The right of caregivers to access health information of relatives with mental illness

This article reviews the legal, ethical and practical challenges of complying with the Ontario Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) within the context of a Canadian mental health system that is overburdened and under resourced. The advent of deinstitutionalization has placed significantly increased responsibilities on the families of mentally ill individuals. While research evidences that involving family members in the care of their mentally ill relatives improves treatment outcomes, mental health practitioners constantly face the challenge of engaging family caregivers while also complying with privacy laws. The authors propose an Ontario Caregiver Recognition Act (OCRA) to formally recognize family caregivers as informal health information custodians based on the practice of other jurisdictions which incorporate the rights of family members actively engaged in providing care to their mentally ill relatives.     

An empirical analysis of viewer demand for U.S. programming and the effect of Canadian broadcasting regulations

Using viewer share and rating points for the Toronto/Hamilton television market, we estimate the demand for U.S. programs retransmitted in Canada and test several hypotheses on the effect of domestic content regulation, program type, simulcasting regulations, network affiliation, and other broadcasting variables on audience size. These estimates have general implications for the current trade debate over the cultural industries. More specifically, our results provide support for some U.S. rights holders arguing for greater compensation for the retransmission of programs in Canada, and they raise questions about the publicly stated rationale of domestic content quotas generating net social benefits. These results can generalize to the many European Union and English-speaking countries using similar domestic content quotas.