There are about 32 million people in Canada, which means there are 32 million Social Insurance Numbers, 32 million medical and dental files, and so forth. In other words it’s a lot of data, but nothing too taxing for even a moderately sophisticated computer network to track.
But instead of putting all of our information on one set of servers, making it universally accessible, our concerns over privacy mean that there’s one computer system for drivers licenses, another for police records, another for tax information. Medical files, dental files, education files and so on are not tracked nationally at all, and the health care centre has different records than your family doctor.
Putting all of our personal information together in one digital file that can be accessed a number of different ways may seem a little sinister, like something Big Brother might dream up to track and number its citizens. After all, living in a free society means that we have the right to keep our personal information private, away from the interference of the state and insulated from the abuses of people in power – unless of course we do something to relinquish that right to privacy, like commit a crime.
In fact, privacy is so valued in North America that lawyers and doctors can lose their licenses to practice if they reveal certain kinds of personal information, even if they did it for the public good.
But while privacy is worth protecting, the Dutch don’t seem to share our paranoia over pooling personal information onto digital files. Last week the Dutch government announced plans to begin tracking every citizen from cradle to grave through a unified national database, essentially creating an online record for every person born in the Netherlands after Dec. 31, 2006.
The record will include health and family data, and will eventually include all school and police records. That information will be available to health care workers and hospitals, educational institutions and the police using a formal application system that guarantees privacy.
While I recognize the potential for abuse, I personally believe that a national citizens database is a great idea and long overdue. The proven positives definitely outweigh the potential negatives.
I’ve now lived in four provinces, and have probably seen about 30 different doctors over the past 15 years. None of those doctors has had quick access to the records from any other doctors, which means I have to explain my entire medical history to every new physician I see – what problems I’ve had, how they were treated, the drugs I’ve been prescribed, the fact I had an allergic reaction once to penicillin, etc.
A doctor should be able to access a database using my Social Insurance Number or other information that will immediately tell him my blood type, my allergies, and every injury medical condition I’ve had since I was born and the status of any ongoing treatment. There should be a way to link to my parents’ files so they can also look for any genetic clues to any illness, injury or condition I might have.
A friend of mine is applying to nursing school this year. He has completed university courses at King’s College, Dalhousie University, Royal Military College and Queens University, and any time he applies somewhere he has to get transcriptions from all of those schools. Wouldn’t it be easier if he was able to give the registrar his personal number so they can quickly and easily access that information?
Certain jobs require criminal record and background checks. Certain financial applications require thorough credit checks going back decades. So why not put all that data together in one place to make it easier to access?
Police could use this information to track down criminals, the government could use it to improve delivery of services while tracking down tax dodgers and illegal aliens. It could back up personal records like passports, birth certificates, drivers’ licenses, and data from Canada Pension, Revenue Canada, Employee Insurance, social assistance, Medicare, Pharmacare, and more. If a woman was married and decided to change her name, she could update all of her personal identification with a single application.
Admittedly, with all the security breaches you read about I wouldn’t blame people for being worried that their personal information could be stolen, tampered with, or sold for marketing purposes. But all of those concerns could be easily addressed using next generation security protocols to ensure that only certified users would have access to those records. You could even use biometric security devices like retina scanners to make sure that the person accessing the database is pre-cleared, or make users go through a trained government operator if necessary before information is sent.
It goes without saying that our records would be partitioned in such a way that doctors would be limited to accessing medical information, schools to education information, and so on.
If you’re still concerned, the database could also be permission-based – if you don’t want government to amalgamate your data into one record, you could opt out of the program and continue to do everything the old way. Meanwhile, like the Netherlands, we could apply equally among the next generation of Canadians, who may grow up a little less paranoid.
The Europeans are a lot more modern and progressive in many ways when it comes to government and democracy, and the Dutch decision to create a national database is just one more example of the ways we’re falling behind. Let’s take the lead for a change.
