“Your papers, please.” A traveler may hear this as he moves about in a police state. Papers are dutifully produced, approved and, hopefully, the traveler moves on.

In my mind, those words produce a black and white photo from the 1940s, but tracking of citizens still happens today. Do you remember during the COVID crisis when our government restricted our movement by requiring a medical certificate confirming that you had been vaccinated?

During COVID, we also discovered that our phones were being tracked by the government to see if we were abiding by lockdowns.

When Canadians came out en masse to support the Truckers Convoy, the government found and froze people’s bank accounts very quickly. According to the RCMP, the list of names provided to the banks were found by police investigations, license plates, etc. Does that bother you that the police are able to look at your license plate and find their way to your bank account? Do you think that they were starting from scratch, or did they have that information readily available?

Maybe you’re a long gun owner who was shocked to learn that the RCMP had kept information from the Long Gun Registry even after Parliament ordered it destroyed.

And, of course, we know that finding us is pretty easy in this digital world, because Tim Hortons was able to track the location of their customers . . . home, work, vacations, etc., for more than a year.

“Your papers, please,” may become even more routine as we move further ahead in this digital era.

Starting this month, June 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) has teamed up with the European Union (EU) to create a Global Digital Health Certification Network. They’ve said that medical travel papers ’will help facilitate global mobility and protect citizens across the world from on-going and future health threats, including pandemics.’ It’s described as a ‘digital health tool.’ Is this like George Orwell, in the book 1984, calling ‘mass surveillance’ ‘bulk collection’ of citizen’s private information? I admit that a ‘digital health tool’ sounds so much more pleasant than ‘culling of our citizens’ private information.’

Thankfully, this is currently an agreement between the EU and WHO but our Prime Minister has declared his approval of globalization when he called Canada “the first post national state.” I wonder if negotiations are already underway to peddle Canadian’s health information to the WHO.

I wonder who will be able to see that information. Oh, I know. We’ve been assured that WHO, “will not have access to any underlying personal data, which would continue to be the exclusive domain of governments.” But we know how that goes.

Because, the RCMP, of course, promptly followed Parliament’s orders to destroy information contained in the Long Gun Registry. And the government wouldn’t cull information about citizens such as tracking them during COVID.

And those are just Canadian democratic concerns. What about the concerns regarding some of the world’s least acceptable political philosophies? The current leader of the WHO is from Ethiopia, which is a Marxist-Leninist One-Party country. If Canada went the route of the European Union and worked in tandem with the World Health Organization, do you trust your personal information to them?

Governments have a history of abusing power, Ethiopia is no exception and ours is no exception. The less government knows about each citizen, the stronger the democracy will be and the freer the citizens.

For us to wait until an announcement, such as was given by the WHO on June 5^th, is just too late.

We must ensure that negotiations such as these are not undertaken by our government. According to the WHO statement, “The WHO and the European Commission will work together to encourage maximum global uptake and participation.” We don’t want to be part of the “global uptake and participation.”

CHP policy is that all persons have the right to complete control of their own digital information. They own it! When they no longer engage the service of their internet service provider (ISP), all digital information must be returned free of charge to the owner . . . including all back-up information.

Canadians have a right to their privacy. Neither governments nor any other organizations can be allowed to bypass our ownership of who we are. And certainly, an international organization must not be privy to our personal and private health information. In Canada, we must not hear those ominous words, “Your papers, please.”

Join CHP Canada and promote policies that protect you!