

This is a particular stress on members of the 2SLBGTQIA+ community, who could face exposure and/or blackmail for their browsing history. Not everyone in the community is out, and the ability for others to access intimate data puts already marginalized people at further risk. For 2SLBGTQIA+ Canadians who live in rural areas, this can be especially scary as the online world is sometimes their only way to connect with queer culture.

There is not a lot of data specific to the porn-viewing habits of Canadian youth, with researchers denoting a need for more studies. A 2023 report from Common Sense Media found that around 73 percent of U.S. teens aged 13-17 had watched porn online. The same study found differences in the porn consumption of 2SLBGTQIA+ youth compared to their hetero peers—the former group was more likely to seek out porn intentionally, in an effort to explore and affirm their sexuality. Yet this bill and its sweeping provisions seems based on the idea that all youth engage in the same habits online (watching violent pornography where a woman is subjugated by a man; the concern being its influence) when that is simply not accurate.

Another critique of the bill has been that a VPN, which many youth know how to use, could be a way to get around age verification. The bill is meant to protect those under 18. They are arguably also the most internet and tech-savvy generation to exist and the bill is being created by people who have not grown up online in the same way, and may not be able to anticipate how young people will subvert provisions.

Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne is the chief architect and lead defender of the bill. A former Radio-Canada broadcaster who was appointed to the Senate in 2018, she was a guest on the “Law Bytes” podcast to debate it. In a January 2024 episode, she provided her rationale and defence against the criticism and concerns it has sparked. She explained to host Michael Geist that she has worked carefully on drafting the legislation and adding amendments for three years.

Miville-Dechêne responded to the issues Geist raised around privacy by saying that the bill had not specifically mandated exactly what age verification system would be used at this point, noting that technology evolves constantly. “No method is absolutely zero risk…we can erase the data. We can make sure that it is a mechanism that doesn’t go too far. But frankly, this is not in the bill. This is to be discussed afterwards. So how can you say the bill is dangerous?” Mivelle-Dechêne said.

“In some ways, it seems to me, that makes it even more dangerous,” Geist retorted.

A bill meant to protect vulnerable members of our society should not further marginalize others. If there are not sweeping reforms to this bill, particularly the technological aspects, it could easily become one of the biggest national threats to privacy in recent history.

STOPPING OUTSIDE INFLUENCE
Foreign entities, which can currently spend up to $500 to influence elections, would not be permitted to spend anything on Canadian elections, and organizations selling ad space would not be allowed to knowingly accept advertisements from foreign entities.

ONE LOOPHOLE FOR ANOTHER
C-76 will require political parties to provide receipts for the millions taxpayers spend on election reimbursements. But the bill leaves a new loophole in its wake. A foreign entity could get around the ban on election spending by giving money to one Canadian organization, which could then pass it along to a second Canadian organization that would use the money for political purposes.

SPENDING LIMITS
A new pre-election period, beginning on June 30 of an election year, would cap the spending limit for partisan advertising and election surveys at $1.5 million.

MORE PROTECTIONS FOR PRIVATE DATA?
C-76 will require each political party to create a publicly available privacy policy that defines each party’s standards for the protection of Canadians’ personal data. In testimony given in June, Canada’s Federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien criticized the requirement as inadequate and noted that C-76 wouldn’t limit how much personal information is collected by political parties or the disclosure of personal information to others. Nor would it allow individuals access to their personal information, or require parties to seek consent before collecting information.

VOTER ACCESSIBILITY
In a bid to get more Canadians to the polls, C-76 would allow voter information cards to be used as identification, increase the number of hours advance polls are open, and reimburse political parties for accommodating persons with disabilities.

A TICKING CLOCK
Elections Canada has begun preparing for the bill’s changes, although it is uncertain if Parliament, which resumes in September, will pass C-76 quickly enough for the new measures to apply during the 2019 election.

Photo courtesy of Canopy Growth Corporation

Hilary Black is tired. “Really fucking tired,” actually, she says. She’s been doing this—fighting prohibition, advocating for the rights of medical cannabis patients—for 21 years. And now she’s at the outset of an entirely new chapter: She is in charge of the social responsibility and patient advocacy arm of Canopy Growth Corporation, one of the country’s most prominent cannabis companies, as it’s on the brink of a legalization explosion.

So yeah, she’s exhausted. “It feels like I’ve done 40 years in 20 years’ time,” she jokes. Black is 41, and has spent virtually all of her working life fighting for the rights of medical cannabis users, from her early days with the BC Compassion Club Society (which she opened in 1997) through her 2015 hiring at Bedrocan and subsequent rising through the corporate ranks to her current role as the director of patient education and advocacy with Canopy.

