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Alberta announced it's proceeding with its ill-conceived plan to place health data citizenship markers on driver's licenses. I warned them months ago, citing 7 problems with their scheme. Here's a summary. 🧵 thetyee.ca/Analysis/202...

1️⃣ Elections: If this is really about voter fraud, will a licence with a citizenship marker become the only ID at the polls? Other IDs exist, and licences take a decade to turn over. You still couldn’t reliably tell citizens from non-citizens until ~2036.

3️⃣ Privacy: Bundling citizenship and possibly health numbers onto the most-used ID means more sensitive data on a card that police, bars, employers, landlords and others routinely scan. Alberta hasn’t shown privacy impact work or clear limits on who can keep that info.

4️⃣ Jurisdiction & rights: Citizenship data is federal. Experts doubt Alberta can reuse it this way. And citizenship isn’t protected in the Alberta Human Rights Act, opening the door for landlords or employers to screen out non-citizens unless new protections are added.

5️⃣ Equity: The plan could worsen barriers for Indigenous people, unhoused folks, refugees, stateless people, seniors and anyone with messy paperwork. This calls for explicit exemptions/accommodations and binding rules against using the marker as a gatekeeping tool.