Thank you very much, honourable members.
Transparency and accountability, we know, are essential features of good governance and critical elements of an effective and robust democracy. However, as the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, I must say that the extent of public disclosure of personal information contemplated in this bill does raise serious privacy concerns.
I understand that Mr. Russ Hiebert, the sponsor of the bill, has already proposed amendments that would mitigate some privacy-intrusive provisions. Excluding recipients of pension and health care benefits and the removal of home addresses from public disclosure, raised by many of the preceding speakers, are steps in the right direction. However, I respectfully submit there remain other privacy concerns with the bill.
You have probably already heard about the analysis framework that we use in such situations. Its elements can be summarized by four key questions.
One, is the measure demonstrably necessary to meet a specific need? Two, is it likely to be effective in meeting that need? Three, is the loss of privacy proportional to the need? And four, is there a less privacy-invasive way of achieving the same end?
As I understand it, the need purportedly being met by this bill is greater accountability and transparency of unions. With respect to the first two questions then, it should be noted that labour organizations, whether in the public or private sector, receive funding largely through membership dues.
This bill aims to increase transparency and accountability of unions vis-à-vis their members by requiring detailed disclosure of salaries and other individualized expenses through online posting. However, the bill goes much farther than that by requiring such disclosures also be made to the public at large, which in my humble opinion, oversteps what is needed to achieve its stated objective.
With respect to the third question about proportionality, I should begin by stating that an individual's remuneration constitutes personal information that cannot be disclosed without the individual's consent. Exceptionally, there are instances in Canada of specific salaries being publicly disclosed when funded directly by the public. Examples include salaries of elected officials and of some high-ranking federal and provincial civil servants. However, to my mind these exceptional cases of public disclosure do not create a clear precedent for labour organizations, given that their accountability is to their members and not to the general public.
Some of the preceding speakers have said that because labour organizations are tax exempt under the Income Tax Act and because membership dues are tax deductible, labour organizations should be subject to a higher degree of public accountability. However, it is not clear that the names, the salaries, and the disbursements above $5,000 in respect of all labour organization employees and contractors need to be publicly disclosed to achieve this more limited objective. I think this is a significant privacy intrusion, and it seems highly disproportionate.
I'll conclude with the possible alternatives, Mr. Chair.
I believe that limiting the scope of the bill such that public disclosure requirements would apply to a much smaller subset of individuals or would require only aggregate-level reporting would result in a more balanced, yet equally effective, regime. For instance, the registered charities in Canada are required to publicly disclose only high-level salary information for their 10 highest-compensated positions in annual information returns. Even then, only the numbers of positions within specified salary ranges are disclosed.