Thank you very much.
My name is Trevor Bailey. I'm the Conservative Party of Canada's privacy officer. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me here today to discuss our privacy policy, and I look forward to answering any questions you may have surrounding that policy.
I've been the privacy officer for the Conservative Party for approximately one year in addition to my role as director of membership for the party.
The Conservative Party of Canada has had a formal privacy policy in place, including the role of privacy officer, for approximately six years. Though I am relatively new to this privacy role, I've held senior positions in the membership and fundraising departments for the past seven years. In those roles, I've had or shared the responsibility to oversee our data, access thereto and its authorized distribution.
The privacy officer role is built around our party's commitment to protecting the privacy of Canadians. This commitment is important to the Conservative Party of Canada. That commitment includes taking great care to keep both confidential and secure all information in our possession that relates to the personal information Canadians willingly provide to us or is passed to us by Elections Canada as laid out in the Canada Elections Act. That information includes surname, given names, civic address and mailing address. Other information the party may ask for and receive from individuals, like an email address, phone number, gender and date of birth, is also information we include as covered by our privacy policy and is collected through our website or in response to a mail piece with that person's consent.
As part of our privacy policy, any person may unsubscribe from our email, mail or phone lists at any time using links provided in each email message, clicking on our privacy policy at conservative.ca or contacting the party directly.
As this committee would know, as a federal political party registered under the Canada Elections Act, the Conservative Party, including its electoral district associations, candidates, nomination contestants and leadership contestants, are subject to extensive regulation under that act, including in particular the public disclosure requirements for contributions over $200. As a result of these requirements, we collect personal information from donors and members when they contribute to our party or purchase a membership. You may also choose to provide us with personal information on a voluntary basis such as when registering for an event or signing a petition. We are required by law to keep records of donors for tax purposes.
The information the Conservative Party gathers, either directly from Canadians or as a result of legislative requirements, is used for communication purposes. As a political party, we believe it is very important to communicate with Canadians on a regular basis. We are a national organization, but we have a riding-based membership system, so personal information may be disclosed to local riding associations, candidates, nomination contestants or leadership candidates for the purposes of communicating with those persons.
There is some non-personal information that we track that is also included in our privacy policy for the additional information of Canadians. That non-personal information that may be collected through our website is collected through the use of web cookies with the purpose of informing the party about how people use our website in order to help us deliver better content for those users or to assist in general advertising efforts. We inform people in our policy about how to opt out of many of the advertising features used by sites like ours by adjusting their Google Ads settings or through free services like the Network Advertising Initiative's consumer opt-out page.
To wrap up, the Conservative Party employs a variety of security systems to safeguard personal information from unauthorized access, disclosure or misuse, and from loss or unauthorized alteration. The Conservative Party does not and will not sell personal information.
As I said in the opening, the commitment to protecting Canadians' privacy is important to us, and ensuring it's kept safe and secure is something we take great care in doing.
If there are any questions on this policy, I'd be happy to take them.
Thank you.