Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 23rd, 2015

[Janet Sherbanowski]

New Horizons for Seniors is a federal program from which we receive funding, $25,000, to educate seniors on fraud. We receive a number of invitations, which we are now unable to fulfill, from seniors groups, hospitals, nursing homes, and the City of Toronto's seniors' forum to go out and provide educational material. There is something called “The Little Black Book of Scams” that was produced by the Competition Bureau, which we widely distributed. Unfortunately, it became something that is now available only online. It's a very comprehensive book that can be used for seniors. I would advise you to get some copies of it. I was able to get 200 to give out to various groups, and then I started photocopying. It's a very good resource.

Seniors have a different type of.... You're right: they don't want to report. One of the biggest scams is the romance scam. That encompasses both the fraud side of it and embarrassment for them in regard to getting money from them.

Also, there is the identity theft part of it, because quite often the person who is being proposed as a romantic companion is someone whose identity has been stolen. You have somebody in Indiana, for instance, who is saying that they are a lieutenant in the Marines from the United States. A board member of mine was actually a victim of this. The person ended up asking for $8,000 to come to Canada. By the time this had happened, not only had my friend participated in the scam and shared photographs and information about her own life, including financial details and all of that, but her information could then be used to scam somebody else with her photographs, and that person would be another nice romantic target. It really is perpetuating.

You're right when you say that seniors don't want to report this. When we go to talk to them, I'm of an age that they're certainly able to identify with, so the face-to-face communication is very good for them.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Before I move on, what was the name of your resource?

[Janet Sherbanowski]

It's called “The Little Black Book of Scams”. It's produced by the federal Competition Bureau.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I would like to get copies of that myself.

My next question is for you, Mr. Popa. I hope I've pronounced your name correctly. I'm sorry if I did not.

Sir, you mentioned successes in Europe. Were you talking specifically about cyberfraud, cybercrime, or a combination of the two? Could you outline some of these successes that are practised in Europe? I mean successes in the sense of what we're not doing.

[Claudiu Popa]

Sure, thank you for the question.

What we find is that Europol, for example, is an organization that is obviously a law enforcement body, but it's one that is very, very connected with their equivalent in Asia. They have touch points in Canada as well. One of the things they do differently is they publicize a lot of their successes. One of the latest ones has been within the airline industry where there was a tremendous amount of fraud based on identity theft. Those identities were used by people to just fly around the world for millions of dollars' worth of value, but more importantly, with the intrinsic risk of effectively flying these unknown individuals with unknown intentions around the world. That particular success was widely publicized recently, and they said that they are focused just as much on every other industry that is thusly suffering. The reason I mention this one is obviously that it has a particular touch point with our topic of interest.

One of the things they're doing is obviously communicating things. One of the things they're also doing very well is collaborating and exchanging information, so not just saying that they are equally concerned about specific types of crime, but they're actually exchanging behavioural information and transactional data for suspected parties. They do so across a number of layers. For example, we're obviously particularly concerned with corporate identity fraud. Corporate identity fraud is, in many cases, what begins this chain of abuse of trust that leads to personal identity fraud. A lot of this corporate identity fraud, of course, is a concern to corporations. They have an education program that ensures that organizations understand what the impacts are to their reputations, their finances, etc., so they get a lot of support from organizations in Europe in particular.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I have one question left.

I find that interesting, because I was in eastern Europe some time ago, and there are several countries now practising open data practices on a large scale, countries like Estonia and Latvia. That trend seems to be spreading through the Nordic countries and further. I guess with the European Union they're going to do much more, so I'm a little surprised with the open data policy, yet they still have best practices for cutting down on cyberfraud and cybercrime.

[Claudiu Popa]

They do.

Sorry, was that your question?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

That's it, yes.

[Claudiu Popa]

What I do is I differentiate between open data strategies and proper open data practices. What we're seeing is that some countries are supporting open data activities, but those open data strategies are not necessarily effective. For example, you might have specific countries that are publishing datasets that they simply have no need for. They conduct inventories of the data that they're holding and they're saying they don't really need this data, but before destroying it, they'll just publish it as open data and look really good doing it. That's not necessarily helpful or effective. In many European countries they're actually saying that this is anonymized transactional data that is in fact leading to added intelligence, not just for the creation of apps that we can sell for 99¢ for someone to make money off of, but for law enforcement to say that there's a tangible trend and there's a rate at which people in specific vulnerable sectors are clicking on different things. This was shared by organizations, by associations, by advertising councils and bodies, and that is useful. So I encourage the definition of open data in general versus effective open data sharing.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you. The time is up, Mr. Simms.

