Canada

Private clinics in Canada are selling access to personal health data without patients’ knowledge, according to a new study that says clients in the pharmaceutical industry are paying millions for this information.

“This is not how patients want their data to be used,” lead author Dr. Sheryl Spithoff told CTV’s Your Morning on Monday. “Patients are generally fine with sharing their data if it’s going to be used for research and health system improvement... but they’re very reluctant to have their data shared or held with for-profit companies.”

Spithoff is a family physician and scientist at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. Published in the journal JAMA Network Open early this month, the new study focused on two unnamed health data companies that each had access to between one and two million patient records.

“The entities involved in the primary care medical record industry in Canada—chains of for-profit primary care clinics, physicians, commercial data brokers, and pharmaceutical companies—work together to convert patient medical records into commercial assets,” the study explains. “These assets are largely used to further the interests of the pharmaceutical companies.”

Spithoff’s research uncovered two models for how patient data is sold. In one, private clinics sell health information to a third-party commercial data broker that removes personal information before running analytics for the pharmaceutical industry. In another, private clinics are actually owned by a health data company that uses patient information to develop algorithms for pharmaceutical companies in order to identify and target patients with drug interventions.

In both cases, data is typically used without patients’ knowledge or consent.

“According to a data broker employee, no one sought consent from patients to access and use their records,” the study claims. “Instead, companies appeared to seek out physician consent to access patient records.”

Such practices, the study adds, “could potentially generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.”

Spithoff says the study identified a number of risks with the monetization and sharing of patient data.

“One is that this is likely to give the pharmaceutical industry increased control over medical practices, so we’re likely to see more of a focus on expensive new on-patent drug,” Spithoff said. “We’re also very concerned about how the data are being used—anytime data are been shared, there’s privacy risks to patients.”

A physician interviewed for the study told researchers that patient data is “snatched away.”

“It’s patient’s data but how is it that these companies even can own the data?” the physician said, according to the study. “I don’t see how it should even be legal to provide this information."

Thanks to Friday’s cabinet shuffle, more than half of the entire United Conservative Party caucus in the Alberta legislature is now a member of Premier Danielle Smith’s cabinet.

To be precise, 57.4 per cent of the 47 UCP MLAs now have a cabinet portfolio. When you subtract Speaker Ric McIver, just appointed to replace Washington-bound Nathan Cooper, that rises to 58.7 per cent.

This is not normal and it’s not an indicator of healthy government. There are now 27 cabinet ministers, two of them meaninglessly labelled as associates but in cabinet nevertheless, up from an already disproportionately large group of 25.

Fully four of them make up the junta, for lack of a better word, responsible for managing health care — or, as was argued in my hot take Friday, for dismantling public health care.

No comment other than the phrase in title is prominent on the hats intentionally shown behind the young man being interviewed here. I'll let everyone reading this decide for themselves whether this is a problem or not.

EDIT: For the record, perhaps my original commentary on this post was attempting to be too 'clever'. I was most definitely * not * trying to promote these chuckleheads. It was posted in order to ensure people know the enemy -- there are some scary forces working in Canada to instill the horrors we are seeing down south, right here, right now.

Queen Elizabeth died in 2022. I haven't seen any money with the new king on it. Do they think he's going to die too so just waiting to avoid having to redo the work?

Pete Hoekstra thumbs through an imaginary document, and pauses for effect: “This is a serious proposal — pile one.” Then he raises a second document. “I can’t believe this,” he guffaws. “This is a joke.” Straight to the discard pile.

That, says President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Canada, is how it will go — one way or another — when newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney submits a proposal on a revamped economic and security agreement with the United States

The long story short is that in nine years, over the lifetime of the Trudeau government, federal subsidies to business more than doubled through the introduction of over 100 new programs. Every Canadian went from paying just over $310 to businesses large and small to over $800 per year in 2023/24.

A group representing major foreign streaming companies told a hearing held by Canada's broadcasting regulator on Friday that those companies shouldn't be expected to fulfil the same responsibilities as traditional broadcasters when it comes to Canadian content.

The Motion Picture Association-Canada, which represents large streamers like Netflix, Paramount, Disney and Amazon, said the regulator should be flexible in modernizing its definition of Canadian content.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is holding a two-week public hearing on a new definition of Canadian content that began Wednesday. The proceeding is part of its work to implement the Online Streaming Act — and it is bringing tensions between traditional players and large foreign streamers out in the open.

