Mr. Speaker, privacy is certainly a major concern to Canadian consumers of financial services and rightly so. Consumers do not want confidential and personal information given to outsiders or used for the purposes other than which it was given or authorized.
The government certainly appreciates these concerns and is planning to build on actions already undertaken by financial institutions. I emphasize that the government is planning to build on these actions.
Earlier this year changes were introduced to the financial institution legislation that strengthens privacy protection for consumers of financial services. Regulations are under discussion that will require all federally regulated financial institutions to establish procedures governing the collection, retention, use and disclosure of customer information, to implement complaints handling procedures, to inform customers of these procedures and to report annually on privacy related complaints.
The banks and property casualty insurers have already adopted codes of conduct on privacy that are modelled on and consistent with the privacy code established by the Canadian Standards Association. The banks' code was audited by Price Waterhouse and the Insurance Bureau of Canada's code was examined by the Quality Management Institute to ensure that the codes were in compliance with the CSA model. The CSA financial institution codes allow organizations to obtain customer consent to use their shared personal information in a number of ways.
The banks do not provide customer information to parties outside their corporate group, with the exception of information released for legal, income tax and credit reporting purposes.
The government will continue to monitor the privacy practices of financial institutions, both to ensure their effectiveness and to assess whether more needs to be done to ensure the protection of customer information.
The task force on the future of financial services sector may also be examining privacy issues in its work. We certainly look forward to seeing what the task force has to say when it reports back to the government next fall.