Alex Trebek may be one of the only Canadians on Jeopardy! next season. Producers from the show have barred Canadians from taking the most recent round of online tests, which recruit future contestants, because they are concerned about complying with Canada’s online privacy regulations. 
 
 Could Alex Trebek could be the only Canadian on Jeopardy!? ( AP ) 
 
 “As international laws governing how information is shared over the internet are ever-changing and complex, we are currently investigating how we can accept registrations from potential Canadian contestants,” spokesperson Alison Shapiro said in an email. “The Jeopardy! Adult, Teen, and College tests have already taken place this year, and we are making every effort to find a solution before the next round of testing is available.” It’s a blow for the legions of Canadian Jeopardy! fans who dream of asking Trebek the right question and winning fame and fortune. The show’s silver-tongued host even felt compelled to comment on the exclusion, telling the Ottawa Citizen that it was “an issue affecting my native country and the show I love.” 
 
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 “It is true that for the most recent Jeopardy! contestant tryouts, Canadians were precluded from taking the online test, since the show must now comply with new rules set down by the Canadian government,” he told the Citizen. Because people stay on the Jeopardy! contestant list for 18 months, there may be some Canadians from last year’s test that could still be eligible, Trebek said, adding that several Canadians have already appeared this season. “We have had many Canadians as contestants throughout the history of the show, and we hope that will continue, because Canadians make great game show contestants. We look forward to having more try out as soon as we are sure we can comply with all Canadian online privacy laws,” he said. Neither Trebek nor the producers were able to pinpoint what exactly the issue is with Canada’s privacy laws that prevent Canadians from completing the online tests. Requests made by the Toronto Star to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission and Industry Canada were similarly fruitless. 
 
 No government department could say what the problem might be with the online test, or which department questions about the test should be directed to. Ultimately, it shouldn’t be too hard to create an online test that is compliant with this country’s privacy laws, said Chad Finkelstein, a lawyer with Dale and Lessman LLP who has written about business compliance with privacy laws. 
 
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 “It seems to me that those hurdles are very easy to get around,” Finkelstein said. The biggest difference between here and the United States, Finkelstein said, is how we treat spam. In force since July 1 2014, Canada's anti-spam legislation forbids companies from emailing citizens without their express or implied permission. In the U.S., it’s enough to allow customers to opt-out. If a person signs up for a product or service in Canada, companies can only communicate with the person about that product or service. Ryan Black, lawyer at McMillan LLP, said the decision could have been triggered by a new feature on the website, or the producers could have just gotten nervous. The penalties for breaking anti-spam laws are steep, and can rack up fines up to $10 million. “It’s especially onerous,” said Black, who specializes in anti-spam legislation. It’s not the first time an international enterprise has gotten cold-feet about Canadian anti-spam laws, Black said. For about one day in 2014, Microsoft decided it couldn’t send out notices about security patches. “They very quickly realized, ‘yes we can, we just have to do it in a different way,’” Black said. ||||| Canadians Left With Questions After Being Barred From 'Jeopardy!' 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP 
 
 A decision to bar Canadian citizens from being future contestants on TV's Jeopardy quiz show is causing a range of reactions in Canada, particularly among those who note that show host Alex Trebek has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Canada. 
 
 Media outlets in Canada recently noted that their country is singled out in Jeopardy's eligibility guidelines: 
 
 "At this time we are precluded from accepting registration information from Canadian residents. We are currently evaluating this matter." 
 
 That led the Toronto Star to note, "Trebek may be one of the only Canadians on Jeopardy! next season." 
 
 The situation is being attributed to differences in online privacy laws – but some Canadians aren't buying it. Here are the two top-rated comments on the CBC's story about the ban today: 
 
 "We kept winning that's why! If you can't beat'em, ban'em" – ComplacentCanadian 
 
 "This is in keeping with the general 'dumbing down' of Jeopardy questions. The last college championships were laughable. You only require knowledge of TV shows, American Presidents, and the Bible." – Maggie M50 
 
 That CBC story, we'll note, was under the headline, "I'll take Bummer for $400: Canadians no longer allowed on Jeopardy." 
 
 An Ontario native, Trebek told the Ottawa Citizen last week that while Canadian contestants have been on the show in the past — and more are also competing in the current season — "for the most recent Jeopardy! contestant tryouts, Canadians were precluded from taking the online test, since the show must now comply with new rules set down by the Canadian government." 
 