But now, as she helps lead the charge into the legalization era, she’s facing a new challenge: What do you do when you get the thing you’ve wanted your entire life? You stay a little bit angry, that’s what. You recognize that for every step forward the world makes with cannabis, there will always be someone who still needs an advocate—like the patient who can’t afford her medical cannabis (Black recently testified at Parliament against the $1-per-gram excise tax on medical cannabis); or the victims of the opioid crisis, for whom medical cannabis holds promise (one of Black’s recent projects was the creation of a research position at the University of British Columbia on cannabis and battling addiction).

Like many other activists now working in the corporate world, she sometimes gets accused of being a sellout, of turning her back on her activism. She gets it, but she doesn’t buy it: She’s trying to make the position work to her advantage. “I’m very empowered working with Canopy, because it’s such a financial engine,” she says. “I have a lot of influence inside the country.”

Her influence comes from a unique perch within Canopy: As a woman, driven by an activist’s sensibility, she is in one sense at odds with much of the rest of the male, high-finance cannabis world. That role affords her a voice—she has a deep activist pedigree that carries weight throughout the cannabis industry, legal or otherwise—and allows her to act as a role model in a way that few people in the industry can. “I want every single cannabis company in the world, whether you’re a massive company like ours, or you make lip balm, I want everyone to have a corporate responsibility initiative,” she says.

She still doesn’t shy away from compassionate rebellion against the law, even if on a different scale. Black’s dog, Ringo, is sick, and nearing the end of his life—bone cancer. Vets said he had two months. She says, heavy doses of CBD have given him seven. Strictly speaking, this isn’t legal; her dog gets CBD through a small act of compassionate civil disobedience. “He has access to it because he has me,” she says. “I want all the suffering dogs to have access to it.”

Once an activist…

An overlooked aspect of recreational cannabis legalization in Canada is the privacy implications of the distribution systems, especially in the online environment.

The privacy and security risks are substantial, and protecting the online rights of consumers needs more attention. Highly sensitive personal information will be exposed to the risks of redistribution and data breaches, and these risks are magnified if the data is stored or processed in the United States.

In the province of Ontario, the framework put in place by the former Liberal government has been dramatically changed by the new Doug Ford government. While the Liberal’s plan had its flaws, the problems will be exacerbated by the premier’s move to privatize retail sales.

The previous plan was to centralize sales through the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS), a subsidiary of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). In reversing this plan, the government is essentially handing over a new and lucrative market to the private sector.

A 2018 Deloitte report estimates Canadians will spend as much $7.17 billion on cannabis products in 2019, with about 35 per cent of that estimated to be online. Under Ford’s plan, the OCS will only handle online sales with physical retail outlets under a private model, expected to open in April 2019.

With this policy shift, legislation will need to be hurriedly amended and, not surprisingly, the reversal is controversial. While applauded by industry interests, it’s been denounced by other groups. Their concerns shouldn’t be ignored in the rush to meet the self-imposed deadlines for online and retail sales.

Will consumer data be transferred to the U.S.?

OCS is a public agency, but the actual online transactions will be handled by Shopify, a Canadian e-commerce platform. When recreational marijuana use becomes legal in October, consumers will have no choice but to use this online system until the retail stores open in 2019. This gap is where serious privacy concerns come into play.

Canadian privacy law requires that organizations holding personally identifiable information comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). The law’s purpose
is to protect Canadians regarding the collection, use, storage and distribution of their personal information. Yet data breaches are a growing concern, and different rules apply when data crosses the border.

With cannabis transactions, a security breach or even a routine data transfer to a U.S. affiliate could have far-reaching negative effects on the consumer. Insurance companies, employers and local police could be interested in accessing this data.

Personal stigma is an important issue, but perhaps the biggest problem concerns data transfers into the U.S. Once across the border, U.S. security agencies could obtain information about the cannabis consumption patterns of Canadians who have joined the online system. This could lead to increased border crossing delays, more intrusive questioning and searches, and could result in orders banning Canadians from entering the U.S. because of their cannabis consumption.

Shopify’s privacy policy states:

“While Shopify Inc. is a Canadian company, we provide services to individuals and our technology processes data from users around the world. Accordingly, Shopify may transmit your personal information outside of the country, state, or province in which you are located.”

and

“Shopify works with a variety of third parties and service providers to help provide you with our Services and we may share personal information with them to support these efforts.”

