Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm pleased to be here. I am a professor of political science at the University of Victoria. I'm currently on sabbatical leave at the University of Toronto, so I haven't come all the way from Victoria today. I have written or edited a number o

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for your question, and it's really a big question. To deal with any privacy legislation, how do you strike the right balance between the rights of the individual and the legitimate service needs of government agencies? The Privacy Act is based on a theory. It's base

Information & Ethics committee  I hear from privacy professionals and from the Privacy Commissioner's office that it's generally not used a lot. It is often dated. It produces huge headaches for government departments that have to keep it up to date and define consistent uses. I certainly see the value in havi

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for accepting my invitation. I wrote a report for the Privacy Commissioner in 2012. At the time Jennifer Stoddart was receiving a number of complaints about political parties. She couldn't do anything about it, so she asked me to do some research on what the main feder

Information & Ethics committee  Political parties play a crucial role in our democracy in mobilizing voters and in educating the public, and you don't want to have privacy rules in place that hamper that ability. On the model in B.C., British Columbia is the only jurisdiction in Canada where political parties

Information & Ethics committee  Back in the day, the major threat was presumed to be coming from government. It was Big Brother. The history of the Privacy Act was that it followed on from the Access to Information Act and the need to make sure the personal information exemptions in the two statutes were intern

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I believe so. It's an issue, because when one of your constituents goes to you with an issue, for example, there's a presumption that the conversation happens in confidence and the information that's being transmitted is not going to find its way into the NDP database, for o

Information & Ethics committee  You'd have to look at some of the precise exemptions in the Privacy Act. There are certain provisions in section 8 concerning disclosures of government data to members of Parliament in their capacities as members of Parliament, so that is relevant to the question you asked, but t

Information & Ethics committee  I think a distinction has to be made between the tribunal model in Quebec and the commission models in B.C. and Alberta. I'm on the external advisory committee for the B.C. information and privacy commissioner, so I may have some biases. I certainly accept Gary's analysis of the

Information & Ethics committee  You're referring to the U.S. border, I assume?

Information & Ethics committee  That's why I asked the question. For most countries in the world that have comprehensive data protection law, there's an agency similar to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada that the Privacy Commissioner can talk to and have discussions with. If there's any complaint by a Canadia

Information & Ethics committee  The PIAs have been embedded in Treasury Board guidance. My understanding from the Privacy Commissioner is that some departments do a lot of PIAs, while others do very few. They vary in quality a lot. I did some analysis of PIAs a few years ago, and my conclusion was that they'r

Information & Ethics committee  I think there are certain models. Increasingly, privacy impact assessments are included within statutory provisions. They're included, for example, in the new general data protection regulation of the European Union. It's something that all European countries—their organizations

Information & Ethics committee  It would formalize what should already be done under TBS guidance.

Information & Ethics committee  The accumulation of complaints, of course, can lead to an understanding about systemic problems, and good commissioners will be able to do that. I understand what my colleague is saying about the frivolous and vexatious exemption. On the other hand, there are people who do abus