Evidence of meeting #3 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was work.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Acting General Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, in fact the winners are announced on our website. And it's not a YouTube video contest; it's a video contest in itself. It was targeted at high schools. High school students produced and made their own, which will appear on our website.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Okay, and I presume the winners for the time being have to be kept private.
February 11th, 2009 / 5:05 p.m.
Acting General Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I think they are actually on our website--with their consent.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Oh good, with their consent. I just wanted to make sure.
Acting General Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
We looked after that.
Conservative
Acting General Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I don't have the numbers, although I can give that to you. It wasn't as many as we'd hoped for, but there were quite a few.
Conservative
Acting General Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
That I also don't have the number for, but I can get it to you if you're interested.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Yes, if you wouldn't mind.
How do you ascertain whether you're getting value for money and promoting awareness? The reason I ask is that I find the term “promoting awareness” always finds its way into the mission statement of every organization. It's the most often used and the least possibly calculated objective of any organization. So how do you do it?
Acting General Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
That's an excellent point, and I'm glad you raised it.
I mentioned our ombudsman role earlier, and we take the view that the best way to get compliance with the legislation is through people knowing about it, agreeing with it, and conducting themselves in accordance with it. To that end, we say that it's the responsibility not only of organizations but also of individuals to act responsibly with how they handle their personal information and give it out. They should be aware of their rights and be aware of the implications when they give out information.
So promoting awareness is part of what we do for individuals and also organizations, and we can measure it directly through things like the complaints we receive. If there's a given area, for example, where there are a lot of complaints, then we'll target that area, perhaps, for raising awareness about people's rights and obligations. A good example is giving out driver's licences to retailers. More and more retailers are looking for your driver's licence as a way of preventing fraud, they say. We ask retailers to do that only when there's a demonstrable case of fraud or if they need it for a valid business purpose. We also ask consumers to check why the driver's licence is wanted and what will be done with it. Is it for target marketing? What are the implications of this?
We also measure it through surveys. We can tell from our surveys that the level of awareness of Canadians, and also concern about certain issues, changes over time and often it's in direct result to some outreach that we've done.
So we do try to measure its worth, but it's a big part of what we do as an ombudsman.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
How many privacy complaints do you get a year--not against you, not against your organization, but against...?
Acting General Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I mentioned earlier the total of, at the moment, 75 per month, divided between the two acts. If you multiply that by 12, that sort of gives you our total. I would need a calculator here.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Is there a way that you can establish a ratio to find out what it costs to process the average complaint?
Acting General Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes. We do look at that from a salary figure. It's difficult to separate out all of the institutional costs, but we do have an average cost.
Tom.
Director General and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Services Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I don't have the figure here, but to answer your question, we could do it.
Acting General Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
One of the things we're trying to do with this new process--reducing the amount of paper, reducing the treatment of files--is what you've seen hospitals do and what the courts have done when they've had a backlog, and that is not treat all the complaints the same way. You do a real triage so that you can group them. If you've already issued a finding on a given question, you may be able to deal with it summarily. If it's more complex, it goes into a different stream. You really try to give the complaints the treatment they deserve in terms of importance and national scope.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Now, your principal recourse, as I understand it, if you find a complaint to be valid and you find the group or individual against whom the complaint was lodged intransigent in addressing it, is to take it to Federal Court. Is that right?
Acting General Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, that's right.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
How many times have you taken such a matter to court in the last year?
Acting General Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
In the last year, we initiated court applications in about a dozen, but many of those settled before an actual hearing.
I should say that it's primarily under the private sector legislation that there's a much broader capacity to go to court, which doesn't exist under the public sector legislation. So we have six or seven active cases at the moment.
Conservative