 But Trebek also noted that once they're in the pool of contestants, people stay there for 18 months, meaning that Canadians who registered before the ban could still appear. He also said the show's producers hope to make sure it is in compliance with Canada's laws. 
 
 The precise snag that's keeping Canadians from signing up for future episodes of the show isn't being discussed in detail. Reports in Canadian media cite a statement from the producers of Jeopardy! in which they said, "As international laws governing how information is shared over the internet are ever-changing and complex, we are currently investigating how we can accept registrations from potential Canadian contestants." 
 
 Citing two legal experts, the Star says the law in question could be Canada's anti-spam legislation, which carries potential penalties of up to $10 million for abuse. The newspaper reports that the law, enacted in July of 2014, "forbids companies from emailing citizens without their express or implied permission. In the U.S., it's enough to allow customers to opt-out." 
 
 One other notable piece of online privacy legislation that recently took effect in Canada is the Digital Privacy Act. Enacted last summer, it sets rules for how personal information can be collected, used and disclosed. It also regulates how companies handle cybersecurity breaches and sets steep fines for companies that don't handle them properly. 
 
 When The National Post asked the office of Canada's Privacy Commissioner how many complaints Canadians had filed about Jeopardy! potentially violating their privacy, spokeswoman Tobi Cohen replied, "I can tell you that our office has not been engaged in this matter." ||||| A reader calls with disturbing news: Jeopardy! — the best game show ever — has barred Canadians from applying as contestants. 
 
 I’ll take Canadians Are Way Too Smart for $200, Alex. Could this rumour really be true? I didn’t believe it. 
 
 And yet there it is on the Jeopardy! website (yes, they exclaim the name!). Potential contestants are told to take an online test, which could lead to a live audition in an American city. To take the test, however, a person must register and provide a zip code which, of course, Canadians don’t have. 
 
 Dig a little deeper in the site and you come across a Q & A section. 
 
 Q: ARE CANADIANS ELIGIBLE TO TAKE THE TEST? 
 
 A: “At this time we are precluded from accepting registration information from Canadian residents. We are currently evaluating this matter.” 
 
 Wow. And we thought Donald Trump would build that wall, like, after the election. 
 
 Here’s the awkward part. The iconic host, the ever-gracious Alex Trebek, a household name in a household game, is not only Canadian-born but rather fond of Ottawa, arguably his second home north of the border. 
 
 Though originally from Sudbury, he spent several years here studying at the University of Ottawa, where he earned two degrees before graduating in 1962. He later worked in radio and television for the CBC. Local? As a student, he roomed in a house just a couple of streets over from me. So he’s something of an Ottawa homie. 
 
 A well-known philanthropist, Trebek returned to Ottawa in 2015 to inaugurate the Alex Trebek Alumni Hall on the campus of the university. It was no empty gesture. Trebek, now 75 and the host since 1984, has donated more than $2.25 million to his alma mater and a sign on Séraphin Marion Private bears his name. 
 
 David Barnabe, 43, a public servant in Ottawa, has long wanted to be a contestant on the show. His interest goes back to the 1980s when he travelled to Pittsburgh in an effort to make the teen Jeopardy! tournament. “I even met Alex Trebek down there.” 
 
 The show opens up its online test period usually once a year and, in 2016, it was in January. When Barnabe went to take the test again, he had to re-register, then stumbled on the zip code request. No go. On to Google, which had a discussion of the new barrier on Reddit, where users were floating various theories about the anti-Canuck rule. 
 
 He’s hoping the Canadian exclusion is a temporary thing. 
 
 A publicist for the show was unable to provide a detailed explanation as to what has changed with Canadian participation in Jeopardy!, but hinted the country’s new anti-spam legislation, in effect since mid-2014, might be a factor. 
 
 “As international laws governing how information is shared over the Internet are ever-changing and complex, we are currently investigating how we can accept registrations from potential Canadian contestants,” reads an email response from Alison Shapiro. 
 
 “The Jeopardy! Adult, Teen, and College tests have already taken place this year, and we are making every effort to find a solution before the next round of testing is available.” 
 
 The online test consists of 50 questions, with a time limit for each. Those who score best are placed in a pool to be invited to a live audition. Since 2006, more than a million people have tried the test. 
 
 “The online test has expanded JEOPARDY!’s contestant pool to include more women, minorities, and students,” the website crows. But not bloody foreigners, apparently. 
 
 Could it be we’re just too smart for Americans? 
 
