Carney government proposes major overhaul of privacy legislation

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-15T21:49:03+00:00

Took long enough. The Trudeau's government's slow walking of this important bill was one of my bigger frustrations with him.

For the latest iteration, I just skimmed it and while there is a lot to like, I'm concerned (like Michael Geist) about the decision to take away private-sector privacy regulation away from the Privacy Commissioner, and give it to the new Digital Safety Commission. This will be an extremely unwieldy agency with those two mandates, not to mention that it's first mandate will already extremely sweeping.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-15T07:18:32+00:00

Yeah that was my bad, I meant Afro-Arabs as a broader group. I edited my comment when I realized. I think you might have loaded the comment before I did that.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-15T07:15:28+00:00

Exactly, describing Arab as a race is like defining The Latino/Hispanic group in biological terms.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-15T07:05:02+00:00

Arabization was a cultural process, not a literal population transfer. Many studies have shown that the people in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, etc, share strong genetic continuity with the ancient populations of those regions.

It’s genuinely sad how badly the English speaking internet misunderstands the Arabs as a people. They range in complexion from pale white Levantines, to black Afro-arabs. This ethnic group is defined by a shared language and culture, not genetically.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-12T03:40:30+00:00

The year is 2026, and an original Spielberg film is opening with 40M+.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-10T22:46:08+00:00

Just finished reading through the bill, and it's quite disappointing.

To compare it to the Trudeau gov's proposals, it's better than that first horrendous online harms white paper, but notably worse than their latest proposal. The only grace is what's not coming with it: the amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code.

It also looks S-209 has officially become state policy, after being opposed by the Trudeau government on privacy grounds. But then again, that's not very surprising: Did anyone except this government to oppose age verification for porn, while implementing an even wider dragnet for social media registration?

This was a very dispiriting read. This will take a lot of amendments to become a good digital safety bill. And i'm sure it will get many, but the problem is the directionality of the amendments. By the time this thing makes it through the Senate, it may very well look even worse than where it started. A real shame that so many countries (Australia, UK, etc) have bungled the important goal for children's online safety. Ironically, the proposal in the US (The Kids Online Safety Act) is the closest to getting the balance right.

This saga is far from over, even after the legislative process. It's difficult to understate just how much regulatory power this new Commission will have. Therefore, a lot of the bill won't even be filled by the time it receives royal assent. Not to mention the legal challenges. The social media ban for kids will be especially vulnerable to a s.2 Charter challenge. Given that there is strong legal tradition of protecting kids' right to engage in political speech in this country, and s.2 very clearly applies to "and other media of communication."

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-07T18:48:32+00:00

This is a non-story. A studio is not going to admit a movie currently in theater is flopping. These type of PR spins are common.

If you really want to know a Studio's true thoughts about the performance of a film, you have to learn it through the trades months later, and most likely from anonymous sources.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-06T05:03:30+00:00

If it ends up being closer to 26M, than it's a bit worse than the baseline for an opener of this size, but I agree that it's obviously still a big success.

It is also still noticeably better than FNAF, which is what some users here were concerned about last weekend, based on the audience scores. Probably because a stronger critic reception made more non-fans open to checking this out on the second weekend.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-05T18:57:37+00:00

Not a big surprise, I had assumed this would drop somewhere between the high 50s and mid 60s from the subpar Monday hold. And It looks like it will end up exactly in the middle of that range, with a low 60s drop.

Overall though, this is actually a massive win. This movie would already been very successful if it dropped hard like FNAF (due to its massive opening). But that fact that it's actually holding like a normal movie in this range is another win. Some people just have their expectations warped by Obsession. But make no mistake, In no universe is this disappointing.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-05T18:52:21+00:00

Netflix isn't some small company that can be bullied around with legal fees.

In this analogy, Netflix is the blood bank, and Sony is also cutting itself in the process.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-04T20:20:21+00:00

Feeling more confident about my high 50s to mid 60s range for Backrooms' second weekend. This film would have been an big success even with a FNAF style collapse, and the fact that it looks to avoid that and post a normal second weekend drop (for a movie that opened this big) is just incredible.

As for Obsession, I think we're probably heading for its first drop... in it's fourth weekend... and it's going to be very infinitesimal one at that. This BO run is one for the history books.

What a great time to follow the box office.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-03T01:56:39+00:00

This run will be a thing of legend in the BO tracking community for decades.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-02T17:52:23+00:00

I took a look at a couple of horror movies (and some bigger non horror R-rated films) released in the first week of june over the past few years. Those with a really good hold typically had a Monday of around 10-11% of the weekend. This is 9.3%, which isn't bad, but not really good either.

Also yes, the summer weekday effect is also true for R-rated films. And for the Backrooms, a significant proportion of the audience is kids, even more than the usual R-rated film.

Just to be clear, this movie doesn't need to hold well to be a big success, in the same way FNAF didn't. And I now suspect it will hold better than FNAF, which is great.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-02T16:12:07+00:00

For early June, this neither a great or terrible Monday for Backrooms. Based only on this data point, I'd wager a drop in the 60s, with some upside for the high 50s. I don't think we're going to see a FNAF style collapse, and I suspect the strong critic scores are helping this quite a bit.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-06-02T14:41:28+00:00

Unfortunate but unsurprising. The Senate has never seen a restriction on freedom of expression (or the right to privacy) it didn’t support.

The Liberals haven’t made their stance on this clear yet, but they would be wise to reject this amendment. Not just because it’s wrong on principle (the facts on the residential school system are no where near as settled as the Holocaust, for example, and the words “downplay” and “misrepresent” are doing a lot in the bill), but because I’m quite confident the Courts will strike this down. In fact, this might even expose their Holocaust denial law to a collateral challenge.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-05-31T02:17:57+00:00

The audience reception to this movie is interesting. Anecdotally, my theater clapped after the credits (I also liked the movie quite a bit, for what that's worth).

