Evidence of meeting #23 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was surveillance.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:40 p.m.
Investigative Researcher, Advocate, As an Individual
Within the acts, I do think it should be covered.
I know the Privacy Commissioner said he'd take a pass on that. However, in India, on the access to information side, political parties are covered. Political parties handle fundraising, pretty large databases of information. With the private sector and some non-business communities now being considered for coverage, political parties should be covered and regulated in that way too.
12:40 p.m.
Director, Privacy, Technology and Surveillance, Canadian Civil Liberties Association
I would agree, and I would note that Alberta, which has recently been reviewing their PIPA document, explicitly asked as part of their review process if this should be something that is included within PIPA. We responded that it should.
Political parties are collecting vast amounts of information and subjecting it to the same kinds of data analysis that every other private and public sector body can. They're using it for very specific purposes and getting data from places that individual citizens may not expect them to get it from. All of those things warrant appropriate protection. It could be that PIPEDA is the right place, particularly since the Privacy Commissioner has said he doesn't think it belongs in the Privacy Act.
I would certainly encourage the committee to give some consideration to where you think it should go and to adding it in.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
12:45 p.m.
Staff Lawyer, Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic
Briefly, I just want to say there may be some room for overlap because some of the information sometimes flows from government activity to the political parties. That could be covered by the Privacy Act and the rest by PIPEDA. That's worth considering as well.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Okay, I'm going to thank our witnesses now.
Colleagues, we're going to suspend for a few minutes and then use the last 15 minutes to go in camera. I am going to ask our witnesses to leave the room as quickly as possible. I do want to sincerely say thank you very much. It was an excellent discourse and conversation today, and we much appreciate it. We know that if we have any subsequent questions, we can follow up with you.
Thank you very much for your contribution.
[Proceedings continue in camera]