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In an effort to identify potential deportees, the federal government quietly tested facial recognition technology on millions of unsuspecting travellers at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport in 2016.
The six-month initiative, meant to pick out people the Canada Border Services Agency suspected might try to enter the country using fake identification, is detailed in a document obtained by The Globe and Mail through a freedom of information request. The project is the largest known government deployment of the technology in Canada.
As travellers walked through the international arrivals border-control area at Pearson’s Terminal 3, 31 cameras captured images of their faces. Whenever the system returned a match against a 5,000-person list of previously deported people, a border officer would review the data and pass the traveller’s information along to an officer on the terminal floor, who would track the traveller down and pull them into a “secondary inspection.”
Facial recognition has come under intense scrutiny in recent years. Experts have warned facial data, once collected, could lead to the permanent loss of a person’s anonymity in public. Much like a fingerprint, a face is highly identifiable and can’t easily be changed.
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Passengers flying out of Terminal 3 at Toronto Pearson International Airport, are photographed on Oct 27 2019.
Fred Lum/the Globe and Mail
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Increase in eating disorder cases among teens overwhelms Ontario’s pediatric hospitals
A sharp increase in eating disorder cases is overwhelming Ontario’s pediatric hospitals, necessitating changes to treatment and higher admission standards that doctors fear are leading to poorer outcomes for patients.
Admissions for eating disorders at the province’s five pediatric hospitals have jumped as much as 223 per cent as teens have struggled with isolation, a lack of routine, and the loss of extracurricular activities.
“There is no question, this is the worst it has ever been in my experience,” said Debra Katzman, a senior associate scientist and co-founder of the eating disorders program at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. She has specialized in eating disorders for more than 30 years.
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Canada needs to get better at pandemic prep, says security expert
If Canada doesn’t adopt a new approach to the way it determines the risks posed by major outbreaks, the country could be blindsided again by a future crisis, said a former security adviser to the Prime Minister.
Margaret Bloodworth, who led an independent federal review into problems with Canada’s pandemic early warning system prior to COVID-19, said the government must get better at preparing for novel outbreaks, including developing better risk assessments for the emergence of a previously unknown virus.
Speaking publicly for the first time since the review panel released its findings last week, Ms. Bloodworth said Ottawa’s methods for assessing risk on outbreaks – which help determine what kind of response is needed – have typically been geared toward known health threats. But the system is less effective at confronting new diseases, such as a novel coronavirus, where information can emerge rapidly and change often.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR No relief in sight for Canada’s wildfire season: With more than 150 new fires igniting in Canada over the weekend, it seems there’s no end in sight for wildfire season. More than 270,000 burning hectares in British Columbia have pumped thick smoke into the air across Alberta, obscuring the Edmonton and Calgary skylines. Kim Connors, the executive director of the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, told The Globe and Mail that this is the most active fire season the agency has seen in years.
Non-confidence vote against Annamie Paul cancelled, sources say: According to two sources, Green party executives have called off a non-confidence vote that was slated for Tuesday which could have led to Annamie Paul’s removal as party leader. A party membership review, which could suspend Paul’s membership to the party entirely, has also been halted.
Death toll of German floods expected to rise: German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the flooding that has devastated parts of Europe as “terrifying” on Sunday after the death toll across the region rose to at least 188 and a district of Bavaria was battered by the extreme weather. Merkel promised swift financial aid after visiting one of the areas worst affected by the record rainfall and floods – the country’s worst natural disaster in almost six decades. The death toll is expected to rise.
NDP pledges permanent rent control, paid sick days as Nova Scotia election begins: Nova Scotia NDP Leader Gary Burrill launched the party’s 10-year plan for the province that would include permanent rent control and paid sick days, as the Nova Scotia entered the second day of the election campaign. A traditional platform will be released in the coming days, he said. Nova Scotians go the polls Aug. 17.
Latest from The Decibel – Who Canada left behind in Afghanistan: As the United States continues to pull its troops out of Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of fighting, the Taliban is taking back more and more territory. A lot of countries have specific programs for current and former employees who want to relocate, but Canada hasn’t unveiled the details of a special program yet. Parliamentary reporter Janice Dickson has been speaking to drivers, senior officers and others who worked for the Canadian government in Kabul about the severity of their situations and what help they need.
MORNING MARKETS COVID-19 fears hit stocks: Risk-aversion ruled on Monday as a surge in worldwide coronavirus cases pushed down bond yields and left stocks facing their longest losing streak since the pandemic first hit global markets 18 months ago. Just before 6 a.m., Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 1.88 per cent. Germany’s DAX and Frances’ CAC 40 were off 1.91 per cent and 1.97 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed down 1.25 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1.84 per cent. New York futures were lower. The Canadian dollar was trading at 78.43 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT Healthy skepticism doesn’t necessarily mean rejecting mainstream medicine
“I worry that many of my fellow yogis and health-food-store shoppers might be clinging to and misappropriating the holistic idea of ‘body sovereignty’ as a way to legitimize their apprehension and mistrust of the COVID-19 vaccine.” – Gillian Deacon
Taxing today’s religious institutions because of residential-school horrors would be missing the point
“Cardus has published research on this halo effect. For every dollar in a religious congregation’s budget, the wider community receives a benefit worth an estimated $4.77. That benefit comes in many forms, including soup kitchens, housing programs, substance abuse counselling and refugee resettlement. Add in economic spinoffs, and all that activity is worth an estimated $35-billion per year to Canada.” – Brian Dijkema
Thirty years after Gwen Jacob’s arrest for going topless, little has changed
“More than ever, our bodies are being objectified, commodified and hypersexualized, and social media has strengthened the pressure to achieve an impossible ideal. Instead of celebrating diversity, we now have digital filters that attempt to make us all look the same. The effect of this airbrushed ideal is that men are now perceptibly suffering from body shame too, as evidenced by the relative rarity of shirtless men in public nowadays.” – Stéphane Deschênes
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON Open this photo in gallery
David Parkins
David Parkins/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER Is barbecued meat safe to eat?
Sizzling burgers, grill-marked juicy steaks and barbecued spareribs are summertime favourites for many people. However, studies linking barbecued meat to cancer might have you wondering if eating grilled meat is harmful. And if so, how much is too much. Here’s what the science says about the grilled meat-cancer connection, plus tips to make it safer.
MOMENT IN TIME: Summer 2011 A taste of summer
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Neighbourhood kids run a lemonade stand on the front street of their Calgary neighbourhood of Garrison woods in the SW on Sunday, June 26, 2011.
Chris Bolin/The Globe and Mail
For more than 100 years, photographers and photo librarians have preserved an extraordinary collection of 20th-century news photography for The Globe and Mail. Every Monday, The Globe features one of these images. This month, we’re looking at outdoor eating and drinking.
Take lemons, sugar and water, add an adorable child with a makeshift stand at the end of a driveway, and you have the formula for one of summer’s most beloved traditions: the lemonade stand. The beverage’s origins can be traced back to around 1100 AD, when Jewish traders in Cairo sweetened lemon juice to make a concoction called qatarmizat. By the mid-17th-century, limonadiers in Paris and Rome sold the drink from packs on their backs. The lemonade stand, as we now know it, became a permanent fixture in North America after magazine editor Edward Bok of Ladies’ Home Journal wrote a charming story about how he made his first earnings selling lemonade as a boy in Brooklyn. His tale of wholesome free enterprise launched an industry run by pint-sized entrepreneurs. A century later, the lemonade stand endures as a symbol of youthful ingenuity and spunk. – Gayle MacDonald
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