 In April 2014, Ottawa public servant Frédérique Delaprée won about $22,000 after twice being Jeopardy! champion. In November 2010, two of three contestants on the same show were current or former Ottawa residents. So there. 
 
 Jeopardy! is one of the few game shows during which important things actually happen. In 2011, IBM’s super-smart computer, nicknamed Watson, made news around the world when it easily defeated two legendary (human) champions. 
 
 It was a frightening display of a machine’s ability to comprehend speech and syntax, not to mention having a lightning-quick way of retrieving tiny bits of information. Watson, by the way, was built with key components developed in an IBM lab in Ottawa. So there. 
 
 The daily double? Trebek’s had two heart attacks in the past 10 years. Pray this doesn’t give him another one. 
 
 To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com. 
 
 Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn 
 
 Here’s Alex Trebek’s response to the Citizen: 
 
 Kelly: 
 
 Thanks for today’s article which brings attention to an issue affecting my native country and the show I love. It is true that for the most recent Jeopardy! contestant tryouts, Canadians were precluded from taking the online test, since the show must now comply with new rules set down by the Canadian government. However, people are in our contestant pool for 18 months, and we have featured several Canadians as contestants on Jeopardy! this season (at least 7 at last count), including one who will appear this Monday, February 22, and two more who have already taped for appearances in March. We have had many Canadians as contestants throughout the history of the show, and we hope that will continue, because Canadians make great game show contestants. We look forward to having more try out as soon as we are sure we can comply with all Canadian online privacy laws. 
 
 Alex Trebek ||||| Kelly: 
 
 Thanks for today’s article which brings attention to an issue affecting my native country and the show I love. It is true that for the most recent Jeopardy! contestant tryouts, Canadians were precluded from taking the online test, since the show must now comply with new rules set down by the Canadian government. However, people are in our contestant pool for 18 months, and we have featured several Canadians as contestants on Jeopardy! this season (at least 7 at last count), including one who will appear this Monday, February 22, and two more who have already taped for appearances in March. We have had many Canadians as contestants throughout the history of the show, and we hope that will continue, because Canadians make great game show contestants. We look forward to having more try out as soon as we are sure we can comply with all Canadian online privacy laws. 
 
 Alex Trebek ||||| TORONTO/WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Canada’s main immigration website remained down on Wednesday and New Zealand reported increased traffic to its website for residency visas from U.S. nationals as Donald Trump surged to victory in the U.S. presidential election. 
 
 Supporters of Hillary Clinton react at her election night rally in Manhattan. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson 
 
 Americans have often vowed to leave the country if their chosen candidate doesn’t win the election, but this time around some are actually preparing to do so after Trump stunningly won the Nov. 8 election. 
 
 A spokeswoman for Canada’s immigration department said the website crashed “as a result of a significant increase in the volume of traffic” as election results rolled in Tuesday night. 
 
 Bonnie Quinn, a New Jersey insurance underwriter planning to move to Canada with her husband said she felt “just downright embarrassed” by the election results. 
 
 “I’m not sure in what order we should do things - find jobs first or move,” said Quinn, 35, whose Irish grandparents once immigrated to Canada. 
 
 In New Zealand, immigration officials said the New Zealand Now website, which deals with residency and student visas, had received 1,593 registrations from United States citizens since Nov. 1 – more than 50 percent of a typical month’s registrations in just seven days. 
 
 Rod Drury, the chief executive of NZ-based global accounting software firm Xero, said the statistics matched up with interest his company has been seeing from prospective U.S. national employees concerned about a Trump win. 
 
 Drury said what started as a joke was becoming a reality. 
 
 “I’ve got lots of messages coming through at the moment asking for a job in New Zealand, and we’re saying ‘Yes you can’,” Drury told Reuters by telephone on Wednesday. 
 
 In the hours after Trump’s victory, Americans were searching for jobs in Canada at 10 times the rate of previous nights, said Jed Kolko, chief economist for job website Indeed. 
 
 “It’s far too soon to guess how many of these searchers will make a move after the shock wears off. But the jump in searches shows how many Americans were surprised by Trump’s victory and are thinking about their options elsewhere,” Kolko said in an emailed statement. 
 
 In Atlanta, business coach Nancy Chorpenning, 62, said she and her husband are looking to move to Costa Rica sooner than their planned retirement because of the Trump victory. 
 
 “I am simply terrified the new administration and Congress may destroy the Social Security we count on when my husband retires,” said Chorpenning, who is traveling to Costa Rica next week to scout for condos. 
 
