Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 28, 2015, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A9 IDEAS �o ISSUES �o INSIGHTS THINK- TANK A 9 Winnipeg Free Press Wednesday, January 28, 2015 I MAGINE finding out that a stranger has received highly sensitive information about you because a company has sent your mail to the wrong person. Or asking to look at your own personal information for the sake of fixing a suspected error, only to be denied access to it by the company that collected it. As privacy commissioner of Canada, it's these kinds of things I want to draw attention to on this Data Privacy Day. About a third of private- sector privacy complaints to my office under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, Canada's federal private- sector privacy law, involve smaller businesses that employ fewer than 100 people. I realize smaller companies face a multitude of compliance pressures, on top of day- to- day operational demands, and that they have a limited staff to address them. But I also know Canadians are increasingly concerned about their privacy and are choosing to do business with organizations that are sensitive to those concerns. According to our latest public opinion poll released today, 81 per cent of Canadians say they would choose to do business with a company specifically because it has good privacy practices. And more than half would choose to do business with a company specifically because it does not collect personal information. But only 16 per cent of Canadians believe businesses take their responsibility to protect personal information very seriously. Nearly a third say they have suffered negative consequences due to an organization misusing, sharing or losing their personal information. Another 29 per cent of respondents say they've asked a company how it planned to use or protect their personal information and of them, 43 per cent decided not to do business with that company due to concerns over privacy. These figures should raise alarm bells for all businesses, especially smaller ones that, in my office's experience, sometimes appear to be less aware of their privacy obligations under federal law, and as a result, may be less likely to recognize and embrace privacy measures as a competitive advantage. Smaller businesses should be asking themselves what proactive measures they are taking to safeguard the privacy of their customers and to mitigate data breaches. Companies should limit the amount of personal information they collect to what is necessary for the purposes of delivering a product or service, and they should make it clear to customers why they need such information, ideally through a privacy policy. To avoid losing personal information or sending it to the wrong person, companies need to know what they collect, where they store it and who has access to it. To that end, training staff on privacy protection is crucial. Companies also need to think twice about collecting sensitive information, such as driver's licenses, and if a company uses video surveillance, it needs to make sure customers are aware they're being recorded. If a business is going to store personal information on laptops, USB keys or hard drives, it should make sure those devices are encrypted and password- protected. Furthermore, businesses cannot simply ignore customer requests for access to their personal information and must designate a point person to respond to customer questions about privacy. The most common complaints to my office relate to the use and disclosure of personal information - when companies use information for purposes other than those specified at the time they asked for it, or when it's discovered that an employee has looked at somebody's file without authorization. My office also receives many complaints related to the collection of personal information. This, for example, could involve the acquisition of an unlisted telephone number by a collection agency, or an equipment rental company that insists on photographing customers as a precaution against theft. Under federal private- sector privacy law, companies are generally required to provide access to the personal information they have about a client or customer when that person requests it. That, however, doesn't always happen, and denials of access to personal information account for another large number of complaints to my office. We also receive complaints from people who say they never consented to the use of their personal information in the first place, while others complain about businesses that failed to use proper safeguards, such as encryption or password protection, to ensure the security of their personal information. Landlords, hotels, real estate agencies, collection agencies, travel agencies, retailers and financial planners are among the most common targets of privacy complaints to my office. Although many complaints to my office are resolved quickly, it's unfortunate that they arrive at all, as many are entirely preventable. Unfortunately, a telephone survey we conducted last year of more than 1,000 companies across Canada found more than half ( 55 per cent) did not have a privacy policy. Half didn't have procedures in place for dealing with privacy complaints and two- thirds ( 67 per cent) did not have policies or procedures in place for assessing the privacy risks of new products, services and technologies. These are among the privacy basics for organizations. Meanwhile, 59 per cent of business expressed little