This third-party sharing includes Google Accounts, PayPal Express and Apple Pay. When a Shopify account is opened, partner accounts are established, each having their own terms and privacy policies. This framework is inappropriate for online cannabis sales because excessive data sharing with more parties increases the risk of breach, and the likelihood of data crossing into the United States.

What about data breaches?

The security of online personal information is a growing problem. Data is increasingly susceptible to being breached, leaked, hacked or misplaced. Breaches like those at Ashley Madison, Equifax, Hudson’s Bay, Yahoo and eBay get significant attention, but breaches have become so widespread that a 2015 Ernst and Young report says “…cyberattacks are no longer a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when.’”

PIPEDA requires security safeguards, but its language is vague. A 2017 report about the Internet of Things concluded the current safeguarding language needs to be strengthened to reflect technological developments. These considerations apply to online platforms like Shopify.

While Shopify claims it will protect its customers’ data, the details of how they will do so haven’t been disclosed, and too many questions remain unanswered. How can Shopify guarantee this same high level of commitment on the part of their U.S.-based third party affiliates with whom they share information?

With online delivery starting in October, many important operational details must still be determined and disclosed. Since Ontario lacks the data localization requirements present in British Columbia, these details are all the more urgent. For consumers to make informed choices about whether they want to risk online transactions, more transparency and certainty is needed.

Privacy must not be an afterthought

The problem of online security extends beyond cannabis sales and isn’t going to be resolved overnight. The same challenges confront other online retailers. But online cannabis data is particularly sensitive, and the stakes are much higher. While the former Ontario plan didn’t fully address privacy concerns, the new changes will add complexity, making things worse.

If consumers lack confidence that their sensitive information will be fully protected, or worry it could cross into the U.S., the system will fail. The 2018 Deloitte Report states emphatically that privacy concerns are vital:

“Cannabis consumers worry about the privacy and security of their personal information, and they expect that information to be protected, especially online. Retailers will need to ensure they invest in robust privacy and e-commerce cybersecurity.”

Without such strong confidence, cannabis users will likely continue their current purchasing practices, and the implementation of legal sales will not be effective.

In Ontario, the Ontario Cannabis Store/LCBO is well-positioned to implement sales in a safe and secure manner, but their online practices also need to be scrutinized. Adding so many new private retailers into the mix, as Ford is now doing with his privatization plan, will only magnify the problems.

Privacy concerns can’t be an afterthought; they must be designed into the system from the outset, and there is little comfort this is happening.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

While it’s been clear since the May leadership contest that conflicts between Bernier and Scheer persisted—with Bernier removed from the CPC shadow cabinet for publicly challenging the party on supply management in Canada’s dairy sector—this move came as a surprise given that it coincided with the start of the party’s policy convention.

Bernier made his move to maximize both media coverage and pressure on his former party, one he’s accused of “abandoning” Canadian conservatives. The question now is just how effective Bernier’s new party will be, and, if it can find success in time for the 2019 election, how will it affect the CPC and wider federal politics?

Bernier’s new party has potential, if for no other reason than he won more than 49 per cent support in the 2017 leadership contest, meaning that many Canadian conservatives are sympathetic to Bernier’s vision for Canada.

Caucus support?

But there’s no real sense if Bernier has support from key influencers in the CPC. Indeed, Bernier said in his departure news conference that he had not discussed his move with his caucus mates. This doesn’t mean failure is inevitable, but it may be that, however popular Bernier is with segments of the Conservative electorate, he won’t have the institutional muscle to launch a viable party, especially so quickly.

Furthermore, it’s not yet clear just what sort of platform Bernier will offer to Canadians.

In 2017, Conservatives looked to Bernier as the libertarian candidate who ostensibly fit the “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” archetype. During that campaign, when hopefuls like Kellie Leitch and Brad Trost made staunch pitches to social conservatives, Bernier highlighted economic issues, namely limiting government intervention.

If this is the basis of his new party, he may well pull support from his leadership backers, as well as right-leaning Liberals who can’t stomach Conservative social policy.

Nonetheless in recent months, Bernier has merged his laissez-faire economics with an approach to cultural and social issues that aligns him much more explicitly with the far right than he did during the 2017 contest.

Most recently and notably, he has become a high-profile critic of what he called the Liberal government’s “extreme” approach to multiculturalism and diversity, which supposedly puts at risk the sanctity and meaning of Canadian identity.

Bernier has intertwined this with his anti-government ideology, saying that the Liberal approach to diversity creates little tribes that “become political clienteles to be bought with taxpayers $ and special privileges.”

What will his platform be?

In a sense, Bernier is keeping many of his libertarian policies while making an overture to those Canadians wary of diversity, immigration and multiculturalism. The question is: Can he convincingly combine these beliefs into a coherent policy suite that appeals to Canadians, or will he end up with a platform that pleases no one sufficiently to win any significant support?