The Canadian military insists it's getting a handle on its recruiting crisis, but a new leaked internal report obtained by CBC News suggests many of those who come through the door quickly leave in frustration over the inability to get trained and into the job they want.

In addition, the effort to retain experienced soldiers, sailors and aircrew was dealt an important blow recently when a Department of National Defence office — set up to find ways to keep people — was defunded.

The struggle to recruit new members to both the regular and the reserve force has been a major preoccupation as the Forces face a shortage of up to 14,000 qualified personnel.

But the flip side of the equation — that has gotten less attention — is the effort to hold on to people, especially in critical technical trades.

“Alberta is a place soaked in self-deception.” Those words began Alberta-based journalist Mark Lisac’s 2004 book aimed at shattering the myths that have unhelpfully animated too much of Alberta’s politics over the past few decades.

Current and former Alberta politicians are once again embracing and treating separatist grievances seriously. That means it’s time once again to highlight and challenge political misconceptions that have the potential to destroy Canada.

Oil is the root of one such myth. The misconception? That Ottawa perennially opposes the oil and gas sector and is determined to stop its continued growth. The National Energy Program (1980), the Northern Gateway pipeline project (2016), the Energy East pipeline (2017) and the proposed greenhouse gas pollution cap allegedly prove Ottawa’s hostility.

Notably missing from these grievances is the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans Mountain expansion project. Ottawa supported these projects aimed at transporting Alberta oilsands crude to foreign markets. The federal government even purchased the Trans Mountain project from Kinder Morgan in 2018 — not to kill it, but to build it.

Grand Chief Greg Desjarlais of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations says no referendum can overturn the treaty that encompasses most of central Alberta.

"We're tired of seeing the government pass these bills where you don't see two sentences of Indigenous inclusion, and that has to stop," Desjarlais told the media at an anti-separatist rally on the steps of the Alberta Legislature building in Edmonton, amiskwaciwaskahikan, on Thursday.

About 600 people were at the demonstration, many with flags and signs protesting Alberta's separation from Canada and the controversial Bill 54, proposed by Premier Danielle Smith's government.

"I think we're tired of being pushed around," Desjarlais said.

CBC Site Of course the Ottawa resident isn't going to leave Stornoway and move to his suburban McMansion. Unemployable as he is, finding a mover who'll take "I'm sure to win the next election!" as a guarantee of payment is, ummmm, sketchier than most movers will accept.

https://archive.is/https://www.thestar.com/business/hudson-s-bay-to-sell-name-stripes-brands-to-canadian-tire-for-30-million/article_f795840b-f5b0-5e32-a722-af171ead18c0.html

Neskantaga First Nation Chief Gary Quisess is only six weeks into his first term, and is facing simultaneous crises in his community and in Thunder Bay. But he left home and travelled to Queen’s Park today to call out what he describes as “genocide” buried in new provincial environmental legislation.

Ontario’s proposed Bill 5, the Protect Ontario By Unleashing Our Economy Act, would allow the province to designate “special economic zones” that would qualify to bypass environmental regulations and speed up development. It is expected to be in force as early as September, and Premier Doug Ford intends to name the proposed Ring of Fire mineral development as the first such site.

Critics say the law would gut protections for endangered species, remove environmental protections, and trample Indigenous rights. Environmental Defence calls the legislation “an attack on civil liberties and treaty rights.”

The benefit could add $200 a month for people struggling. But the UCP government will deduct it from its own support.

Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canadians "weren't impressed" when the U.K. decided to offer U.S. President Donald Trump an unprecedented second state visit while he was threatening Canada's sovereignty.

"To be frank, they weren't impressed by that gesture, quite simply, given the circumstance," Carney told British news channel Sky News in an interview posted online Wednesday.

American-owned Quest Diagnostics purchased LifeLabs in August 2024 from OMERS, a jointly owned pension fund company, for $1.35 billion. LifeLabs’ B.C. workers, who have been without a contract since last April, have been on strike since Feb. 16.

Ayendri Riddell, director of policy and campaigns with the BC Health Coalition, or BCHC, says the fact that such a large part of Canada’s health infrastructure is owned by a massive foreign company is cause for concern.

“As a company they’re not accountable to the Canadian workforce or to our health-care system and our patients,” she says. “It doesn’t seem like their striking conditions are having much of an impact on Quest.”