to no concern about the prospect of a data breach and 58 per cent indicated they had no guidelines for dealing with a breach involving the personal information of customers. There is clearly a need for greater awareness about privacy protection. As we mark Data Privacy Day today, I am urging all businesses to use this opportunity to take stock of, and strengthen where necessary, their privacy practices. Strong privacy practices are not just good for customers, they're good for the bottom line. Daniel Therrien is the privacy commissioner of Canada. Small businesses must address privacy By Daniel Therrien T UESDAY marked the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Tanks of the First Ukrainian Front broke through the enclosures 70 years ago. Twenty- year- old Ihor Pobirchenko was the first to confront the unimaginable horror perpetrated by the Nazis. Atop a tank, he saw people hanging from the barbed- wire enclosure. They were alive, but barely; the fence was not electrified. The tanks rolled in. Recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lashed into his Polish counterpart, Grzegorz Schetyna, for daring to dispel the popular Second World War myth that Russians alone liberated Auschwitz, Warsaw and Berlin. It is still Russia's practice to credit itself with Soviet achievement, denying the role of some 100 million non- Russians of the former USSR. This is in evidence today as Putin wages spiteful wars with neighbours in a manner reminiscent of Soviet times. My father spent nearly two years in Auschwitz for opposing the German Reich's occupation of Ukraine. More than a million Ukrainians were incarcerated there. I was brought up on his stories about those historic times. He avoided the Gestapo for over a year, hiding, among other places, in the Redemptorist seminary where he had studied. This bit of family history was revealed by fellow seminarian, the Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Catholic Church of Canada, at father's funeral. When the Gestapo police finally branded him with a concentration number in Auschwitz, he had to endure the " welcome" line. It comprised running the gauntlet with hundreds of katsetnyky, or prisoners, as they were beaten with batons. This experience was shared by other katsetnyky who came to live in Winnipeg, including Dr. Michael Marunchak, Rev. Semen Izyk, Petro Petelytsky, Theodor Chimko. Some had health issues for life. Anyone who fell was dragged off and punished; anyone who abstained got the same. Fear and terror ruled. The camp's commandant had decreed: You are nothing; I am the law. Too often, those who were unable to deal with the sadism any longer sought a quick, merciful end on the electrified enclosures. My father lost many friends in the mills of death, as the concentration camps were called. He survived, living for nearly 50 years in Winnipeg, devoting his life to crossing Canada in the interest of his community. Newspapers, churches, credit unions, children's summer camps and the now $ 30 million Taras Shevchenko Foundation attest to some of his achievements. He was particularly proud of the creation of the World League of Ukrainian Political Prisoners that battled international bureaucracy for the right to state that some million Ukrainians who lived under Polish or Soviet rule had been incarcerated in the Nazi camps. He knew Canada from coast to coast, and loved it for its peace and security, the rule of law, even- handed politics and the helpful decency of a policeman. He hoped Ukraine would " one day be more like Canada." Had he lived, today's terror in Ukraine would be seen as a potential repeat of history. He would equate Putin's determination to subjugate Ukraine to what happened before and after the Second World War with Germany and with Russia. Father would be proud, so proud, of the courageous stand of the volunteer battalions holding the front. " I told you," I can hear him say, " Ukrainians will never give up fighting for their country." YouTube videos show Russia operating in Luhansk and Donetsk using children and women as human shields, destroying homes, burning, killing, mutilating. They are not for gentle eyes. More frightening is the annihilation of the " never again" promise made to humanity by Russia when the war ended and over and over again in other international agreements and recent ceasefires. My father would be incredulous that NATO is unable to find a solution to this trampling of international law and democracy on its doorstep. He would question why America has stopped short of punishing Russia from spreading global chaos. He would have a message for his Canadian government as well: You have been a great friend to Ukraine, but now its time to call Mr. Putin on his actions. Ihor Pobirchenko, the youth on the tank, became a well- known jurist in Ukraine. When last interviewed, at 88, he was covered with medals and awards, including the United States' medal for heroism. In soft Ukrainian, he said he joined the army to defend his native land from an aggressor. Today, his descendants and those of his comrades are doing the same. My father has good reason to be proud. Oksana Bashuk Hepburn, former director with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, is an opinion writer. Ukrainians forgotten heroes of Auschwitz OKSANA BASHUK HEPBURN T HE Arboc smoke shop, gas station and nearby VLT lounge is a humble little cluster. Its trailer and pumps and low- slung lounge are easy to miss among the shiny new hotels and car dealerships