Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, committee, for having us here.
You have our submission and there are a number of links in it to related documents. I won't take you through that. I'll just raise some of the points in there, and hopefully that will leave more time for questions on what is a very important piece of legislation.
I also want to say that we appreciate the fact that the committee is hearing from witnesses before second reading. We take this as a positive sign that the government is in favour of and open to amendments above and beyond its usual openness in the normal course of proceedings.
The first thing I'd like to talk about is the Spencer decision of the Supreme Court of Canada from last year. I'd like to concentrate on the B.C. aspect of it. As you know we have a special legislative committee that looked at our substantially similar legislation: the Personal Information Protection Act. The committee came out with recommendations for changes to our equivalent of section 7. You have the link to that report, I believe, through our submission.
The approach they suggested was a narrowing of the scope of the B.C. section.
The special legislative committee in B.C. also raised concerns—some of which we raised with them, as did the Information and Privacy Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham—about the question of substantial similarity between the provincial and federal acts, so there is some discussion in there.
In addition to the B.C. committee and the B.C. commissioner, the federal Privacy Commissioner, Mr. Therrien, has also indicated he has some concerns with section 7, and has suggested some changes.
The second point I'd like to make is something that we raised not before this committee, but before the access to information, privacy and ethics committee relating to political parties. Political parties are not covered at the federal level by privacy legislation. The large amounts of data collected by political parties are essentially unregulated. I don't think this is suitable. I don't think this is appropriate, and I think it diminishes the confidence that Canadians have both in the privacy law, because of this very large hole, but also in terms of what happens to their personal information.
I offer to you, by way of contrast, what we have in British Columbia where our provincial political parties are covered by the Personal Information Protection Act. Our commissioner has conducted investigations into complaints that were brought to her by individuals about the conduct of political parties. The commissioner investigated, reports were issued, and practices were changed, and yet the political system continues. There has not been a complete collapse of the political system or the political parties in British Columbia. I offer to you, as an example, what can be done and the kind of thing I think could be easily done by including the political parties under PIPEDA.
The final point—and I'll be quite brief because I believe that Ms. Lawson will be dealing with this as well—is a report we are currently working on for the federal Privacy Commissioner called “The Connected Car: Who is in the Driver's Seat?” The report will be released March 25 in Vancouver and we'll be happy to provide you with copies.
I'll leave Ms. Lawson to deal with some of the particulars. Of course we won't be revealing the report here today, but there are a number of issues related to privacy, of course, and consent and consumer choice. I think members of the committee will find that report very interesting, and we hope it will inform your work as well.