{"id":7900,"date":"2025-07-19T11:16:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T11:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/7900\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T11:16:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T11:16:11","slug":"sask-s-new-privacy-commissioner-on-her-offices-role-in-an-era-of-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/7900\/","title":{"rendered":"Sask.’s new privacy commissioner on her office’s role in an era of AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saskatchewan’s new information and privacy commissioner says a life-long passion for serving as a check on government power will help her excel in the new role.<\/p>\n

Grace Hession David said in an interview Thursday that\u00a0she always wanted to be a lawyer and has been\u00a0privileged enough to serve as a Crown prosecutor and defence lawyer in Ontario. She’s even argued cases in front of the Supreme Court of Canada.<\/p>\n

David said her passion developed early.<\/p>\n

“I was fascinated as a young child by the Watergate hearings and by the fact that a judge could subpoena the president of the United States and say, ‘hand over the information,'” David said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We live in a democracy, but government needs checks and that’s the role of this office.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Big shoes to fill<\/p>\n

As the province’s information and privacy commissioner, David will serve as the face of an office responsible for protecting people’s private information, while monitoring the laws around government disclosure to the public.<\/p>\n

David acknowledged that she\u00a0has big shoes to fill. Her predecessor,\u00a0Ron Kruzeniski<\/a>, spent more than a decade in the role and built up an office of experts \u2014 many of whom will be able to provide their institutional knowledge to David.<\/p>\n

“We’re a team,” she said.<\/p>\n

WATCH|\u00a0Tips from outgoing provincial privacy commissioner on how to protect your digital privacy:\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

Tips from outgoing provincial privacy commissioner on how to protect your digital privacy<\/p>\n

Saskatchewan’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Ron Kruzeniski is retiring after more than 10 years in that role. His office has published more than 1,230 reports in that time. He joined The Morning Edition to talk about how people can protect their digital privacy.<\/p>\n

David said her interest in cybersecurity\u00a0developed from a\u00a0case she helped prosecute in Toronto<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An organized gang was able to breach the security of the five main banks in Canada by joining their bank accounts with the accounts of elderly victims,\u00a0then wiping out the accounts.<\/p>\n

“This is a huge fraud,” David said. “We couldn’t ever really put a number on it, but it was in the millions.”<\/p>\n

David said it made her realize the vulnerability we all face in a digitally connected world.<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence a top concern<\/p>\n

In David’s\u00a0interview with CBC\u00a0and in her first annual report<\/a>, the new commissioner stressed her concern with the “rapidly developing consequences of technology in every area of our lives in this province.”<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence\u00a0and its unintended consequences<\/a>\u00a0are among her top concerns and David hopes she can educate the general public about the topic.<\/p>\n

“The traditional model of people saying to the government, ‘I want to know what you have on me,’ for sure that’s always going to be there. We always are going to deal with that,” she said.\u00a0“But as we go into these new eras of technology, this is something that everybody has to be concerned about and everybody has to understand.”<\/p>\n

While she is still settling into her role, David said she believes she has the ability to be an advocate and a defender of rights.<\/p>\n

One concern\u00a0is the\u00a0lack of power to give orders. The commissioner can provide recommendations after reviewing a government’s response to an information request, but can’t compel a government body to hand information\u00a0over.<\/p>\n

David said\u00a0that “in a perfect world,” her office would be equipped with that tool.<\/p>\n

“I also am a realist and I realize that we don’t have it today and so that’s the four corners within which we work,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saskatchewan’s new information and privacy commissioner says a life-long passion for serving as a check on government power…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-7900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}