Nearly every resident of the Northwest Territories had their sensitive information on a laptop that was stolen from a government employee, according to documents obtained by CBC News. About half of N.W.T. residents are now at risk of identity theft. Meanwhile, in December 2018, a man found hundreds of medical records in a N.W.T. dump site. (CBC)

Talking point: The loss of sensitive information has proved expensive for provincial bodies. In 2015, St. Johns’ Eastern Health—Newfoundland and Labrador’s largest health organization—spent $100,000 in labour searching for a lost USB drive containing information on 9,000 employees, including social insurance numbers. These instances weren’t targeted cyberattacks, but the lack of data security protocols they demonstrate could prove very expensive in a deliberate hack—breaches cost an an average of $6.03 million, according to IBM.