that have popped up along the TransCanada Highway through Headingley. As small- time as it is, the tiny urban reserve helped spark Swan Lake First Nation's renaissance, turning it into one of the best- run and most self- sufficient bands in the province. The small business ventures gave the band capital - cash- flow that helped fund everything from new playground equipment to a wind- farm proposal to the new casino near Carberry. The band was even able to fix up nearly every old house on the reserve. During a visit a couple of years ago, photographer Ruth Bonneville and I coveted one of the cool log cabins the band built for several young families, a kind of test project for a homebuilding business. It's pretty rare to be jealous of a rez house. If that's what a small urban reserve can do for Swan Lake, imagine what one at Kapyong Barracks could do for First Nations in general. The Arboc project was among the capital region's first urban reserves, one that allowed Swan Lake access to customers near Winnipeg and to the modest tax breaks available to status Indians who shop and work there. Since then, despite molasses- slow bureaucracy and a treaty land claim process that's essentially stalled, Manitoba has begun to see the next generation of urban reserves, a big step up from the original gas- bar model. Two years ago, after many stops and starts, Long Plain First Nation won reserve status for its squat office building on Madison Street in the Polo Park area, a block behind the Future Shop. Yellowquill College is ensconced there, a Petro- Canada station looks ready to open any day and there are plans for expansion. Despite racist rumblings, nothing bad happened. The building didn't become a slum. The Indian Posse didn't take over. Everyone paid their bills. Meanwhile, Peguis First Nation, rolling in millions after winning a decades- long land- claim fight, recently bought MPI's old licensing centre on Portage Avenue next to the RCMP headquarters. Renovations worth $ 500,000 are underway. The building is 95 per cent leased. It's likely Winnipeg's next urban reserve. Peguis Chief Glenn Hudson says he's told the feds and the city he'd like to convert the building to a reserve in a year. That's crazy talk, but it shouldn't be. Canada routinely failed to live up to the simple math laid out in treaties signed more than a century ago, so bands in Manitoba are still owed thousands of acres. At last count, the 15 bands who are part of the 1997 Treaty Land Entitlement Framework Agreement are owed a total of 460,000 acres. Many other bands hold individual land debts. While we continue to lament high welfare rates and federal " handouts" that form the backbone of many reserve economies, it takes eons for bands to win the very thing that might break that cycle - reserve status for an urban parcel. Take, for example, Sapotaweyak Cree Nation. In 1998, Sapotaweyak signed its Treaty Land Entitlement agreement, detailing how many acres it was promised in 1874 - more than 100,000 acres - but didn't get. In 2006, the band bought a old liquor control commission property in Swan River as part of its TLE. Six years later, the band finally reached a deal with the town detailing how the band would pay for municipal services. It took another two years for the feds to award the parcel official reserve status. The process took eight years at best, 140 years at worst. Sapotawayak was the only band that got new reserve land of any kind under the TLE process last year, evidence the process has ground to a halt. Chiefs such as Peguis's Hudson believe urban reserves, and the jobs and revenue they bring, are the key to self- sufficiency for indigenous people and self- government for First Nations. They're even more than that, though. Urban reserves are one way to combat the racism we've now acknowledged exists in Winnipeg. They can bridge our physical divide, making everyday neighbours out of indigenous people and companies. They are a way to reconcile, to give bands like Peguis back some of their traditional lands - the valuable kind, not the stuff we didn't want anyway. They are an in- your- face antidote to all the subtle stereotypes - that indigenous people won't work hard, can't do deals, don't want better. That's Hudson's vision for Kapyong Barracks, the former base whose fate is now mired in court challenges and the tedious TLE process. It's far from certain First Nations like Peguis, Swan Lake or Brokenhead will ever see their claim on Kapyong materialize. But if it does, Hudson envisions the next generation of urban reserve. What started with smoke shops and grew into office buildings could morph again into a real neighbourhood - a combination of condos, apartments and single- family homes, green space, mainstream big- box stores, maybe an educational facility. Imagine if it had a Winnipeg version of Vancouver's new Skwach�ys Lodge, the boutique hotel that showcases indigenous artists. " I think Winnipeg will be pleased with what we have in our plan. It will blend right in," said Hudson. " When people step off the curb in city of Winnipeg land onto First Nations land, they probably won't even notice." maryagnes. welch@ freepress. mb. ca Urban reserves offer a renaissance Dispel stereotypes about First Nations and combat racism MARY AGNES WELCH WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Renovations to the Peguis First Nation building on Portage Avenue are underway, and it's 95 per cent leased. A_ 09_ Jan- 28- 15_ FP_ 01. indd A9 1/ 27/ 15 6: 48: 39 PM ;