Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As you noted, this is a rather wide-ranging amendment, making changes in numerous proposed sections and subsections through the CPPA. Its purpose is to transfer power to issue monetary penalties for violations of the CPPA from the privacy tribunal to the Privacy Commissioner, where we in the Conservative Party believe the power should be rested and where it should have been rested in the first place.
We are of the opinion that the tribunal is completely unnecessary and counterproductive. It will make Canada an international outlier compared to how our peer nations operate. It is unneeded bureaucracy, which will only serve to slow down and dilute the resolution of privacy violations. It will hamper the ability of the federal and provincial privacy commissioners to work together to perform joint investigations and, most concernedly, by existing within ISED, the tribunal, whose members will be patronage appointees by the minister, is an attempt to impede and interfere with the independence and jurisdiction of an independent officer of Parliament.
The proposed tribunal will make Canada an international outlier. No other peer nation—not the EU, the U.S., the U.K., Australia or any other G7 nation—has a privacy tribunal. Each of these other nations has the same system. The privacy regulator investigates and issues monetary penalties to violators. If the violator is unhappy with the result, they take the regulator to court. We know this, because that is the way our privacy enforcement system currently operates. The Privacy Commissioner, PIPEDA and the Privacy Act do not have a tribunal, and the enforcement process is working quite well.
According to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, for more than 40 years this is how the process has worked, and only once in the 40-year period have the courts taken issue with an OPC ruling. There is no need to reinvent the wheel by introducing a quasi-judicial body into the violation of the enforcement process. By trying to reinvent the wheel with this tribunal, the result will be delayed justice for Canadians whose fundamental right to privacy has been violated. Justice delayed is justice denied.
When I think about the quasi-judicial tribunals of ISED, of course my thoughts immediately go to the equally unnecessary Competition Tribunal. It's a body that in its nearly 40-year existence has never even once blocked a merger that was proven to be anti-competitive by the Competition Bureau. It's a body where the average time for delivering a decision is well over one year, except, surprisingly, in the Rogers-Shaw decision. Even then, those decisions can be appealed in the courts.
The tribunal will also serve to drag out the efficient resolution of cases. I will let the words of the Privacy Commissioner stand for themselves. He stated:
Fourth and probably most important, the fact that the OPC would not be authorized to impose administrative penalties, and that its orders would be subject to appeal to another administrative structure before reaching the courts, would reduce the incentive organizations have under the model in place in other jurisdictions, to come to a quick agreement with the regulator. In these jurisdictions, where the data protection authority is the final administrative adjudicator and where it can impose financial penalties, organizations have an interest in coming to a negotiated settlement when, during an investigation, it appears likely a violation will be found and a penalty may be imposed. Unfortunately, the creation of the Tribunal would likely incentivize organizations to “play things out” through the judicial process rather than seek a negotiated settlement with the OPC, thus depriving consumers of quick and effective remedies. Sadly, but truly, justice delayed is justice denied.
The inclusion of the tribunal in this act, as argued by both federal and provincial privacy commissioners, will also weaken the joint investigation processes that are undertaken between federal and provincial governments. This process will also diminish interoperability between provinces and could result in the federal government making the privacy tribunal a necessary requirement for compliance within the federal act.
We've seen several recent examples of the federal and provincial privacy commissioners working together to protect Canadians' fundamental privacy rights.
In 2021, the federal commissioner and B.C., Alberta and Quebec all worked together to investigate and stop Clearview AI from violating Canadians' privacy rights through illegal scraping of images from social media sites to build a facial recognition database. In 2022, the federal, Alberta, B.C. and Quebec commissioners again worked together to investigate and stop Tim Hortons from illegally tracking Canadians' location data after they made a purchase. In 2020, the federal, Alberta and B.C. commissioners stopped shopping mall owner Cadillac Fairview from collecting and using photos of consumers when they stopped to use the store directory screens.
We have heard and talked a great deal so far during this clause-by-clause process about making sure that privacy protection laws are consistent across the country to allow ease of enforcement as well as ease of business operations. As we heard from both federal and provincial privacy commissioners, the tribunal will threaten the ease of enforcement by regulators across each of the provinces and territories and across the country.
The Privacy Commissioner and his office are one of nine fully independent officers of Parliament. In the words of the Library of Parliament:
Officers of Parliament support both houses in their accountability and scrutiny functions by carrying out independent oversight responsibilities assigned to them by statute. These officers are responsible directly to Parliament rather than to the government or a federal minister.
I want to emphasize that last line again: “These officers are responsible directly to Parliament rather than to the government or a federal minister.”
The industry minister should not have a say over the conduct of the decisions of the Privacy Commissioner. The OPC is supposed to be fully independent. If the minister or government does not like a decision of the Privacy Commissioner, then they can appeal the decision in the courts, as they have done since the OPC was created in 1977. The proposed tribunal will completely undermine that independence. It places an ISED-run, ISED-controlled, ISED-funded and industry minister-appointed privacy tribunal in between every single OPC ruling and decision. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner is an independent body, and this amendment will help to preserve that independence.
This question is for Mr. Chhabra, although any of the officials may answer. We know from submissions and testimony that the current and former privacy commissioners oppose the tribunal; the provincial privacy commissioners oppose the tribunal, and almost all privacy advocates and experts oppose the tribunal. Your department has been the one asking and...taking ministers with stakeholders, the minister's famous 300-plus meetings. Which stakeholders have actively been supportive of the tribunal?