But with all this in mind, let’s say Bernier wins meaningful support in 2019. What will the potential impact be?

In short, the conventional narrative is that this is a boon to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. Before this split, the CBC poll tracker had the Liberals and Conservatives nearly tied in the popular vote, but with the Liberals’ vote efficiency putting them on the precipice of another majority government.

Even if Bernier’s new party wins just five per cent of the electorate in 2019, and a majority of that comes from current CPC voters, it will benefit the Liberals (as well as the New Democrats, to a lesser extent, in some regions where they run second to the CPC).

So if one identifies as an anything-but-Conservative voter, Bernier’s move could be welcome news. The risk, however, is that while a more stridently conservative party led by Bernier will feud with Scheer’s CPC, it may also incubate experimental right-wing ideas that could be eventually incorporated into the CPC’s platform.

Poaching ideas

Such a scenario would be reminiscent of when the New Democrats have championed progressive social and economic ideas like pharmacare before they gained mainstream acceptance, but in so doing gave legitimacy to the ideas, which were then poached by the Liberals.

It isn’t inconceivable that Bernier’s new party could fuel attacks on things like Medicare and multiculturalism, which may allow the CPC to take up those ideas, even just partially, and appear as relatively moderate to the electorate in doing so.

Ultimately, we have no real sense of how Bernier’s plan will unfold, or if it will find even modest success. History tells us that the vast majority of political parties in Canada fail due to our first-past-the-post system. Indeed, only three federal parties have official party status right now; two with roots back to Confederation and one with roots in the Great Depression.

But don’t count Mad Max out. If politics has taught us anything over the past few years, it’s that the impossible is a lot more likely than we’ve previously thought.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

For the first time in the history of Canadian mental health, in 2017, the federal government announced an investment of $5 billion to improve access to nationwide services. The lump sum, which is part of the government’s Health Accord with the provinces and territories, is slated to roll out over the next 10 years. Mental health advocates, care workers, and organizations acknowledge that the investment is a welcome first step in tackling Canada’s growing mental health spending.

But the funding is a “mere drop in the bucket to address all the lack of resources and capacity,” says Chris Summerville, co-chair of the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health. In 2015, Canada’s mental health spending was 7.2 percent of the total health spending budget. To raise mental health spending to the nine percent minimum recommended by the Mental Health Commission of Canada in 2012, “the federal government would have to release nearly $778 million annually, to reach all of the provinces and territories,” says Summerville—well above the pledged $5 billion.

Just over a year after the investment was announced, we break down how much each province is receiving over 10 years.

BRITISH COLUMBIA
Population (2017): 4.81 million
Mental health funding: $655 million

While B.C.’s budget has significant spending allotments for affordable housing and supports of Indigenous people, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), it does not show direct allocations for mental illness. CMHA national director of research and public policy Fardous Hosseiny says Canada’s mental health systems focus “more on crisis care.” CMHA recommends that governments adopt a bottom-up approach to funding mental health, by focusing on early intervention, screening and assessment by community and peer support groups, mental health and addictions counsellors, recovery coaches, psychiatric nurses, elders in Indigenous communities, and so on.

ALBERTA
Population (2017): 4.29 million
Mental health funding: $586 million

Facing an opioid crisis that claimed 343 lives in 2016 alone, Alberta’s Minister of Health Sarah Hoffman received a 3.5 percent funding boost from the federal government, in response to her 5.2 percent ask. In 2018, the province’s budget allocated its own $7 million to improve mental health services. Recently, the province also promised a $5 million grant to hire staff and build school-based programs, extending mental health support to 100,000 students across the province.

SASKATCHEWAN
Population (2017): 1.16 million
Mental health funding: $158.5 million

Mental health makes up five percent of Saskatchewan’s total health budget. The province aims to increase that allocation to seven percent. Meanwhile, suicide deaths among First Nations people in Saskatchewan is 4.3 times higher than non-First Nations Saskatchewanians, according to a 2017 Saskatchewan First Nations Suicide Prevention Strategy report presented by the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations’ Mental Health Technical Working Group. The province’s 2018-19 budget estimates mental health expenses of $367 million. New targeted investments in mental health include $4.6 million for improved children and youth mental health, $5.2 million for better access to community mental health supports, and $1.5 million for greater mental health delivery.

