Evidence of meeting #4 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 complaints.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I had an outstanding question dealing with the report from last year.
Ms. Stoddart, do you remember talking to us about a triage factor analysis grid that you felt would re-engineer the process of addressing these complaints?
5:30 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, I do.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
You said that you were hoping to complete it by the end of the year. That was in 2008. Did you ever have a chance to complete that grid?
5:30 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, we've completed that, and it's been piloted, as I understand, starting maybe a week or two ago. It's on its pilot runs.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
Is this part of your plan to reduce the backlog in the next year?
5:30 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
This is part of our plan to maybe do a smarter handling of complaints, trying to give them the treatment they deserve in terms of their significance, their weight, of what they can add to our knowledge of privacy, trying to mediate complaints up front so that they don't go on and turn into a backlog, and do things, if we can, within 90 days.
We're doing some other things with the private sector. For example, if people have a complaint against a bank—and I'll use the bank because we all have several bank accounts and there are a lot of complaints against banks—we would ask if they have contacted the bank's chief privacy officer to see if they could settle this. Often the people have, so with the banks and other major respondents, like Air Canada and so on, we direct the people back to those organizations. That's now also increasing the rate of settlement.
Those are some examples of how we're putting this grid to work.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
In your presentation you talked about needing a complete overhaul of the Privacy Act. As you might know, for some time I've been one of the advocates for reviewing this legislation. We started on this last year and have made some progress.
When you talk about a complete overhaul, you're obviously talking about going beyond the ten fixes that you had proposed. What were you contemplating, beyond those ten fixes, when you were speaking about this?
5:30 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
The other fixes? I'll just try to find them for you, because we have quite a few other ones. I'll just go down it, because this is a distillation of what is in a long paper that we published in 2006, and it's also a distillation of what some of the many expert witnesses say to you.
It says to look at clarifying in the Privacy Act government obligations regarding outsourcing and public-private partnerships, the delivery of service and programs, something that the Privacy Act doesn't speak to, outsourcing generally. And look at security arrangements. The Privacy Act per se does not obligate departments and agencies to make appropriate security arrangements. We say this is part of confidentiality and privacy. In PIPEDA we do talk about specific security arrangements. That would be another thing.
There are the questions some of the honourable members have been raising about the national security oversight framework. So what is the transparency, the accountability oversight over some of the national security agencies—the RCMP, CSIS, CSE, and so on. These were some of the recommendations we made to the O'Connor inquiry about oversight in the use of personal information in the RCMP, which have not been taken up for the moment.
I'm just going down the list to give you a flavour.
We believe that there may be other agencies and government bodies that should be subject to the Privacy Act. I was very happy that the Federal Accountability Act covered more agencies, but we think that there may be a few more that we could find if their activities were reviewed.
Access to people's personal information has come up in our dealings with the European Union. Actually, you have to be a Canadian citizen or present in Canada to avail yourself of your rights under the Privacy Act. This is a bit embarrassing when we're dealing with transborder data flow, API/PNR, agreements with the European Union. Now, we have—and I have been consulted on this—agreed that if European people, for example, flying into Canada had a complaint about the use of their API/PNR, CBSA would investigate, and then I would treat it as a complaint, although strictly speaking it doesn't fall within the Privacy Act.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
All right. There's a lot there.
How urgent do you think it is that we address these? We have the option of looking at the ten fixes, over which there is some dispute in regard to which of those ten we could implement. For the benefit of the members who are new to this committee, can you give us a sense of to what degree this urgently needs to be dealt with?
5:35 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Mr. Chairman, I picked the ten quick fixes on the advice of my staff because I thought they were important but also fairly easy and less multilateral; there were fewer multilateral implications of addressing them.
I know that the amendments to the Privacy Act are a long and contentious road to set out on, so if I could refer you to those ten recommendations, I think they still stand. They would be a net improvement, but they would be easier to implement than some of these others. You can imagine it for extending access rights and so on.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I understood the meeting was to end at 5:30. I know I had this point of order at our last meeting, but I have arranged my schedule for other meetings on the understanding that this meeting ends at 5:30. Is it at your will that we continue meeting, or...?
I would like to move that we end this meeting.
5:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Okay. First of all, it's not a point of order, but the question is relevant so let me address it. Should there be a meeting of another committee, or even of this committee, a steering committee that was scheduled at a particular time right after our normally scheduled meeting, we would adjourn. However, meetings don't adjourn. We just have our time slot. We reserve this room as long as it's available. The meeting goes on. The members themselves decide that they want to go on. We still have Mr. Dreeshen, Mr. Poilievre, and Madame Freeman on the list who would like to speak with the Privacy Commissioner.
I think the answer to your question is that if it's getting repetitive, or if it's not relevant to the order of business before us, the chair also will shut down debate at that point. Having said that, I note that the committee is always the master of its own work. Should the majority of the committee wish to adjourn the meeting, then it would be up to a member to simply move that we adjourn. That would be the proper procedure. It's not debatable. We put a vote immediately and there we are.
5:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Okay. Before I consider that motion, I would like to thank the Privacy Commissioner and her colleagues.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I think it would be more appropriate to thank them after we're done. If the meeting does go on, then they will be here longer--
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
--and I think, of course, that to thank them now would be inappropriate. I would like them to be properly thanked.
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Let's have a record that we thank them and that there are some undertakings.
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
If you have any concerns about what those undertakings are, the clerk also has kept a record, and we would be happy to collaborate with you to make sure we get that. The information will be properly circulated to all honourable members.
I'd also like to indicate for all honourable members before you leave that the Privacy Commissioner has also brought copies of various reports, which are on the table off to the side corner. If you have the time, please take copies. There are the last two annual reports, I believe, as well as the Auditor General's report.
Thank you very much.
We have a motion to adjourn. It's not debatable and I'll put the question now.