 After some Americans, often jokingly, said they would move to Canada if Trump was elected, the idea was taken up by some Canadian communities. 
 
 In February, the island of Cape Breton on Canada’s Atlantic coast marketed itself as a tranquil refuge for Americans seeking to escape should Trump capture the White House. 
 
 On Maple Match, a recently-launched dating website aimed to match Americans fleeing Trump with Canadians, users have more than doubled to about 14,000 overnight, according to chief executive Joe Goldman. 
 
 While the pledge to “move to Canada” has been made in elections past, it has rarely played out, although thousands of Americans who opposed the Vietnam War moved to Canada. 
 
 Migration data from after Republican George W. Bush’s 2000 election and 2004 re-election - other moments when liberal Americans pledged to move to Canada in protest - suggest few followed through on their promises. 
 
 While immigration to Canada increased during the years of Bush’s elections, the rise was not more than increases in other years, data from the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies show. ||||| Turns out Elections Canada needn’t have worried so much about the threat posed by twittering politics nerds to a 73-year-old ban on publishing early election results. 
 
 It was old-school mainstream media whose prematurely released reports were most publicized and visible Monday night, when Canada’s public broadcaster mistakenly went live with election results in time zones that were still voting. 
 
 More related to this story 
 
 
 
 
 
 Shortly after 9 p.m. ET, CBC News Network began broadcasting initial results from Atlantic Canada – a full half-hour before polls had closed in Quebec and Ontario. The coverage was pulled after about four minutes, replaced with a note apologizing for “technical difficulties.” 
 
 The mix-up was inadvertent, said CBC spokesman Jeff Keay, and due to a “switching error.” 
 
 “The error was resolved within several minutes and normally scheduled programming resumed,” he said. “As soon as we could get the error fixed, we fixed it.” 
 
 For those few minutes, however, the network appeared technically in violation of a section of the Elections Act prohibiting “premature transmission” of results to a province where voting is still ongoing. 
 
 The law sparked consternation among Canada’s plugged-in politics junkies, who argued it’s outdated in an age where millions of Canadians have grown accustomed to using Facebook and Twitter to broadcast their musings, meals and political idiosyncrasies to the world. 
 
 Vancouver-based social media consultants Alexandra Samuel and Darren Barefoot started a website aggregating tweets that published results early – but they pulled back at the last minute on Monday, fearing the publicity the site had garnered could land them in court. 
 
 “It was a really difficult decision … In a way, we were victims of our own success,” Ms. Samuel said at the time. “As the past week wore on and we got a lot of coverage, we just got more worried that there were enough people sniping about the site we thought, ‘What are the odds one person would file a complaint about us, specifically?’ ” 
 
 But that didn’t stop thousands of people from tweeting about it: The hashtag #tweettheresults was one of the top trending topics on Twitter worldwide, with users sharing spoilers both electoral and otherwise. 
 
 Elections Canada spokesman John Enright couldn’t say on Monday night whether there had been any complaints about breaches of the results blackout. But he emphasized the elections commissioner “is not monitoring the Internet” and will only investigate complaints he deems in the public interest. 
 
 Mark Freiman, the lawyer representing CBC and CTV in their Ontario Superior Court challenge of the election-results blackout, couldn’t comment on Monday’s broadcast but said in an interview Sunday it’s becoming increasingly complex and onerous for large media organizations to comply with the law, which dates to 1938. 
 
 Bernard Keane, a political correspondent for crikey.au in Canberra, Australia, is familiar with that kind of legislation: He compares Canada’s “premature transmissions” law to a rule prohibiting electronic media such as radio and TV broadcasters from publishing anything election-related in the final days before a vote. 
 
 “This was so ridiculous. And journalists resisted by reading out the newspapers on radio, which was sort of an automatic breach of the law,” he said. “It became so ridiculous, politicians eventually removed it.” 
 
 Mr. Keane saw echoes of that law in Canada’s Elections Act legislation. So he put out a call on Monday to tweet any results people e-mailed to him hoping to avoid the threat of prosecution. 
 
 “I’m of the view that people who are able to should stand up for free speech,” he said. “It’s obviously not much of an effort to tweet the results of an election if you can get your hands on them.” 
 
 More than a dozen people e-mailed him results, he said, and he posted them to his Twitter feed – noting that he wasn’t in a position to check their veracity. 
 
 It’s not clear whether violations of the results blackout – inadvertent or purposeful – will result in prosecutions; Mr. Enright noted that while there have been 600 complaints per election for the past two elections, there have been no charges under this section of the Elections Act. 
 
