Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 21st, 2017

[Cynthia Chassigneux]

I wouldn't dare comment on the federal legislation. However, one thing is certain. As mentioned earlier, in Quebec and British Columbia, the discussions about personal information and privacy concern everyone, regardless of age.

In its 2011 five-year report, Quebec did recommend that the protection of minors be taken into consideration. Minors are visiting websites more and more often, or, as you said, spending the entire day surfing on the Internet and on mobile applications. This issue is a concern in Quebec. There have even been awareness campaigns.

Recently, the minister responsible for access to information and the reform of democratic institutions launched an information campaign. In 2011-12, the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec also conducted an awareness campaign in schools for students. It's important. We're continuing to recommend this in our report. I think the federal legislation should take this into consideration. If we're taking this into consideration, it should also be taken into consideration at the federal level.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you.

Ms. Clayton, can you weigh in on that, please?

[Jill Clayton]

In Alberta, I think we have essentially the same situation as was described in B.C. and Quebec. The legislation protects everybody's personal information, regardless of age. We do have the idea of a mature minor who is able to thoughtfully exercise his or her rights under the legislation, who can make access requests, for example, and make a complaint with our office. We had that recently—a matter that resulted in an order in our public sector. It had to do with a transgender student who made a complaint to our office.

The legislation in Alberta does not specifically address this issue of children. Are they particularly vulnerable? That's a matter I would address. Sometimes a self-reported breach comes in, and in terms of notifying individuals, that is a factor that I take into consideration. Whose information was breached? Do we have a vulnerable population? Are there seniors, dependants, adults, children? There are lots of potentially vulnerable populations.

I will say that a couple of years ago, we participated, along with my co-panellists, in the Global Privacy Enforcement Network sweep of Internet sites and apps, specifically those that were targeting children, and we found some disturbing results. A lot of these websites and apps are collecting information of children. They're not particularly transparent about what they're collecting, nor are they necessarily collecting only the information that is necessary for their purpose, for example, the service that the app is producing. That doesn't necessarily require anything special, or amendments to the existing legislation, because I'm not sure that some of those apps and websites are complying with existing legislation. I think you can get at some of those issues through existing legislation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Mr. Long.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Very good.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Does anybody else have any questions they would like to ask?

No?

Colleagues, I'm going to thank our witnesses on behalf of everyone here. Thank you very much for taking the time out of your very busy schedules to join us here as we deliberate on and review the federal legislation when it comes to private sector protection of information.

Colleagues, I'm going to suspend the meeting right now. We're going to go in camera and have a discussion about a few things.

I would like to thank our witnesses. We know we can call upon you again if we need to. For those of you who have committed to sending us some follow-up information, we look forward to that.

Thank you very much. Have a good day.

[Proceedings continue in camera]