Privacy Issues and Canada’s Faith Communities

Privacy Issues and Canada’s Faith Communities essay by Travis Dumsday ON the Identity Trail.

"Broadly speaking, public policy issues have an unfortunate tendency to become ghettoised, with particular problems being championed by certain segments of society while being mostly ignored by other interest groups and society at large. Thus certain segments become associated in both public and official consciousness, rightly or wrongly, with certain issues. The aboriginal community for instance tends to be associated mostly with issues directly relevant to that community, such as the economic development of reservations, preservation of native languages, etc. I call this ghettoisation unfortunate partly because it can lead to an accompanying tendency on the part of government and media to ignore the community’s involvement and stake in other issues...

With that in mind, if someone asked you to write down a list of the issues of interest to Canadian religious communities, what would be the first item to pop into your mind? I realize that ‘Canadian religious communities’ is an exceedingly broad designating phrase, but humour me for a moment. What comes up first? Gay marriage? Abortion? Government funding of religious schools...

How about privacy? Would that enter anywhere on the radar screen? I suspect not...

Privacy is not seen as a ‘religious’ issue. But faith groups in this country are going to have to address some difficult questions relating to privacy in the near future, if they are not embroiled in them already.

In this context I think especially of the position of Canada’s Islamic community. If CSIS were to send undercover agents to attend services at mosques and monitor sermons given by Canadian Imams, in the hopes of spotting nascent terrorist sympathies or recruiting tactics, would this be a privacy violation?"