Evidence of meeting #21 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
So if I were your employee and I sent in a request for any and all personal information held by the company, you could determine that was vexatious or frivolous, and my remedy would be to go to the Privacy Commissioner?
4:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communication (FETCO)
It has to be a two-way street here. If the employee has a legitimate interest—and he does in personal information, of course--he should provide the employer with some parameters to get the information. Otherwise, you're asking employers to go through literally millions of pieces of paper and records to find things, if it's a request like, “I need pension information or health information.”
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
But supposing I'm an employee of a company that's keeping extensive records on me, and it's just a bureaucracy to me, wouldn't it be in my interest to at least once a year ask the company to disclose to me, the employee, what information they have? I don't know if the information they have on me is good or not. Maybe I'm not being promoted the way I think I should be.
4:30 p.m.
Senior Legal Counsel, Privacy Coordinator, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
That's not frivolous or vexatious.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
Okay, but why wouldn't I, once a year, want to find out all the information a company has on me to see if there's anything that is unfounded or wrong?
4:30 p.m.
Senior Legal Counsel, Privacy Coordinator, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
That would not be frivolous or vexatious, I don't think. It's a judgment call. Of course, a person to whom a company said, “This is frivolous or vexatious because you've asked this information 50 times before in the last six months and we have no further information”, could go to the Privacy Commissioner. The Privacy Commissioner must investigate, has a legal obligation. But also there's a provision in paragraph 13(2)(d) that she doesn't have to prepare a report if she determines that it's frivolous and vexatious.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
Sure, which is fair.
On your recommendation 13, I can't understand that if I as an employee sued the company, the company couldn't use any information they have on hand in their defence without my consent. Why would they have to obtain my consent?
4:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communication (FETCO)
I will have to defer to my legal friends with respect to that issue.
4:35 p.m.
Director, Employee Relations, Canadian Pacific Railway Company, Federal Employers in Transportation and Communications
We've had situations where--I'm not talking necessarily about a particular type of lawsuit--an current employee files a human rights complaint, and we've had situations where certain internal departments that hold the information.... For example, the complaint is based on a failure to accommodate, or specifically regarding a medical condition, and the occupational health department will not release the information to the employer so the employer can defend himself, the employer being the industrial relations department, or whoever is in charge of defending the employer in that case; whereas the employee makes a request and rightfully has access to that information, and immediately hands it over to the union. In a grievance situation, the union will be armed with all this information and the company is barred from gaining it.
So there are cases where there are difficulties. The information can be obtained eventually, but there are cases where you get into these internal difficulties because of a lack of clarity in that regard.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
That seems a bit of a stretch, really. I can't see how it wouldn't be available in a defence of an action in some manner.
4:35 p.m.
Director, Employee Relations, Canadian Pacific Railway Company, Federal Employers in Transportation and Communications
It happens. It should be, I agree.
4:35 p.m.
Director, Employee Relations, Canadian Pacific Railway Company, Federal Employers in Transportation and Communications
Yes.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
Can you provide us with some specific concrete examples? I don't mean now, I mean in due course, so that we can take a good look at it so we can see how your proposal would work.
4:35 p.m.
Director, Employee Relations, Canadian Pacific Railway Company, Federal Employers in Transportation and Communications
Absolutely.
4:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communication (FETCO)
Mr. Chairman, I'd just like to add that at the request of Industry Canada, in the process of preparation for the review, they asked us for specific examples. If I recall, one of the examples attached to our brief as an appendix is that very specific case that Barbara made reference to.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
It's interesting that Industry Canada asked you to do certain things. When we asked them what they would like us to fix, they wouldn't give us an answer.
December 4th, 2006 / 4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Bruce Stanton Conservative Simcoe North, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for coming this afternoon.
Mr. Brazier, in your recommendations, specifically in recommendation 2, you talk about permitting employers to use, collect, and disclose personal employee information without consent in conducting a routine and reasonable business and managing the employment relationship. I certainly get the employment relationship aspect of it.
I wonder if, though, in conducting a routine and reasonable business, this isn't allowing a wide berth for businesses to decide...? And perhaps that begs another question. How would one define just what those parameters might be? For example, would that allow businesses to grant access to lists of employees for the purposes of related companies or third parties for marketing purposes? Could you maybe talk a little more about how one might approach that and still protect the information of employees of a company from going to a broader sphere?
4:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communication (FETCO)
Subject to Edith or Barbara correcting me, I think this is the approach in B.C. and Alberta, is it not?
4:35 p.m.
Director, Employee Relations, Canadian Pacific Railway Company, Federal Employers in Transportation and Communications
The intent here is the management of the employment relationship, the conducting of routine business with regard to employees, certainly not selling your employee's information out to where it shouldn't belong.
4:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communication (FETCO)
The examples I referred to a few minutes ago are all on employee relations. As I said at the beginning of my introductory comments, the only thing we're interested in is labour. All the examples relate to issues of employee relations and they all relate to the types of situations that have come up, the anecdotal material that's been referred to when you have a situation.
The formal dispute resolution process is an example where because of the nature of the process, because it's done for proper business purposes, and because it might even be done in accordance with the requirements of a statute, we believe collecting personal information or not disclosing it is legitimate under those circumstances.
No one here is suggesting this be used for other purposes. It's only for the purpose of managing the employee relationship. We're certainly not suggesting that we be allowed to use personal information from an employee and to then give it to a subsidiary for commercial purposes. It's strictly for labour.
The act itself is constructed in such a way that labour issues, the employee relations issues, are basically self-contained in a part, and we look at it that way.
Just about every statute I know of has “reasonable”, which refers to “vexatious” or “frivolous.” These terms are subject to debate, subject to discussion, and subject to disagreement. I would agree that once you have this kind of language, there's always a legitimate disagreement among people.
