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News Reports and Commentary Selected by Franklin Carterof the Book and Periodical Council’s Freedom of Expression Committee   In Toronto, the publisher and editor of Your Ward News have been sentenced in court for promoting hatred against women and Jews. LeRoy St. Germaine, the paper’s publisher, was sentenced to 12 months of strict house arrest.

News Reports and Commentary Selected by Franklin Carterof the Book and Periodical Council’s Freedom of Expression Committee   In northwestern British Columbia, the Nisga’a Lisims Government (NLG) is trying to legally silence one of its employees. Andre Cardinal, an information technology manager, alleges the NLG is guilty of misconduct. His allegations have not been proven in court. REPORTAGE

An unprecedented number of public disputes have erupted across Canada in recent years about meeting room bookings and speaker’s events in the country’s public libraries. Most disturbingly, critics have ignored, disparaged, and frequently rebuffed the time-honoured commitments of Canadian public libraries to freedom of expression and unfettered access to library services.

2004 - 2020

On June 24, Sidewalk Labs, a sister company to Google, released its three-volume, 1,500-page Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP) containing its draft proposals for a smart-city project in Toronto. This post focuses Sidewalk Labs’ discussion of “Creating a Trusted Process for Responsible Data Use” (Part 3 of a chapter on “Digital Innovation” -- Volume 2, Chapter 5--) (Volume 2, Chapter 5. Part 3 proposes the use of a “civic data trust” to govern the “urban data” generated within the proposed smart city project area.