No. My intervention will be quite short. I will develop only one point, concerning the situation in Quebec.
Thank you very much.
Another topic of importance, for the industry, relates to the provisions on individuals’ right to access information that concerns them. It is clear that they must have the right to access it, to determine the use being made of it and, if necessary, to correct any inaccurate information.
However, experience shows us more and more cases where access rights are used for purposes that the legislature could never have thought of when the Act was promulgated. Increasingly, companies are receiving detailed, identical access requests, most likely prepared by lawyers, that seem to be “fishing expeditions” to obtain information that would not otherwise be available except through the process of discovery, as it should be.
At present, Quebec’s An Act Respecting the Protection of Personal Information in the Private Sector includes a provision covering this type of situation. The second paragraph of section 39 of the Quebec act stipulates that:
39. A person carrying on an enterprise may refuse to communicate personal information to the person it concerns where disclosure of the information would be likely to: (2) affect judicial proceedings in which either person has an interest.
Under this provision, it must be clear that the legal proceeding would be instituted in light of the facts at issue. The industry recommends that the Quebec precedent be used to amend the Canadian act in a similar fashion.
Thank you.