MANITOBA
Population (2017): 1.34 million
Mental health funding: $181.6 million

At first, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister held out on signing the federal Health Accord, demanding more money for Indigenous health care and rising rates of kidney disease and diabetes. In August 2017, the province signed the health pact and received an additional $5 million for 2017-18 in health care funding to fight kidney failures. Currently, “mental health spending in Manitoba is approximately 4 percent of its health spending budget. Even though the funding announcements have been made, those funds will not bring mental health into parity with physical health,” says Summerville.

ONTARIO
Population (2017): 14.19 million
Mental health funding: $1.9 billion

One in three Ontarians will suffer a mental health or addictions crisis in their lifetime. The province estimates an expenditure of $29 billion on mental health in the next five years. The recent 10-year allocation from the health accord is “simply not sustainable,” said former health minister Eric Hoskins. To match the federal allotment, Ontario is funnelling a supplementary $2.1 billion to mental health and addictions care for the next four years. The province has also increased the annual funding for mental health and addictions operations to $3.8 billion.

QUEBEC
Population (2017): 8.39 million
Home care and mental health funding: $2.5 billion

Every year, over 500,000 Québécois aged 12-24 and 430,000 aged 25-64 are diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Up to 50 percent of long-term absenteeism in the province is attributed to mental disorders. The Québec Health and Welfare Commissioner estimates the yearly cost of psychotherapy in the province to $400 million. In 2017, Quebec announced an investment of $35 million in mental health which will support their first public psychotherapy program.

NEW BRUNSWICK
Population (2017): 759,700
Mental health funding: $104.3 million

In 2015, Moncton reported 22 suicides. In 2016, that number grew to 40. Suicide rates in northern New Brunswick are even higher, and youth hospitalization in the province is almost twice the national average. Wait times for those in crisis range from six months to a year at mental health facilities in Moncton. Most mental health professionals operate private practices not are not covered under the province’s health plan. But recently, the Medavie Health Foundation donated $360,000 to support mental health research and evaluation.

NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR
Population (2017): 528,800
Mental health funding: $73 million

In 2014-15 Newfoundland and Labrador reported an average of 13.5 percent of citizens who experienced repeat hospital stays due to mental illness, in comparison to a national average of 11.5 percent, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Fatal police shootings in the province are rare, but two out of three that have occurred since 2000 involved people living with mental illness. The province is hoping to tackle this $1.7 million allocated in its 2018 budget toward mobile intervention units. And $6.1 million has been reserved to replace Waterford Hospital, the province’s century-old mental health facility.

NOVA SCOTIA
Population (2017): 953,900
Mental health funding: $130.8 million

In 2017 health services audit, Nova Scotia reported an expenditure of $225 million on mental health services per year. The report by Nova Scotia’s Auditor General, Michael Pickup, found that the government lacks a specific plan on how it intends to deliver mental health services to those who need it the most, delivery is inconsistent based on location, wait times and assessment methods vary, and there are ongoing concerns around patient and staff safety. The province’s 2018-2019 budget has allocated $3.9 million for mental health and youth supports.

P.E.I.
Population (2017): 152,000
Mental health funding: $20.5 million

In 2015, Prince Edward Island reported a suicide rate of about eight people for every 100,000. The province’s 2018 budget allocated funding for student wellbeing teams, a 24/7 mental health response team, a $175,000 grant to CMHA for island-wide support groups, and more.

YUKON
Population (2017): 38,500
Mental health funding: $5.2 million

Both Ontario and Yukon have almost the same amount of funding allotted per capita. But the territory has a suicide rate of 20 percent, while Ontario’s suicide rate is 9.7 percent, making it clear that the amount of funding allotted to Yukon is disproportionate to what it needs.

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
Population (2017): 44,500
Mental health funding: $6.1 million

In 2015, the Northwest Territories reported a high suicide rate of 24.7 per 100,000. The 2018-19 budget allocated targeted mental health funding of $1.5 million for education and training of child and youth mental health counsellors, and $500,000 for on-going funding for the youth-in-crisis mental health programs and existing community care for Indigenous peoples.

NUNAVUT
Population (2017): 38,000
Mental health funding: $5.1 million

In 2016, Nunavut’s suicide rate of about 86 people for every 100,000 was the highest recorded in the country. The provincial government, Nunavut Tunngavik, the Embrace Life Council, and the RCMP have embarked upon a five-year action plan, Inuusivut Anninaqtuq, by investing $16 million to bring wellness programs within reach of all Nunavut communities.

