Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. The Public Interest Advocacy Centre has been deeply involved with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA, from a consumer perspective from before its pa

Information & Ethics committee  I believe we're almost identical in our viewpoints.

Information & Ethics committee  Speaking for PIAC, I'd say we would still like to have order-making power, because of companies in the past that have demonstrated they will not follow the findings of the Privacy Commissioner--repeat offenders.

Information & Ethics committee  We were having this debate earlier. We think it's either one or zero. There was an Air Canada dispute over the flight points program, and Air Canada's name came out. I don't recall another situation where the Privacy Commissioner has ever named anyone.

Information & Ethics committee  We believe there are at least 350 findings.

Information & Ethics committee  The difficulty would be with very large losses, of course. The California legislation allows for substitute notice through a newspaper of general circulation for really large ones--

Information & Ethics committee  It might not be very good at all, but it might be the only way to do it if there are half a million.

Information & Ethics committee  I'll just speak from PIAC's point of view. We support having the Privacy Commissioner apprised as soon as possible of a data breach and having the Privacy Commissioner give advice to the company involved, but we do not support the Privacy Commissioner having discretion to make

Information & Ethics committee  To begin with, in our experience, there have been organizations that didn't really follow the commissioner's recommendations. In those cases, particularly if the name of the organization is unknown, consumers will want to solve the problem themselves, by no longer dealing with th

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  May I answer? To the extent that it does affect the smaller businesses, we simply think it's good business, because if a customer finds out after the fact that there has been a loss of their personal data and it led to identity theft, that business would feel terrible and they

Information & Ethics committee  I believe the Privacy Commissioner has the mandate, under the act, to do some public education, and we do acknowledge that they have some guidelines on their website. I'm not sure of their plan for reaching out in the future. I believe it was referred to in the last report that t

Information & Ethics committee  I'm just going to take a stab in the dark here, but I know the Privacy Commissioner does meet with the business organizations on a fairly regular basis, and this is something that certainly could come up in discussions with them at that time. We would be happy to participate, as

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  No, we don't think so.