 But some of the law’s opponents hope publicity from this election will spark a legislative change – either to make all results public, to any time zone, or to keep ballot boxes closed until polling has ended in all provinces. 
 
 “What I was happiest about was the conversation that people had about the law itself,” Ms. Samuel said afterwards. “A lot of people continued to use the #tweettheresults hashtag to weigh on the limits that the Elections Act poses to people who want to talk about the election online. And the rate of tweets – enough to make #tweettheresults trend on Twitter worldwide – was a real indicator of the breadth of Canadians' impatience with the law as it now stands.” 
 
 Jay Rosen, a professor at New York University’s Arthur L Carter Journalism Institute, said he finds the law “absurd.” 
 
 “This is a case where technology has moved on and political institutions have to adjust ... it is kind of comical, in a way,” he said. In the U.S., he said, networks usually voluntarily hold off from calling an election until after the West Coast has voted, but they don’t wait for Hawaii and they start broadcasting East Coast results as soon as they’re available. 
 
 To outside observers, he said, Canada’s “premature transmission” rule seems an outdated anomaly in the 21st century. 
 
 “In many ways, the Canadian election system is better than the American system,” he said. “But this particular regulation just strikes me as a political institution that isn’t keeping up with the times.” ||||| Alex Trebek has hinted that he may be ready to step away from “Jeopardy!” the game show he’s hosted since 1984. He even went as far as to suggest potential replacements. 
 
 Speaking to Harvey Levin on the latest episode of “OBJECTified,” Trebek revealed there’s more than a 50/50 chance he’ll step away from his hosting duties in 2020, once his contract is up. 
 
 “Sure,” he responded, when asked if he can see life beyond “Jeopardy!” 
 
 Trebek, 78, even got candid about finding a potential replacement for him should the time come when someone else has to read the answers to some tough trivia questions. The star was ready with both a male and female suggestion when prompted by Levin for more information about his potential exit. 
 
 “I mentioned to our producer not so long ago that the fellow that does play-by-play for the Los Angeles Kings – they should consider him,” Trebek said referring to Alex Faust. 
 
 When asked if a woman could fill his shoes, Trebek wasted no time in making his selection. 
 
 “There is an attorney, Laura Coates,” he said. “She’s African-American and she appears some of the cable news shows from time to time.” 
 
 As Page Six notes, Coates was very excited about her name being in the mix for a chance to fill in for the iconic host. 
 
 “Incredibly honored & humbled @Jeopardy Alex Trebek 1) knows who I am 2) thinks I'd be a great host of my fave game show ever that I grew up watching w/ my family & still watch w/ my own kids (who saw him say this & now think I'm a genius) #Dying,” Coates wrote on Twitter. 
 
 Right now it has not been confirmed that Trebek plans to leave the show in 2020. However, based on his latest interview, it seems he’s giving serious thought to not renewing his contract. Earlier this year, production of the show was put on hiatus after the host revealed he underwent brain surgery. Fortunately, he was able to recover in a hurry and things went back on track.
– Residents of this North American country can no longer compete on Jeopardy! What is Canada? The TV game show's eligibility guidelines now single out Canadians, saying that "at this time we are precluded from accepting registration information from Canadian residents. We are currently evaluating this matter." The Ottawa Citizen reports potential candidates must take an online test during a once-annual test period, and 2016's test went live in January—with a required ZIP code field; Canadians don't have those. "Wow," the Citizen quips. "And we thought Donald Trump would build that wall, like, after the election." The Toronto Star weighs in, noting, "Alex Trebek may be one of the only Canadians on Jeopardy! next season." Indeed, Trebek hails from Sudbury, Ontario, and holds dual citizenship, NPR reports. In a response to the Citizen, Trebek says the Canadian exclusion is an "issue affecting my native country and the show I love," and he suggests "Canadian online privacy laws" are responsible for the ban. As far as which law, the Citizen speculates that anti-spam legislation in effect since mid-2014 may be to blame. (Companies must now get express permission to email Canadians, rather than just provide an opt-out.) The Star surveyed government departments to get to the bottom of it and came up empty-handed. A lawyer well-versed in privacy laws says, "These hurdles are very easy to get around" (after all, Microsoft was able to figure it out). Trebek mentions that people are in the contestant pool for 18 months, so there will be Canadians on the show this year. In fact, there will be one competing Monday night. (A Jeopardy! rarity happened in January.)