NATIONAL
On Indigenous mental health

In its 2018 budget, the federal government committed a separate $200 million over five years for the delivery of culturally appropriate addictions treatment and preventions services in First Nations communities, and $248.6 million over three years for mental health and emotional supports for residential school survivors and their families. But according to Yipeng Ge, Vice President of Government Affairs at the Canadian Federation of Medical Students (CFMS), there’s still a need for more accountability and transparency in tracking the distribution of the funding to the communities that need it the most. Budget reports don’t get conveyed to those working on the ground, Ge said. CFMS has called on the government to adopt the frameworks and strategies recommended by Indigenous peoples to address First Nations and Inuit suicide, comprehensively review current distribution of funding through the National Aboriginal Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy, and more.

Thousands of federal offenders are serving life sentences in Canada’s justice system, and critics say they aren’t getting the rehabilitative support they need.

“A life sentence is quite different from a traditional sentence,” explains Anita Desai, executive director of the St. Leonard’s Society of Canada. People serving life sentences, or “lifers,” often grapple with a greater sense of hopelessness than other inmates, she says, and they require targeted supports to help them work through that.

That support used to be given through a federally funded program called LifeLine, which helped lifers envision, and then prepare for, a future outside of prison. The federal government scrapped the program’s funding in 2012 as part of massive cuts amid Stephen Harper’s tough-on-crime agenda. Advocates want the funding reinstated, but the current government doesn’t appear interested in the program either.

From 1991 to 2012, LifeLine paired prisoners with mentors who themselves served life sentences and then successfully reintegrated into the community. The mentors guided mentees on adapting to life in prison, helped them prepare for life on the outside, and supported them once they were paroled.

LifeLine won multiple international awards while it was running, and correctional systems in other countries have emulated the program. Before it lost funding, LifeLine was employing as many as 26 in-reach workers to provide services to over 2,200 lifers. The program was not only effective, it was relatively inexpensive as well, costing just $2 million a year.

When LifeLine’s funding was cut, a coalition of community groups raised money to run a stripped-down version of the program. That funding ran out in March 2018, further jeopardizing the future of LifeLine.

Desai and other advocates for prison reform say it’s time for the federal government to fund the program again. Ivan Zinger, Canada’s federal prison ombudsman, agrees. In his 2016/2017 annual report, Zinger called on the Liberals to do just that.

But a spokesperson from Correctional Services Canada (CSC) says the government isn’t considering reinstating funding for LifeLine at this time. The CSC says LifeLine has been replaced by the Lifer Resource Strategy—a set of materials in binders available for prisoners in their libraries.

Desai says the Lifer Resource Strategy isn’t adequate. She compares it to giving a student a textbook but no teacher. “Ultimately,” Desai says, “a life sentence is handed out by the government, and it should be the responsibility of the government to fund a program that’s demonstrated to support this specific population.”

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) faced a monumental task: Not only did it need to build a credible recreational cannabis business to manage consumer demand, but it had to outflank the drug’s illicit market, all while undercutting head shops. In figuring out how to balance it all, the LCBO turned to its control-centric history of alcohol management and adopted an approach generously described as happily repressive.

Gone are the resistant values of 1960s counterculture, along with any notion that marijuana was a key element of the era’s mind expansion and generational definition—not to mention a statement of alienation, especially by minority youth, facing police and an unforgiving justice and legal system.

Counterculture, with cannabis at or near its core, was always about experimentation with consciousness. But with the advent of Ontario Cannabis Stores, the arms-length agency created by the LCBO to oversee legal weed sales, any liberatory value that marijuana once had to challenge mainstream culture is gone. Come July 1, there will be nothing left of the subversiveness of pot.

More than 50 years ago, critical theorist Herbert Marcuse described how the loss of antagonism and an undercutting of subversion leads to an indifference to all things under a system of consumerism run amok. In One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse dubbed this “repressive desublimation.” While sublimation reroutes our impulses toward expressions of different realities, desublimation strips creativity of its inherent resistance, offering instead promises of immediate gratification.

And in Ontario, what restrictive pleasure it is! In historic LCBO fashion, whereas bottles of booze were fetched in brown paper bags, provincial Cannabis Stores won’t even permit self-service. There will be no open, well-stocked shelves of little green bags with unique, outward-facing branding. Virtual interfaces with products will abound, augmented by samples hoarded by sales consultants for smelling purposes only. Crowd management will begin at the door.

But will it end at the door? For its first five decades of operation after its founding in 1927, the LCBO kept records on every drinker, every purchase made, every employee, every drinking establishment and bottle of alcohol. The mandate of control was applied to sales and sites of consumption, with the agency deploying permits, order forms, region-specific stamps, interdiction lists, purchase reviews, and consumer investigations. Purchase privileges were cancelled for those deemed undesirable.

