Thank you for organizing this today and for allowing members of the public to come forth and engage with such an important issue.
My concern today rests with the information sharing act within the Anti-terrorism Act.
The green paper posed a question about general data retention periods in the context of the telecommunications sector, but what is not mentioned in the green paper is the data retention period for this act. To my knowledge, there are no indications about what happens to the data after it is shared. Would it be collected or disposed of after it has been used by the organization?
Personally, I believe the data that is shared through the information sharing act must be included in this context, as it permits the unprecedented sharing of our data amongst 17 governmental institutions and more, depending on the discretion of the Governor in Council.
Under this provision, the scope of sharing is much too wide for an activity that undermines the security of Canada. These include terms that are much too vague. As a governmental organization, you can request data for public safety or for the economic or financial stability of Canada. I would urge the clarification of such terms in schedule 3 of this act in order to prevent the limitless power to monitor and profile ordinary Canadians such as me.
If you look at the pictures on your phone right now, you'll see that most of us are hoarders. There's picture we took of an informational poster. Just in case we need it, we'll keep it, and without clearly identifiable regulations on the sharing practices of our data, I'm afraid these organizations will do just that.
We as citizens do not have adequate protections to challenge this backdoor practice despite the fact that the Privacy Act obliges institutions to limit collection of personal information to what is directly related to and demonstrably necessary for the programs or activities of government institutions.
Just as a couple of examples, in the U.K. there's a one-year period for the data collected under their Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act, and similarly in the intelligence bill in France, which stipulates a range from about one to 12 months depending on the type of information that is collected.
As a young Canadian, I want to see more transparency and protection for the average citizen and our data doubles. I believe that clearly defined data retention periods about what information is shared, how it is shared, for how long, and the ways in which it will be de-accessioned are very important, and this will provide some protection against the possibility of profiling. The clarification of the terms in schedule 3 may reduce the unnecessary sharing of our data.
Thank you.