Evidence of meeting #26 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 pipeda.
A recording is available from Parliament.
General Counsel and Government Relations Officer, Credit Union Central of British Columbia
Our submission does highlight those issues, because we did try to take into account the lessons learned in preparing the submission. I would simply add to the issues you've already noted.
The fraud prevention issue does continue to be one of the biggest concerns in the industry. If you were looking at the lessons learned, I would say the B.C. model of fraud prevention would be one we would commend you to examine.
Vice-President, Policy, Canadian Bankers Association
We would agree with that. I think that's a particularly important one from the provincial side. The B.C. model would be very good.
Senior Vice-President, Corporate Operations and General Counsel, Canadian Bankers Association
I think another constraint was mentioned earlier, but just to underscore it, the fact is that our investigative body cannot talk to their investigative body. That's silly because of the fact that the bad guys are attacking the banks, credit unions, and every other financial institution out there. Why in heaven's name we can't share information just makes no sense.
Conservative
Bruce Stanton Conservative Simcoe North, ON
Would it be fair to say that one of the objectives here would be to try to get some harmonization—
Conservative
Bruce Stanton Conservative Simcoe North, ON
—as a general intent or objective coming out of this process?
Senior Vice-President, Corporate Operations and General Counsel, Canadian Bankers Association
Yes, harmonization, while remembering that the system as it is now works very well, by and large.
Conservative
Bruce Stanton Conservative Simcoe North, ON
Finally, just as one more point, on the point that you raise with respect to the public interest exemption, could you give us just an anecdotal example of that again? I take the case. It's well put here. But just give us a common sense example of how that would play out in a banking situation.
Director, Consumer Affairs, Canadian Bankers Association
It could be a senior who walks into the bank and wants to withdraw $30,000. Clearly this is atypical of this person. There may be a caregiver with them. In many cases, the caregiver is influencing the person and is going to walk away with the $30,000.
Conservative
Bruce Stanton Conservative Simcoe North, ON
So it's a suspicious circumstance, and this would be the employee in the bank who would be alerted to that kind of thing.
Director, Consumer Affairs, Canadian Bankers Association
Sure. A senior comes into the branch. The employees often will know this senior. They know what is typical behaviour for them in terms of banking transactions. If it's unusual, they'd really like to be able to call up another member of the family and say, “Is it okay for your mom to be doing this?”
Conservative
Bruce Stanton Conservative Simcoe North, ON
That's the part I didn't get. What can be changed, then, to allow what you're looking for here, that being a means that currently PIPEDA blocks you from doing? Is that my understanding?
Director, Consumer Affairs, Canadian Bankers Association
That's correct. Some of the provincial legislation—I can't remember offhand whether it's Alberta's or B.C.'s—does allow for disclosure of interest information when the law allows. If we even had “the law allows” in our common law, our ability to disclose when in the public interest could kick in.
Conservative
Bruce Stanton Conservative Simcoe North, ON
You don't need to answer this right now, but perhaps for the purposes of our deliberations here in order to come at the question of how one would go about defining that circumstance—because obviously you would have to be able to put some scope on that—what would be the triggers to allow that public interest exemption to be executed?
Senior Vice-President, Corporate Operations and General Counsel, Canadian Bankers Association
I was thinking about that coming up. You should take comfort about the fact that in many statutes, this test is used. For example, securities commissions can get involved in a situation and make an order if it's in the public interest. It's not defined, but it hasn't caused them any problems. And there are a lot of statutes at the federal level as well that use the undefined public interest test very well.
Vice-President, Policy, Canadian Bankers Association
But we will take your advice. We'll follow up with the committee on that.
Conservative
Liberal
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
Yesterday in the House of Commons it was suggested that fees for ATMs should be abolished. Can I assume that the Credit Union Central and the CBA would support that provision?
Vice-President, Policy, Canadian Bankers Association
No.
There will be other venues to talk about that, but on that particular one, Canadians have access to their own money and their own.... If you have money in Scotiabank, you can use that Scotiabank machine without those extra charges.
We have a user pay system. It's transparent. If you want to use another bank, you have access to your money, but you are not the customer. That's not where your money is. You're provided with a choice. And I think the statistics show that most people are very savvy in how they go about business. You'll see the statistics rising where people say, “Well, I'm going to use my own machine because it just makes sense”. And that's the process.
We could go on at some length, Mr. Peterson, as you know. So there you go.
