Political parties play a crucial role in our democracy in mobilizing voters and in educating the public, and you don't want to have privacy rules in place that hamper that ability.
On the model in B.C., British Columbia is the only jurisdiction in Canada where political parties are covered. That has to do with the particular drafting of our Personal Information Protection Act, which is the substantially similar B.C. legislation that was passed as a result, in the wake of PIPEDA. There have been three investigations, I think, by the former privacy commissioner of British Columbia into political parties. The parties there have been developing codes of practice along the lines that I suggested.
I don't know that this needs to be controversial. We have a principle in this country that you shouldn't be building secret databases. That's the principle behind the Privacy Act. Unless they're exempt for national security reasons, they shouldn't be secret. Individuals should have some right to know what information is being collected on them, how it's processed, and who it's disclosed to.
In most other countries of the world, political parties are covered, with the exception of the United States. There's a gap in Canada. I think the initial step is to engage the major political parties in a process whereby the 10 basic principles in PIPEDA are laid out, then there's a discussion about how those apply to the peculiar context of political campaigning, and then that is translated into some sort of agreeable code of practice for the major political parties. This should not be a race to the bottom.
I've written a great deal on this and I'd be happy to share that with the committee, if you're interested.