Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members.
I am pleased to be here today with my colleague Caroline Maynard, Information Commissioner of Canada, to discuss the main estimates for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada for the fiscal year 2023-24.
As Privacy Commissioner of Canada, I am responsible for protecting and promoting the privacy rights of Canadians in the public and private sectors. In my last annual report, tabled in Parliament in September 2022, I point out that this is a pivotal time for privacy in Canada, and I highlight the important work of my office in this regard.
My office investigates complaints and breaches that have meaningful impacts for Canadians and privacy in Canada. For example, earlier this year, we released the results of our investigation into Home Depot's sharing of personal information with Facebook when their customers opted for an electronic receipt at checkout.
We found this practice to be a breach of privacy law, in part because we concluded that it was unlikely that Home Depot customers would have expected that their personal information would be shared with a third party like Facebook simply because they opted for an email receipt instead of a printed one.
Since issuing our findings, my office has learned of several other retailers allegedly engaging in similar practices. We have reached out to those organizations and are in the process of confirming how they are complying with the expectations flowing from our investigation.
Looking ahead, my office recently announced investigations into TikTok that focus on its privacy practices as they relate to younger users, as well as the company behind the artificial intelligence-powered ChatGPT. Children are less able to understand and appreciate the long-term implications of consenting to their data collection and need even greater privacy safeguards. We can and must do more to protect their privacy. This will be one of my key priorities in the years ahead.
My office also needs to stay ahead of fast-moving technological advances. We need to monitor and research technology so that we can anticipate how it may impact privacy and so that we can promote the technologies that most enhance privacy. This is another of my key focus areas.
My office provides advice to government departments and private sector organizations, publishes reports on compliance with privacy laws, and raises public awareness about privacy issues. In this digital age, the world is at our fingertips, and the price of that convenience is often the disclosure of personal information. That is why it is so important for Canadians to be aware of their right to privacy, to be able to control when and how their personal information is collected, used and disclosed, and to know where to turn for help when they need it.
We also provide advice and recommendations to Parliament on legislative reform and on privacy issues of considerable interest and importance to the public. On that note, I would like to thank the committee for the reports it published following studies on the device investigation tools used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and on the use of facial recognition technology.
As I noted in my statements following the release of those reports last year, I welcome the committee's recommendations to improve privacy protections, to ensure that the law recognizes privacy rights as a fundamental right and requires federal institutions to consider and address the impact on privacy from the outset when designing and using new technologies, and to adequately regulate technologies that have an impact on privacy.
My office has an initial operating budget of $29.5 million for 2023-24. We manage these resources optimally to protect and promote the privacy rights of Canadians as effectively as possible.
We are also looking ahead and preparing for law reform. The government took an important step toward modernizing the private sector privacy law with the tabling of Bill C-27, which has been referred to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology for further study. My written submissions and recommendations to the INDU committee were made public by the committee earlier this week. I'm looking forward to appearing before the committee to discuss this important bill.
I was pleased to learn that in the recent budget, the government proposed temporary funding of $6 million over two years for my office to undertake more in-depth investigations of privacy breaches and to improve response rates to privacy complaints, as well as $15 million over five years to operationalize new processes required to implement the proposed consumer privacy protection act. Should Parliament adopt Bill C-27, it will be essential that my office be properly resourced to fully and effectively take on important new responsibilities, especially those focusing on prevention.
Canadians are more concerned than ever about protecting their privacy. That is why the work of my office is so important.
I look forward to your questions.