Evidence of meeting #143 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cra.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
I'm sorry, Mr. Green. I've stopped your time.
There is a little bit of chatter on all sides here. I want Mr. Dufresne to hear Mr. Green clearly.
Mr. Green....
Something's going on with his microphone; it's kind of muted. I've mentioned it to the clerk before.
Mr. Green, please restate your question for Mr. Dufresne, and then I'll start your clock after that. Go ahead, sir.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I appreciate that, Mr. Chair. I'll speak a little bit louder. Maybe that'll help.
I'm happy to hear that you're calling for this recommendation. You also mentioned the importance of having greater powers, order-making powers, so that if there's administrative sabotage or departmental belligerence in not wanting to co-operate with your investigations, having greater powers within your commission would allow more timely reporting. Can you expand on why that's so important?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
It's important, because we have seen many situations where we receive these reports late, as we did in this instance. That creates the types of situations that we've seen here. It prevents us from giving advice early on and from working with the organizations early on. If this is a legal obligation, I am convinced that there will be greater compliance with this with public sector institutions. It's a legal obligation for private sector organizations. It should be a legal obligation for public sector organizations.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
In keeping with that spirit, do you feel that you have adequate penalties or deterrents, administrative deterrents, for people who fail to comply or are repeat habitual offenders in breaches? Do you have enough power within your commission to hold real accountability?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I do not, because, for both the private sector and the public sector, I do not have order-making powers, and I do not have the ability to issue fines. Those are recommendations that we've made to Parliament for both the public sector and the private sector. It's being proposed in Bill C-27 for the private sector. I would want to see this, certainly, in an upcoming bill dealing with public sector privacy law.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
You mentioned recommendations from the 2020 GCKey debacle, from your study on that. You mentioned that some of them had made some progress. In your opinion, were there any recommendations that weren't followed that may have led to the continued gaps in the administration of privacy on this most recent breach by the CRA?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
That will be part of what we assess in the investigation in terms of seeing what happened when, and whether the recommendations that we made in our GCKey report mattered. When were they implemented, and did these things occur before or after, for instance, the multifactor authentication and the improvements in terms of the process and verification? That will certainly be part of our conclusions in this upcoming investigation.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
That concludes my questions.
Thank you very much, Mr. Dufresne, for being here.
Thank you to the committee for struggling through my IT issues. I hope to have those resolved for the next meeting.
Thank you.
December 5th, 2024 / 5:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Green.
That concludes our round of questioning.
Mr. Dufresne and Ms. Gervais, on behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank you for being here today and for accommodating us. I know we had a bit of difficulty last time, but we made it through this time.
You might as well settle in, Mr. Dufresne, as you're coming back Tuesday on the TikTok issue. I appreciate your making yourself available to this committee for back-to-back meetings.
That concludes the meeting for today. I want to thank everyone, including the clerk and the analysts.
I will advise the committee that you did receive an email from the clerk with respect to questions that have been asked of Twitter, or X. That should be in your email right now. Keep an eye out for it.
Thank you, everyone. Have a great weekend.
The meeting is adjourned.