Good morning, everyone. As Mr. Masnyk mentioned, my name is Bob Kimball and I'm the volunteer chair for the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada.
I come from a small town of about 4,500 people, Sussex, New Brunswick. I just want to give you a little perspective on where I come from. I have six employees in my office. That includes me and my wife. My father is an insurance broker. My three brothers are insurance brokers. I mentioned my wife is an insurance broker. Even my son is working in insurance, so it's a family business...small community. Insurance gets in your blood.
My goal this morning is to provide you with an industry perspective as well as a working perspective on these issues that you're challenged to look into.
First, I'd like to commend your dedication in serving the public on an important issue that affects Canadians.
Privacy is one of the cornerstones of our society and something that should never wilfully be compromised. We live in a world that is being transformed by the greatest evolution in technology in our history, and safeguards need to be in place to protect Canadians from any abuses of their privacy.
I'm here as an insurance broker, so I'll speak on how some of the issues before you affect our profession and our consumers of insurance.
I'd like to begin this morning with a comment on the general effectiveness of PIPEDA. Through our experience, I would suggest to the committee that PIPEDA works, and it works well. I can tell you that we've checked with our office, the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada, and we have not received a single complaint regarding privacy since PIPEDA came into effect. In addition, we have confirmed with the general insurance ombudsman that his office has not received a single complaint regarding breaches of privacy when it comes to brokerages. It's based on this that I'm of the opinion that the approach taken in the spirit and the intention of PIPEDA has been a correct one.
After the privacy legislation was passed in 2001, our association prepared and distributed a guide to all of our brokers dealing with the implementation of these provisions, and you all have a copy of it in the binder.
In addition, we had seminars and road shows that were offered to all of our brokerages across the country to help them implement the new requirements. Brokers have embraced the guidelines as a regular part of day-to-day business. As brokers, we strive to cover and protect our clients. This is what we do every day. We provide clients with peace of mind. We would not be in business if we did not do this well.
Under this protective coverage also comes our clients' personal information. I'd like to share with you what that means in an insurance broker's office. In my own office, as well as having all of the physical things looked after--bars on windows, alarm systems, metal filing cabinets, those types of things--we have long-term employees. My shortest-term employee has been with me for 10 years. I have one lady who's been with us for 43 years. So we have long-term employees. We're in a small town, so obviously we have to keep people's privacy utmost in our mind.
Our computer system, which has the information in it, is a proprietary system. It doesn't work on a Windows base. It's very different. There are about six or seven different insurance systems out there, and you have to know entirely how the system works in order to get any information out of it. There are multiple passwords. We have passwords to sign our computers on, to get into our insurance system, to access information. So we take privacy very much to heart.
I'd like to ask Mr. Fredericks to address some of the issues that are raised in your consultation, if I could, at this time.