Evidence of meeting #49 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 pipeda.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Full Professor, University of Ottawa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law, As an Individual
As a parent of teenagers, I'd kind of go with 25—
Full Professor, University of Ottawa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law, As an Individual
—but 16 I could live with, yes.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Mr. Massé, and then we'll have a quick question from Mr. Bratina.
Liberal
Rémi Massé Liberal Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I forgot to ask you something earlier, Mr. Martin-Bariteau.
In your conclusion, you referred to a short bilingual document containing examples and recommendations, and you didn't have time to finish your remarks. We would be very interested in having you send us this document and your recommendations.
Assistant Professor, Common Law Section, Faculty of Law, and Director, Centre for Law, Technology and Society, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I would be pleased to.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Karanicolas, you focus in your work on digital rights and freedom of expression online. With regard to journalism and personal information protection as it relates to journalists and fake news—we hear all about that right now—much of that is just distributed electronically. What responsibility do you think news outlets should have in receiving, publishing, or broadcasting information that is received through, let's say, digital means?
I guess the only way I can focus this on our conversation is to ask whether the public should have a right to access the sources used by the news media to publish or to put their news on air.
Senior Legal Officer, Centre for Law and Democracy
Journalists' source protection is a very important principle of freedom of expression and needs to be protected. We're moving away from PIPEDA here, but I think the law is not as strong in Canada as it should be. It's a cardinal rule that needs to be safeguarded that journalists don't need to divulge their sources.
On the issue of fake news, as soon as the issue started to come out, I think a lot of freedom of expression people were unhappy because they saw the direction in which this conversation was going to go. There's a strong need for initiatives to promote savvy readership and to promote responsible journalism, but the term “fake news” is very often abused by governments around the world to try to prohibit opinions that they don't agree with. As soon as the door to that conversation started, I think a lot of people were very upset, and I think that's the direction that the conversation globally is unfortunately heading in.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Thanks. I just wanted to hear your opinion on that.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
I'm not terribly sure about the germaneness to the study, but it's important.
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Colleagues, if you'll just indulge me for a quick second, I have a question for the witnesses.
Notwithstanding the fact that the data garnered by malware, spyware, bots, and so on is covered under different Canadian legislation, that information can sometimes be melded and merged with information that's legitimately garnered through something like the people who follow PIPEDA. Given the fluidity of data, the World Wide Web, and the fact that it's uncertain exactly where the data is actually stored—we have distributed storage around the world, distributed processing around the world, and so on—how important is the harmonious nature of our legislative and regulatory environment when it comes to the protection of information in order to ensure that we get the right balance between protecting people's personal information and not chasing away tech companies in Canada that might be investing, researching, and doing innovative things with the use of data? How do we make sure we get that balance right?
I'll just leave that out there for whoever wants to go first.
Seeing none, I'll pick Mr. Karanicolas.
Senior Legal Officer, Centre for Law and Democracy
In terms of harmonizing rules and considering how rules are done in different places, it's tremendously important but also tremendously difficult. Ideas about privacy and the appropriate limits of the private sphere, as well as how your personal information should be handled, vary tremendously from place to place, so it's very difficult to come up with a common standard on issues like privacy or data protection.
I do think, though, that you hit on something that I absolutely agree with, which is that the opacity of these data flows is a huge problem. Rather than focusing on the location where information is specifically being stored, to me it's the identity of the players that is a bigger concern and the fact that you can make an agreement with Google or Facebook and you can read their terms of service—difficult to understand as they are, at least you have it in front of you—and then Google or Facebook can pass your information on to a third party data broker and from there it's just a black box.
There is a huge need for transparency on where this information is going after it's been collected by the person you're contracting it with, and generally more information about how information is being processed behind the scenes.
Full Professor, University of Ottawa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law, As an Individual
I agree with that. Transparency at that level is going to be an enormous issue.
I do think that data protection is becoming interdisciplinary as well. Just to use the example of the data portability right, which is something in the new European directive, we were discussing this earlier today and my view is that it is competition law, not really data protection law. It doesn't really matter, necessarily, in terms of the overall regulation of the environment but I do think we are in a context in which there is a lot of overlap now. I see some big data issues as human rights issues or anti-discrimination issues, and then some of them are consumer protection issues.
We currently have traditionally dealt with different issues under different statutes in different departments of government. There is increasing convergence in terms of the relevance of those provisions to data protection, or perhaps data protection to the relevance of those sorts of issues as well. So I think this is a challenge, too. I definitely would agree with that.
Assistant Professor, Common Law Section, Faculty of Law, and Director, Centre for Law, Technology and Society, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I agree with what was said.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Okay.
Subsequent to that, in previous experiences on this committee and in my previous role as a database administrator, my issues with data are a bit technical, but there is a whole debate around deletion and deactivation, which are different things completely. We haven't had a very good discussion about deletion versus deactivation.
The other thing I think we need to flesh out a little bit more on the committee is the language, the simplicity of the language and the layman's use of the language when it comes to agreements or terms of agreement when we sign on for something, because the currency, as you say, in most cases is actually the data that's provided and the personal information that's provided when we log on and use a free app, for example, or even a paid app.
I know there are a lot of questions. Nobody that I know of, and I'm a computer geek of sorts, reads the end user licence agreements that are 65 pages long and full of legalese. I'm wondering if you have any recommendations for this committee in terms of simplifying that for the consumer.
Full Professor, University of Ottawa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law, As an Individual
Michael, do you want to start?
Senior Legal Officer, Centre for Law and Democracy
In terms of the rights of the consumer in terms of deletion and understanding, again, transparency plays an important role at the outset. Users should be able to understand what information about them companies are holding, and then requesting that the deletion is of that information, or the removal of that information when they leave the service, or the correction of that information, are important aspects to pursue.
In terms of simplifying terms of service, there is a fundamental challenge, which is that these terms need to be legally binding. They're drafted by lawyers, and they need to be specific and they need to be written in a particular kind of language. The avenue that we support is generally providing simplified terms of service that go alongside the actual legal terms of service in order to explain things. I think that can be done. There are initiatives that have explored ways to explain what's being done in clear English that have had significant success.
There is a role for the OPC in terms of promoting model terms of service, which I think can be done. You can draft a standardized agreement that can be adapted to different contexts and I think that's an issue that should be pursued.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Thank you very much.
Thank you to my colleagues. I'm not going to adjourn the meeting right now. I'm going to suspend the meeting and go in camera because we have a small matter we need to discuss.
At this point in time I'll excuse our witnesses. Thank you very much for your assistance as we continue our deliberations on PIPEDA. We know we can count on your expertise again in the future should the committee need it.
Colleagues, we're going to suspend for a few moments and we'll come back in camera.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
