Information & Ethics Committee on June 5th, 2008

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

The other point, which is very interesting to me is that I looked up who the witnesses were. A former member of my riding was a witness here. Bill Kempling was a member of the House of Commons and he was a witness at a committee. I've only been here a couple of years, but I have never experienced that. I think I'm going to have to check with Bill's wife to find out what he was here for.

From a practical point of view, one of my questions is we're talking about making the privacy impact assessments part of legislation. From your department's perspective, can you tell me whether you use PIAs, how they're used, what their functions are if they're used, or is that further up the ladder?

[Anne Rooke]

As I said earlier, we do PIAs. In the past year we've done two. We don't do a lot of them. Our programs are very well ingrained, and we don't collect a lot of new information, which is where you would look at doing the privacy—

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Privacy aspects.

What do you do with that information once you've done your PIA? Those two you did, what happened to them from a functional point of view?

[Anne Rooke]

They're submitted to OPC, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, for them to review. If they have comments, we will assess those comments and make changes, if appropriate. Treasury Board is also involved in seeing the PIAs.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

So the commissioner is recommending that this tool be legislated. Do you think that will make any difference to your organization and how they handle PIAs, whether it's legislated or not?

[Anne Rooke]

I really don't know how to respond to that until I see what the requirements would be. I can't imagine that it would have a serious impact on us.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

When you do PIAs, the way you phrase it, maybe in your department you have a significant amount of private information on these individuals who are your clients, or whatever you want to call them. Based on your experience, are they different in your organization from what they would be in other organizations, or are they virtually consistent across the board from every group? Did you see them in your previous job, Ms. Rooke?

[Anne Rooke]

No, I was not involved with the PIA.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

You were not involved with that. You only looked after investigations and complaints.

[Anne Rooke]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Mr. Wallace, your time is up.

We have Madame Lavallée, s'il vous plaît.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I apologize for being late. I was held up in the House on a metter that is important to all of us. As a matter of fact, I see that a few regular members of the committee are absent.

Mr. McCowan, you said that Ms. Rooke is the expert for balancing security concerns with the rights of inmates, did you not?

[Ian McCowan]

Yes, the bottom line is that in terms of the exemptions that are applied under the statutes, the vast majority of those exemptions, which involve some balancing of various interests, are done in Ms. Rooke's shop on the various requests.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

A few years ago, I received a visit from representatives of the Union of correctional officers. At the time, they probably went to see all the official critics for labour issues. Their complaints seemed valid to me. They were complaining that they had been assaulted by some inmates and that, during those assaults, there had been some exchanges of organic liquid. Later on, they had been unable to get information about the health status of their assailants because that was personal information that was exempted. There seemed to be a lack of balance between the rights of the inmates and the rights of the correctional officers, the rights of the inmates to protect their personal information versus the rights of the correctional officers to protect their health. That issue has not yet been resolved. Correctional officers are looking at all sorts of avenues to find a solution.

Could not a solution be to include an exemption in the Privacy Act relating to the medical file of an assailant, be it an inmate or someone else?

[Ian McCowan]

As you may be aware, the Correctional Service of Canada was recently the subject of an independent review, and there were 109 recommendations that were given to the government with respect to a huge variety of issues for CSC. A couple of the recommendations dealt with the issue of mandatory testing of inmates, which is related to the scenario you are describing. I'm not aware of the specifics of the privacy determination that you're discussing from a few years ago, but I can indicate that it was an issue that was raised in the report that was recently done on the Correctional Service of Canada, and I know it's being looked at.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Very good.

You used the words “as you know” but I did not know. I did not know that Corrections Canada had tabled a report. Is that what you said?

[Ian McCowan]

Yes. If it would be helpful, we could get you some copies. It was an independent review of corrections done about last year. It was chaired by Rob Sampson and it resulted in 109 recommendations to reform the Correctional Service of Canada in a variety of ways.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

As you said, one of those recommendations related to screening the inmates for diseases. Most of the time, inmates are aware of their health status. If they assault a correctional officer, they know that, in order to avoid any risk, that officer will have to be treated against AIDS or other infectious diseases, the nature of which I leave to your imagination. They also know that this will create anxiety and anguish for the officer himself and for his family. If they know that they have an infectious disease, their assault was aimed at harming the officer. The point is not to screen the inmates for diseases, because that information is probably already in their files. If an inmate has AIDS, I suppose that that information is already in the medical file. So, the solution recommended by correctional officers is that they have access to those medical files.

[Ian McCowan]

There are a number of different issues. It could be that the paper record that deals with whether or not an inmate has an infectious disease is somewhat dated. I think that's why when the panel looked at this issue they made some recommendations in terms of mandatory testing.

As I said, the government is looking at this issue. There was some support for this transformation agenda broadly in budget 2008. There has been no specific announcement on this point, but the government is looking at the range of recommendations in Mr. Sampson's report, and this is one of them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you kindly.

Mr. Hiebert, please.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, I didn't have my name on the list.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Madam Bennett.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to know a little more about the medical file piece in terms of the doctor-patient relationship. Unfortunately, in our country, the file still belongs to the doctor and not the patient, yet we know we've had terrible trouble with people having follow-up for serious conditions like HIV/AIDS as they come in and out of prison.

What do you do with the medical file? Does the inmate get a copy of their medical file when they leave prison? How do you handle this in terms of the medical record?

I guess my bottom-line question is why can't all these people see their files anyway? Why do we have to have ATIP?

[Ian McCowan]

I don't know the specific process for what happens with the doctor's file when an inmate leaves, but I can certainly undertake to find that out and provide the process to you, if that's helpful.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Once patients were able to look after their file, the doctors' charting changed a great deal in terms of smart aleck remarks and characterizing people in a different way from how they would if they knew that file was going to be viewed by the patient.

What is viewed to be the downside of letting every inmate see their own file?