Now I give the floor to Ms. O'Neill Gordon for seven minutes.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

I want to thank the presenters. They certainly have shared a lot of worthwhile information with us, and information that gives us food for thought as we go forth in our study.

Following in my colleague's steps, and this question is for Ms. Sherbanowski, is there a basic short list that can be circulated to my constituents to help them protect their identity? Would that be helpful?

[Janet Sherbanowski]

Thank you for the question.

There is a short list, and the easy answer is that sure, we can say to do this, this and this. The long answer is that when electricity was first put in, anything electric could be plugged in and there were many house fires. Then we developed grounding and all these things. Everybody's little things that come in from abroad must have CSA approval. I'm sure we've all seen that label. The Canadian Standards Association also does ISO standards and various standards on many things, including information and the standards we should be setting for information.

I think this is what it's going to take. If we truly have an interest in protecting our society, then we as people who are perhaps studying this in greater detail, as electricians studied electricity to protect people, are going to have to develop a risk assessment for things coming through our country and through our firewalls into our homes and bedrooms and wallets.

Privacy by design is something that I think all the privacy commissioners in Canada have looked at. Designing protections into what we allow our corporations to do is going to have to be part of what we as a society do. I know this is something banks and insurance companies and health companies and everybody looks at, but they say that this is going to cost them a lot of money; this is going to be this, that, and the other.

That is going to be a cost of our doing business in the 21st century. I think it's a worthwhile cost.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Yes, it's a cost that we need to experience in order to make things better for us.

You also mentioned change your PIN day. Is that being successful right across Canada? Are many people taking part in it?

[Janet Sherbanowski]

It's something that is being picked up.

I have a proclamation done on March 20. It happens to be my birthday—it also happens to be the first day of spring, in many cases—so it's easy for me to remember. It's much like what we do with the fire alarms and changing the smoke detector. It's something we can remember as a touch point. It's a little bit kitschy, but it's catching on. The other crime prevention groups across Canada have been picking it up, across Ontario. It's something that again I will be presenting through the Competition Bureau.

We send out a press release. At CPAT we invite a seniors group every year and do a luncheon for 50 to 100 people. We invite the Insurance Bureau of Canada and the Bank of Canada to come, and they do a thing about money and fraud. We talk about fraud and send out releases to various seniors groups.

As I said, everybody uses something very memorable, so that you don't have to have too many PINs, but the adding on of the year at the end or at the beginning just makes it a little more unlikely that somebody looking over your shoulder is going to be able to guess it easily. It's just a reminder that we need to be protecting our identity.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Yes, and it is something that will catch on, like smoke detectors today. Now, that is a common thing, so in years to come this too will be.

[Janet Sherbanowski]

I hope so.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

When I listened to you both present today, I thought of at least two constituents who have had the misfortune of losing all their identity by being conned into giving it out, thinking that they were receiving help and were getting benefits on their computer, which they couldn't use. There were troubles there. They felt they were gaining everything. Especially when they're being told that they're getting something back in turn for giving this information, they're very quick to give out the information, regardless of how many times their families and their neighbours and their friends tell them not to. It's just something they walk into.

I'm wondering what new ideas our government can propose to get at this, such as maybe training or courses for seniors. I like the idea you presented of training with New Horizons for Seniors. Even more, with our youth today, there are going to be many incidents in which people are going to get hit with this.

What we can do? Are there any particular aspects of the issue that you would recommend we could help as our study goes on? It certainly is a worthwhile study and one that we're all tuned in to in trying to make things better for everybody.

[Janet Sherbanowski]

Is the question for Janet?

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

For both of you, if I have time.

[Janet Sherbanowski]

All right.

If I may start, we founded the Social Media Working Group with the Toronto Police Service. It involves the Insurance Bureau of Canada, all the banks, Bell Canada, a lot of groups, and the school boards. Twice a year we do a fraud conference in Toronto. It's televised on Rogers and it's also available on the Toronto Police Service's website.

The first one we did looked at working with the media, having all the media come in and listen to all the experts. It was started just last year, so it's fairly new for Toronto. We work with PhoneBusters and CARP. It has grown. Even the Public Guardian and Trustee is now part of this. Health fraud and identity theft go on. It's an education process.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Madam Gordon.

I am told that the time that we had with our witnesses has run out.

Many thanks to Ms. Sherbanowski for her time today. My thanks also go to Mr. Popa, who was in Florida and I hope he enjoys the rest of his vacation. Our witnesses’ expertise on the issue will definitely help us to move to the next part of our study.

On that note, I suspend the meeting for a few minutes.

[Claudiu Popa]

That's no problem. Thank you for having us.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

I will suspend for a couple of minutes to go in camera for committee business.

[Proceedings continue in camera]