Teresa Scassa - Blog

A recent decision of the Federal Court of Canada exposes the tensions between access to information and privacy in our data society. It also provides important insights into how reidentification risk should be assessed when government agencies or departments respond to requests for datasets with the potential to reveal personal information. The case involved a challenge by two journalists to Health Canada’s refusal to disclose certain data elements in a dataset of persons permitted to…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already being used to assist government decision-making, although we have little case law that explores issues of procedural fairness when it comes to automated decision systems. This is why a recent decision of the Federal Court is interesting. In Barre v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration) two women sought judicial review of a decision of the Refugee Protection Division (RPD) which had stripped them of their refugee status. They raised procedural fairness…