Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am Mark Yakabuski and I am Vice-President, Federal Affairs and Ontario, with the Insurance Bureau of Canada. I'm joined by Randy Bundus who is IBC's Vice-President, General Counsel and Secretary.
IBC is pleased to be here today to participate in your review of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act or PIPEDA. IBC is the national trade association representing the private general insurance companies that provide insurance for homes, cars and businesses.
IBC has been actively involved in the development of private sector privacy laws since the early 1990s. IBC and its members are strong supporters of PIPEDA and the general privacy laws in Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec.
This morning we would like to highlight three issues from our written submission to the committee.
We have three points. We know your time is valuable. The first issue is with respect to work product information. Now I know that you've already had representations on this issue before the committee. There are really two different components to our position with respect to work product information, which we believe can be dealt with by one unique recommendation.
PIPEDA sets out the rules regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of an individual's personal information, as you know, which is identified as identifiable information with respect to an individual. However, PIPEDA does not specifically address the matter of work product information currently, that is, information that is created by a company and its employees in the course of their business activities. This information is not personal information and therefore not regulated by PIPEDA. Yet it is important in our view that PIPEDA be amended to formally recognize work product information, and I'll tell you why.
In a competitive economy--and I know that Parliament wants a competitive economy--it is absolutely essential that companies have access to information about the products and services that they in turn buy from other businesses, so that they can use this information to innovate and improve the products and service they sell their customers.
Without access to work product information, innovation and competition will be stifled in the economy. For insurance companies, for example, we need access to work product information, generated by the many businesses from whom we buy products and services. For example, we need to be able to analyze the quality, the durability, and the effectiveness of the billions of dollars of car repairs that we pay for each year, so that we can improve the service that is offered to our customers. If PIPEDA is not amended to recognize work product information, we believe very strongly that Canadians will be the losers.
Now the second component of work product information can be illustrated by the information in an insurance claims file. A claims file contains both personal information--identifiable information about the claimant--and work product information about the handling of a claim. An individual absolutely ought to have a right to their personal information in the file, but that should not be the case for the work product information that is generated by the company itself. This work product information is created by the insurance company for the purpose of handling that claim and it is important that it be recognized that it is not personal information.
The issue of work product information is too important to be left to an interpretation of PIPEDA and must be addressed and defined in law, in our opinion. We recommend the approach that British Columbia has taken in its Personal Information Protection Act, in which work product information is defined and explicitly recognized as not being personal information.
Mr. Bundus will now speak about two other issues.