Evidence of meeting #84 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was amendment.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
Are there specific statutory mechanisms that you know of that provide indemnity from damages, or is that subject to...?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
No, there's no scheme for damages in the Privacy Act.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
There's nothing. Okay, understood.
I want to talk a little about the court of appeal. The party who is involved in a request deems that they are protected from releasing information based on the statutory provisions, or journalistic integrity, or whatever, and they proceed to withhold information on that basis. There was a case where it had to be taken to court for an adjudication.
Would it be sensible to have or would you have any recommendations as to whether or not there could be an intermediary step? Court actions by anyone, even the Privacy Commissioner, are very complex and very expensive. It's not something that's afforded to a normal citizen very often. Is there some sort of in-between step that you might be able to recommend or suggest?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I recently looked at the evolution of privacy legislation around the world. I note that some of them introduce class action options. These are usually written in such a simple way that ordinary citizens can easily go to a court or one person can constitute a class on a certain topic.
In the one case where we were in court with CBC, to my recollection we did not take CBC to court. We made an order for the information under our law. We do that very rarely, because most organizations comply with us. They then went to Federal Court on judicial review—that is, questioning the legality, the appropriateness, of our decision.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
Could you see a value to having the greater enforcement power within the Privacy Commissioner's office for these types of decisions?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Absolutely.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
Would you be able to expand on that a little bit?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
This committee did go into this question in some depth years ago. We stand by all those recommendations.
I guess the issue is basically that privacy is not taken seriously enough, both in the private sector—I've spoken about this recently—and in the public sector unless there are clear rules and some kind of sanction or accountability.
We have had several cases that were quite sad, in fact, of people who suffered some kind of damage from the actions of a federal organization, either a government or another. In fact one person who went to court under the Privacy Act was told what we all suspected, that there were no damages. Even though this may have had, I believe, a huge consequence on this person's career, and what was done to him was wrong under the Privacy Act, there were no damages.
That's an example of where I think Canada should move forward and join most other countries that now realize these are sanctionable actions.
Liberal
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
Thank you.
Would you be able to elaborate on what specific role you might suggest your office might potentially be able to hold in terms of being a quasi-judicial body determining whether or not...notwithstanding the fact that you have established with us that there are no damages that would flow? In the actual determination of a failure, of a fault, you can write up a decision, but it's not actually enforceable in any specific means or mechanism. Is that correct?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
That's right, yes.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
Would you like to make to the committee a specific recommendation, or a general recommendation, as to how that might be dealt with?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Perhaps I could refer the committee to the previous work we've done on that question, and—
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
Forgive me, Ms. Stoddart, but I'm a guest to this committee. The other members would probably be more aware of that than I would be.
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes. Okay.
Well, I guess it's perhaps a challenge to resume that, but certainly for the Privacy Commissioner to be able to go to court and seek enforceable orders it would be, I think, a step forward.
I also think that the public, increasingly, can look after their own privacy matters by giving them a simplified access to Federal Court.
NDP
Conservative
John Carmichael Conservative Don Valley West, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for appearing today.
Commissioner, I think I've had most of my questions answered through earlier testimony and some of your presentation today, but I'd like to just clarify something. The private member's bill, Bill C-461, does not really distinguish between general information that the CBC possesses and information that the CBC possesses that would reveal the identity of confidential journalistic sources.
I wonder if you could go a little deeper and give us your view on that situation specifically.
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Honourable member, I'd like to be able to give you more information, but as I say, I'm a specialist on neither CBC and journalistic sources, nor access to information.
I really don't have anything that I could helpfully add.
Conservative
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Well, no, but we don't deal with a lot of these issues. They are usually referred to the access to information—
Conservative
John Carmichael Conservative Don Valley West, ON
I just want to make sure we're properly assessing all of the input relative to journalistic integrity, protecting journalists who come forward and giving adequate thought to this. So I appreciate that. I'll let that part go then.
I want to go back to some of your material today. In your presentation you talked about the sunshine list, and granted, while the disclosure of information that we're talking about today isn't really a sunshine list, could you comment, give us your thoughts, about the differences among the various provinces as to their position on what level is appropriate for disclosure of salaries, bonuses, etc.?
I'd also like to get your position or your perspective on this. When you talk about private corporations and publicly traded companies—and obviously we've limited that to the top three or four people—do you think that goes deep enough? Again, we're dealing with a situation here where we have...and I want to come back to that specifically after I hear from you on this.
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
In preparing for this appearance, we did some research on the various provincial disclosure requirements. Some provinces have none. There is a range of requirements. I tried to give you an idea of the range.
Conservative