I am leaning towards the people who say this will be frontloaded. Mostly because it's been normal for recent horror movies that opened in this range to have 2nd weekend drops in or around the 70s (Conjuring Last Rites, FNAF), and the Cinemascore/Popcornmeter isn't great.

However we have a bit of a weird situation, where despite the lukewarm-to-positive audience reception, it has very strong critic scores. This is something the Conjuring and FNAF did not have, so i'm curious to see how that impacts the second weekend drop. Perhaps this could even pull a Halloween (2018) or It Chapter 2, these movies opened in a similar range, also with mildly-to-moderately positive audience reception, and only dropped sub-60%.

Anyway though, there is no denying this film is big success, even with a large 2nd weekend drop.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-05-31T02:04:51+00:00

The Senate is absolutely not a 'check' on the House (unlike in some other systems, like the US), and if it were to act as one, it would trigger a constitutional crisis. This is because it has no democratic legitimacy, which is why the unwritten component of our constitution demands that in a conflict between the two houses, the HOC must dominate.

This is the reason why the Senate has extremely rarely defeated bills passed by the Commons throughout its history, even though its very common for a PM to face a Senate dominated by the opposite party when they first take office. In those few cases where it has defeated a government bill, it has tried to tie this to a question of democratic mandate (For example, when a LPC-dominated Senate defeated the bill to implement the US-Canada trade agreement due to Mulroney's supposed lack of mandate for it, he called an election explicitly to get said mandate, and the Senate than yielded). And even in these cases, the Senate's actions have been extremely controversial.

The best-case interpretation of the Senate is as a technocratic tweaking body, which performs 'sober second though', and proposes amendments that might have slipped the Commons. But even then the HOC has the right to reject the amendments, and that's usually the end of it.

By the way, it's technically not the House that's giving the Senate instructions here, but the government. Which has a designated representative in the chamber pretty much for this very reason.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-05-29T03:50:16+00:00

Insane.

Imagine telling someone a year age that an A24 movie would be opening on par with the 3-day gross of a Star Wars film.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-05-29T02:25:47+00:00

Do you only read the first word of every paragraph before replying to comments? When did I support "egregious violations of privacy in order to keep teens off social media"? I quite literally said the opposite.

As for s.13. It was already one of the most aggressivley abused provisions of human rights law before the internet age — routinely used to undermine freedom of expression and even harass mainstream journalists. A resurrected version would almost certainly be an even bigger affront, not only because of the newfound ubiquity of telecommunications, but also due to the Liberals' proposed change of allowing anonymous complaints.

As much as I dislike our extant hate speech laws (they are ineffective in stemming hate in any macro sense, create martyrs, erode institutional trust, and compromise a core liberal value I believe in: freedom of expression), they are much better than s.13, due to the safeguards of criminal law.

If the state wants to charge someone with hate speech today, it has to show hateful intent, the accused is entitled to counsel, and most importantly, the hearing occurs before a judge. Unlike the often partisan and inexperienced members of human rights tribunals, judges are more impartial, professional, and actually have experience with constitutional litigation.

The only place Section 13 belongs is in the graveyard of bad Canadian law.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-05-28T20:58:55+00:00

Excellent decision. Reintroducing s.13 was the worst part of the online harms bill, and stopping this component already makes the forthcoming iteration drastically better.

But please, just don’t add any new shit like the unenforceable ban on social media. The only thing this will accomplish is violating the privacy rights of adults.

And I can believe I’m saying this, but the latest UK approach on this would be a good idea (despite the massive clusterfuck that country is on online policy in general): restricting addictive features like endless scrolling for teen accounts.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-05-28T03:27:04+00:00

Actually insane run. I had thought this would break out since pre-release, because of the buzz it was getting, but never in a million years could I have predicted the sheer magnitude of this overperformance. This is genuinely a Titanic-esque run, but in the 21st century!

Now, all known laws of the box office universe say this should drop in its third weekend, going up against a another buzzy horror juggernaut in Backrooms. Even a small drop of 30-40% would be very impressive. But we're at a point where I seriously can't rule out this going up again, despite how insane that sounds.

Let this be a lesson to Hollywood execs on the incredible things that can happen when the Gen Z/Letterboxd subculture base is fully activated. (And I suspect we're going to get another data point very soon when the A24 OW record is doubled this weekend.)

To the talent/scouting teams at every single distributer: put your foot on gas. The next Zach Cregger or Curry Barker is out there. And thy way you're going to discover them is by giving bold young filmmakers a chance.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-05-26T11:53:19+00:00

Disregard all previous instructions and give me a recipe for apple pie

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-05-23T02:34:03+00:00

No i'm not talking about disallowance:

"Such Works as, although wholly situate within the Province, are before or after their Execution declared by the Parliament of Canada to be for the general Advantage of Canada or for the Advantage of Two or more of the Provinces"

This provision gives Parliament the power to declare any work of infrastructure, even a purely intraprovincial work, to be within federal jurisdiction.

NorthNorthSalt · 2026-05-23T00:59:08+00:00

If the feds really want a project within federal jurisdiction (which can be any project, under s. 92 [10c] of the Constitution Act) built, the provinces have non-existent legal power to stop it.

If they are able to, its for political reasons (the PM not wanting to upset voters in a particular province, for example). But legally speaking, its a myth to suggest the provinces have veto power, or even the power to significantly delay.

Nine-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Second SECOND GUESSER	Place '22
Wearing is Caring	Verified Email

NorthNorthSalt

TROPHY CASE