Evidence of meeting #13 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was privacy.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to advise members again today that this meeting is public.
I would like to thank our witnesses for coming, and I'd like to introduce Ms. Stoddart and Mr. D'Aoust.
I know you have some colleagues with you. Do you want to introduce them?
Jennifer Stoddart Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
That would be very kind, yes.
Ms. Marnie McCall is from our legal department.
Ms. Aline Gélinas is my special assistant.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
Thank you.
First I would like to thank the witnesses for coming on such short notice. The committee has been working extremely hard, as I explained a little bit earlier, on going through different suggestions on how to improve the Canada Elections Act.
The committee has heard from a number of different witnesses, everybody from the Chief Electoral Officer and the Commissioner of Canada Elections, as well as the various parties. We have had written suggestions from members of Parliament and, in fact, from all the registered parties across Canada.
The committee has worked incredibly hard over the last couple of weeks. We have had extra meetings and spent a lot of time on this.
What it has come down to is that we have a number of ideas in front of us on which we felt we needed the opinion of the Privacy Commissioner and your view on whether what is being proposed is even legal.
Thank you very much for coming. Without further ado, we'll go to the round table type of meeting. Members can ask anything they want, but as I said, I have a list of about seven issues that have been raised over the last couple of months on which I would like to make sure we get clarification. Then frankly, it would be more than easy to dismiss you, as a result.
You're welcome to stay, but then, members, we'll move the meeting quickly into a discussion on those outstanding issues, now based on the information that we have from the various witnesses. Hopefully we can have a brief discussion on each and then vote a yea or a nay on them and move through them.
Without further ado, I will offer the floor to Mr. Simard first. I think we'll stay with the eight-minute round, then we'll go to the standard, unless somebody deems we don't need to do that.
Mr. Simard, please.
Liberal
Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and welcome, Ms. Stoddart.
I would prefer, actually, the round table format since there are only a few of us here.
But I have one question. It is with regard to the year of birth; for instance, volunteers having the year of birth at the polling stations. If I'm not mistaken, the Bloc Québécois has indicated that it is done in Quebec already. Maybe Ms. Picard will correct me on that, but the information I think we received is that if you are sitting at one of the tables and you are a volunteer for one of the candidates, you can have access to information that gives the voter's date of birth.
Is that an issue in terms of the privacy laws?
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I can't inform you as to whether the people at the tables--the volunteers--do have access to the date of birth. If they do, that would probably be covered, I would think, by an oath of office that they would have to take to keep that information confidential.
To the best of my knowledge, this hasn't been an issue. I haven't heard that this has been an issue, but as you know, it is sensitive information. Your date of birth gives access to many things in our system, notably all our credit records. You can do virtually anything with your date of birth.
So if it were to be included in a list, I think it should be used as circumspectly as possible, as little as possible, and shared with the smallest number of people possible.
Liberal
Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB
As you know, one of the major concerns we have at this committee is with regard to election fraud. I think it's becoming more of an issue, and there is a major concern that in one riding, for instance, 10,000 people registered on eBay; it becomes almost unimaginable.
This is one of the ways that we can maybe have a certain amount of control: if somebody is coming in with identification that is doubtful, or you suspect that something may not be right. If you have some information about the person's date of birth and the person is voting as an 18-year-old and they're obviously 80, you know there's an issue.
Generally speaking, based on your experience, do you see that as being a possibility? Is that something we could adapt as one of the tools to identify people, without encroaching on their privacy?
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Well, a basic rule of data protection is that you should use personal information sparingly and in proportion to the problem it's meant to address.
If you find that you have a real problem of voter fraud--that is, misused identity, identity fraud at the polls--this could suggest that one of the ways is to use increased amounts of personal information. But my suggestion, as Privacy Commissioner, is to look at this very carefully. Is this across Canada? Are these isolated incidents or is this a major trend? I say this because it has a lot of implications. It's yet one more sensitive piece of personal information that is added to the bank.
If your conclusion is that this is a significant problem, then yes, you could request that this be added to amended legislation.
Liberal
Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB
Again, when Canadians fill out their income tax, apparently there's a box you can fill out indicating that you allow your name to be used for the voter list.
Is that correct, Jamie? How essential is that?
In other words, if the person does not do that, would it be encroaching on his or her rights to take that information and put it on the voter list without consent?
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
As I remember, the Income Tax Act is one of the pieces of Canadian legislation with the most privacy protection, because it is very sensitive. When we give our information to the income tax authorities, we want to make sure it's used for strictly income tax purposes. So it's in that spirit that we worked with the director general of elections and the income tax people to say that if the information was to be shared, Canadians should be informed and they should consent to it.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
Perhaps I could add to your question by reading, for your information:
Quebec requires that voters provide their name, address and, if asked, their date of birth. They must also produce, as identification, one of a driver's licence, a health insurance card, a Canadian passport or another document that has been issued by a government body. (Elections Act, section 337) If an elector cannot produce the required identification, in order to vote he or she must report to an identity verification panel and provide a sworn statement along with either two pieces of identification or have another voter who has produced the required identification vouch for him or her. (section 335.2)
Okay, moving on, we have Mr. Preston.
Conservative
Joe Preston Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
I have a couple of points. I think we've come to the area of needing proof of identification at the poll in order to prevent fraud. The proof needs to state who the person is, where he or she lives to know that this is within a certain electoral boundary, and we also have a question about citizenship. Obviously Canadian citizens can vote in the election, but others can't.
Do you see any problem with our asking for proof of identification or photo proof of identification to answer those questions?
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I think there's a problem if you move towards asking on one card for a series of information that doesn't already exist in pre-existing Canadian identity documents.
Conservative
Joe Preston Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
I'm suggesting that we use a driver's licence for the photo, which also handles the address piece. I'm not certain of the citizenship piece yet, so you can add to that one a bit—
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, that's why I'm trying to think, what documents do we have? In some provinces, the health insurance card has our photo, name, date of birth, but I don't think our address. Our passport would have our photo and address, but—
Conservative
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I don't know if you can move and still use your Canadian passport.
Conservative
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, that's right, just our place of birth. So I'm not sure that there's one card at the present time—
Conservative
Joe Preston Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
I'm going to have to rule off the citizenship piece for now. But even if I'm showing proof of address and proof from a photo identification point of view—you mentioned health cards in some provinces, driver's licences in others, even age of majority cards in some provinces—showing that I am who I say I am, then I show some other sort of address ID to prove that I live where I live.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
It seems to me there are two issues, but of course you know far more about electoral issues than I do. One issue is, who is legitimately on the voter's list—
Conservative
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
—and as I understand, for what riding? Then when you get to the polls, how do you legitimately show, in the least intrusive way possible, but in a way that doesn't make a mockery of our elections, that you are the person who's on the list?
I think that trying to put all those together perhaps increases the potential of privacy invasion, so—