Big data is here. Will Canada embrace or rebuff it?

In my weekly screed, this time for the Ottawa Citizen and other Postmedia papers, I think about some of the potential of Big Data to transform our economic and social lives and maybe even our health. But at the same time as we can see as through a glass darkly where big data may be leading us, Canada is sending signals that it may well not be welcome. This wouldn’t merely be an economic loss of sizeable proportions. It would deprive us of the benefits of the self-knowledge that big data makes possible.