Edited on Fri Oct-28-05 04:39 AM by V. Kid
...about how they were going to sell this, and how they were going to devide the people of the province up while analysing how to sell this, into groups one of them being "privacy fundamentalists" basically meaning anyone who was worried about our privacy being compramised by American laws! Essentially claiming that they're crazy and need to be ignored, it was really quite arrogant. Anyways, to make a long story short, it was rather Bushian-Republican in its analysis, totally creepy, and somewhat unsuprising considering how this goverment doesn't particularly care about policy when compared to previous (including Social Credit goverments, that I do give credit for having some foresight) goverments. They really couldn't care less if they sell off the entire assets of the province, so long as they get re-elected. They think this is a low-level issue, as such its full steam ahead, and they'll totally ignore any criticisms until they reach a fever pitch. Heck, they wern't even willing to keep it in BC or Canadian hands, the least they could've done was sell it to Pacific Blue Cross or Sun Life or what have you.
Anyhow here's an intresting link to a Georgia Straight story on the issue, not the privacy fundamentalist thing though:
http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=12671Anyways, HEyHEY, I'm suprised your criticizing the BC media, I thought I'd never see the day! And yes, I do think its pathetic. There's a lot of potential for dirt with this goverment, unfortunatley we won't see 1/4th of it.
Oh, I found the link I was talking about, it was part of the "Victoria Secrets" :D column list.
http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=12856 --snippit--
One is Leah Hollins, a former B.C. deputy health minister who retired in 2001. The second is Brian Pollick, a former senior official in the B.C. Ministry of Attorney General. The third, David Flaherty, was B.C.’s first information and privacy commissioner and has worked as a privacy consultant since his term ended in 1999.
Flaherty had an earlier interest in the contracting-out of health-care records. On January 12, 2003, the Liberal government released a 44-page report on the privacy aspects of contracting-out B.C.’s MSP and PharmaCare. The report was written on contract by Flaherty.
It warned the government that outsourcing health records would require “an effective communications strategy for managing the privacy issue”, citing the power of “privacy fundamentalists”.
These “fundamentalists”, which the report said represent “perhaps one-quarter to one-third of the Canadian population”, will “not be inclined to trust an outsourcer to with their personal health information”.
“The B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association will lead the charge on this issue with collaboration of the ‘national privacy coalition’ and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association,” the report said. “Editorial writers and columnists may not be far behind.”