This is our predicament: anti-establishment values have given way to social permissiveness on pot, albeit tightly controlled

Government agencies cooperated fully in the passage of personal information during the LCBO’s early years, creating a kind of social sorting system. Membership in a First Nation, being a woman, or any application initiated by police and judges were met with more severe restrictions. Although this invasive and consequential surveillance system slowly disappeared in the 1970s, the LCBO occasionally still finds itself scrutinized by the province’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner for overextending its gathering of unnecessary personal information, as was the case with intelligence assembled on wine club members circa 2013. Not for nothing did the LCBO pay $250,000 in legal fees to fight scrutiny of its data collection practices.

With Ontario Cannabis Stores, history looks to be repeating itself. Will the LCBO trace every gram of cannabis sold? Can Shopify, the Ottawa-based online retail company hand-picked to run Ontario’s online and in-store cannabis sales, guarantee that consumer purchase data will not end up on U.S. servers? Can the LCBO?

The cannabis retail experience will confirm that a properly calibrated and carefully controlled effort to make marijuana mainstream will bring quick satisfaction in the form of easy-to-purchase legal weed. Yet it may come at the cost of relinquishing personal and purchase information, which could be consequential for already marginalized groups, those at border crossings, or anyone applying for jobs or insurance.

Flashback to 1970. John Munro, Canada’s then-minister of national health and welfare in the government of Pierre Trudeau, was promising to legalize cannabis when conditions were right. They never were. In the intervening 50 years, we’ve ditched what marijuana meant to those negating the mainstream but kept the cannabis. The open road to decriminalization beckons but still has not been taken, despite high use rates and normalized status among cannabis’ many champions.

This is our predicament: anti-establishment values have given way to social permissiveness on pot, albeit tightly controlled. “Pleasure, thus adjusted,” wrote Marcuse, “generates submission.” If estimates about the magnitude of the cannabis market are accurate, submission to one-dimensionality will be massive. And what comes after dashed counterculture promises?

Assurances that the system of control will evolve are hollow. It’s not the system that needs to evolve, but the mental, social, and environmental ecologies of cannabis culture that must find new paths in a radically altered landscape.

Photo courtesy of Cheri DiNovo.

Former politician Cheri DiNovo was raised an agnostic atheist and, from an early age, thought religion was silly. “I didn’t understand why people were religious,” she says. “I always wanted to have that conversation, but was embarrassed to ask because I saw that some of the Christians I knew were very smart people who did pretty amazing things. So how could they believe all this stuff?”

After her husband died in a traffic accident in the early 1990s, asking her faithful friends why they believe seemed less taboo. “I really got the experience of the faith community, as well as the powerful sense that we were not alone, and that it was love that was going to see [me and my children] through,” she says. “It wasn’t just up to me.”

The former Parkdale-High Park MPP left politics at the end of 2017 after an 11-year career that included tabling the most bills that had all three parties’ support, a feat that gave her the nickname “queen of tri-party bills.” She is now the minister at Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church in downtown Toronto. With her blond blunt-cut bob and clerical collar, she doesn’t look like a typical minister—and she isn’t one. As a relatively recent convert and an openly bisexual woman, DiNovo is the antithesis to the conservativism the Bible and Christianity are known for. And although the United Church is welcoming of the queer community, she recognizes the often fractured relationship it has with the church.

“Because I grew up without a religion, I didn’t really have the experience of a toxic religious background,” she says. “But so many of the people I meet do, especially from the queer community. That is a crying shame. That is horrendous.”

For queer Christians, DiNovo’s ministership is a godsend. In DiNovo’s new group of churchgoers, she estimates a quarter of the new members are from the queer community, and, through the group, are navigating through their negative past experiences with religion.

The United Church has technically accepted LGBTQ people since the late 1980s—a decision DiNovo estimates cost them a third of its members—but she is still working toward creating a safe and open space for the community. “We’re trying to be very intentional about being inclusive,” she says. In March, DiNovo asked people from the Trans Women’s Association to give the readings for a Lent service. The women spoke on the work they do and how the story of the crucifixion relates to LGBTQ people. “Of course, we’re not always perfect,” says DiNovo, “but that intentionality I think also builds an inclusive community.”

DiNovo has always been vocal about her left-leaning values as they pertain to religion. On Twitter, she’s referred to Jesus as “non-binary,” “racialized,” “the Jew,” and “the Communist.” In one of her first sermons, she said the apostle Paul was one of the reasons she converted to Christianity, and in the same breath she called him out for being misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-sex work. She believes people who use the Bible to spread hate are not actually reading it, that they are instead “[taking] a line out here, a line out there, and [using] it to beat our neighbour over the head with.”

