Evidence of meeting #16 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 chairman.
A recording is available from Parliament.
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Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
He acts in many of those, maybe not all of them.
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Conservative
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Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
It's by their knowledge and familiarity with legal privacy issues.
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Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I believe he's a sole practitioner.
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Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I wasn't going to ask a question, but then Mr. Peterson got my mind going. You suggested that we need to prompt the government to enact some legislation to solve some of these problems.
The first thing that came to my mind is how many of these complaints.... For instance, if somebody were involved in terrorist activities, do you have any safeguards, for somebody like that, to approach the RCMP and retain some of that information from them? What kinds of safeguards do we have in place for those sorts of things?
5:10 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Exemptions have always been in the Privacy Act for matters of national security. If the RCMP can't give out the information—let's say there's a person with some national security information on his or her file who requested it, and the RCMP gives it out partially but not completely, and then he or she complains to us—we have special investigators with a very high level of security clearance who can look at those files to determine whether or not the RCMP's stance is warranted and whether these are matters concerning national security.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
We see this sort of thing happening in different circumstances. Could you have somebody in the prison system maybe start to play around and bog down the government? Is that possible?
5:10 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
It's not only very possible, it's a reality. This comes back to my previous remarks. We would like, in the reform of the Privacy Act, to be given more discretion in handling complaints.
Worldwide, many of what are called data protection commissioners don't have to deal with every complaint. I think increasingly this is important, because the privacy issues that affect us all are general, they're systemic, they're increasingly now international because of the Internet. I don't think having to spend taxpayers' resources on every single privacy issue is a good way to spend our money.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
Finally--and I don't want to point any fingers--is there possibly someone in the media who...? I guess there's no limit. Somebody could access your commission over and over again. It runs contrary to basically what the act is there for. Are there people using millions of taxpayers' dollars on frivolous requests that they may deem as very worthwhile? Is that happening?
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Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Do you mean in privacy requests, or in access to information?
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Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
Does it happen that there might be, let's say, a reporter who just constantly bombarded you with requests and clogged up the system?
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Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
The standard for things being frivolous and vexatious in law is very high, so merely being bombarded is not a reason not to service the requests now.
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Conservative
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Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
You have some safeguards and you have some ideas for those other issues and those other areas of concern, such as the prison system that I mentioned or something like that.
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Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes. If there were a reform, I would think standards for use of discretion would be important, so that we don't get the system clogged by those who come back time and time again—on the same issue.
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Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
I have three brief questions.
Has the Auditor General had any concerns about your financial statements in any year that you're aware of?
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Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
No major concerns, no, but I think perhaps there have been some comments or suggestions. I'll ask the....
5:15 p.m.
Director General, Corporate Services and Comptroller, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
For the last three fiscal years the Auditor General has done an audit on the financial statements and has provided a clean opinion each of those three years.
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Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
Thank you.
When will your financial statements for 2005-06 be made public?
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Director General, Corporate Services and Comptroller, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I think they already are.