DiNovo herself has been attacked for these values. Her 2017 TEDx Talk on why the Bible is a queer-positive book attracted disdainful comments from some Christian viewers, ranging from exhaustive rants about DiNovo’s “worldly approach” to the succinct “What a horrible woman!”

In another incident, following the first legal same-sex marriage in North America, which she officiated in 2001, she was berated on a homophobic website. The headline of the post reads, “The Sodomite Lesbian Juggernaut Continues to Roll!” with an image of a military tank rolling below the headline. “At the time, I thought that would make great T-shirts!” she says with a laugh.

Joking aside, DiNovo is quick to show empathy to a community that’s been historically deprived of it. “We need safe spaces. We need safe religious spaces,” she says. In a small way, she does that at the beginning of every sermon, which she opens saying: “Welcome to you, whatever you believe, whatever you don’t believe, whatever you’ve done, whatever you’ve left undone, whomever you love.”

DiNovo recalls an older man who wanted to become a minister in the 1970s, but had stopped himself from doing so because he was gay. “He’s now coming out to church—and that was the reason, he said, hearing that welcome,” says DiNovo. “He said, ‘I finally heard what I wanted to hear.’”

Minister Patty Hajdu.

After months of public sexual misconduct allegation at all levels of government (and other industries) across Canada, the federal government is crafting a new bill to improve the process for reporting sexual harassment—and avoiding it in the first place. Patty Hajdu, minister of employment, workforce development and labour, introduced Bill C-65 in November 2017, garnering support from all federal parties.

“We have been powerfully reminded in Canada, and indeed around the world, that harassment and violence remain a common experience for people in the workplace,” Hajdu said during the second reading in the House of Commons in January. “And Parliament Hill, our own workplace, is especially affected.”

WHAT IT PROPOSES TO DO
Bill C-65 will amend the Canada Labour Code to achieve three things: prevent workplace harassment and violence, effectively respond to reports of harassment and violence, and support those affected.

The bill would require all federally regulated employers to have specific anti-harassment policies in place, which isn’t mandatory now. Companies would have to investigate every report of harassment or violence in the workplace, sexual or not, and deal with it, rather than sweep it under the rug. Right now, because workplace harassment is not part of the language in the Labour Code, there is no requirement to go through the current investigation process, which includes reporting the incident to the employer, and referring it to a workplace committee or health and safety inspector to confirm in order for disciplinary or other actions to be taken. Minister Hajdu has called the process now “haphazard” and “piecemeal.”

WHO IT PROTECTS
If passed, Bill C-65 will protect all public servants and employees of federally regulated bodies. Think banks, agriculture, oil and gas, mining, broadcasting, and the government itself. Volunteers, interns, and contract workers, including Parliament Hill staffers—who currently have little protection from harassment at work—would also be covered by the law. This is perhaps the most significant change, given that such precariously employed workers tend to be the most vulnerable to harassment and assault.

WHO IT DOESN’T PROTECT
The bill doesn’t extend into private sectors. While it does protect political staff, it cannot limit parliamentary privilege, which protects the House of Commons and MPs from arrest in civil actions, non-criminal legal procedures alleging injury, and from being subpoenaed to appear in court, which could affect some harassment claims.

WHO SUPPORTS IT
The short answer: everyone. “To say that there is a power imbalance here is an understatement,” Conservative MP Michelle Rempel said during the second reading. “Women are still touched. Our hair is still stroked. Our shoulders are still rubbed. We are still given hugs and cheek kisses that linger a bit too long.”

NDP MP Karine Trudel has called it an “extremely important piece of legislation.”

Even Ted Falk, a Conservative MP from Provencher, Man., said he intends to support the bill.

Before tabling the bill, Minister Hajdu surveyed the public, creating the report Harassment and sexual violence in the workplace: What we heard. She found 60 percent of those surveyed had experienced harassment at work, but only about 40 percent of respondents had been trained on their workplace harassment and violence policies.

WILL IT WORK?
Critics look to the NDP for signs of whether the new law will be effective. They’re the only federal party that has anti-harassment policies and reporting guidelines in place for all employers. But that hasn’t eliminated harassment in the party or fostered confidence in the reporting system—evident in a number of high-profile cases involving the party recently. Of course, no one would expect legislation alone to end the culture of harassment that plagues many workplaces, but it’s one critical piece in the sprawling puzzle.

WHAT’S NEXT?
After the second reading on January 29, Bill C-65 was sent to the human resources committee for examination. The committee will write a report and suggest any changes to the legislation before a final reading. If all goes according to plan, the legislation could pass in the House this spring.