Information & Ethics committee  I would like to see a code of practice. This was actually recommended by the Chief Electoral Officer in his report a few years ago. Compliance with that code of practice would be a condition for receiving the voters list. It's an interim step. I don't think it is enough, becaus

Information & Ethics committee  I think legislation is necessary, but I also think that it requires some analysis. PIPEDA applies principally to commercial organizations. Political parties are not commercial organizations. There is an argument that at the moment when political parties are purchasing data on con

Information & Ethics committee  I think we have to make some distinctions between forms of micro-targeting. Of course, the more innocuous form is where particular segments of the population are singled out for messaging about a particular policy proposal. On the face of it, there is nothing particularly controv

Information & Ethics committee  To your first point about transfers of data, I think this is where the rules concerning the GDPR are so relevant. Europeans are insisting, of course, that for any data transferred to Canada there be strong onward transfer restrictions. Facebook and other private sector organizati

Information & Ethics committee  These words get thrown around in the media and, of course, they're not necessarily accurate. I think it's the lack of transparency and trust that creates that kind of discourse. I believe that political parties have a fundamental and important role in our democracy, and they need

Information & Ethics committee  That's a good question. I don't grade the political parties. It's very difficult to do this on a common standard. The experience in B.C., where political parties have had to comply with our legislation, which is pretty much based on the PIPEDA principles, has been quite encourag

Information & Ethics committee  I think that this would be one approach, yes, but my plea is for some more detailed legal analysis on this. I think one of the dilemmas here is that the Chief Electoral Officer knows political parties and knows the regulations on political parties, but he is not necessarily resou

Information & Ethics committee  One of the problems with the lack of transparency is that you don't really know where the illegality might be. There are certainly a lot of grey areas here. In response to your question, however, I would make just two quick points. It's very important for the committee to note

Information & Ethics committee  That would probably be me.

Information & Ethics committee  No, I don't think it is. Furthermore, Facebook has been under investigation by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner since 2009. This whole issue about access to people's personal information through third party applications was investigated back then. Audits were ordered back t

Information & Ethics committee  Perhaps I'll defer to Thierry first on that.

Information & Ethics committee  I'll speak to that. My understanding is that Facebook has started that process in an experimental manner in Canada to identify the sources of ads that are targeted in Canada. Yes, I agree with that. It's also worth noting that those kinds of procedures would pretty much have to b

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can you hear me okay?

Information & Ethics committee  Good morning. I'm delighted to be with you again today and to appear with my colleague, Professor Giasson. I am a professor of political science at the University of Victoria. I have been studying and publishing on privacy protection issues for around 30 years in Canada and inte

Information & Ethics committee  I think both should have the same powers. I don't know quite how the Privacy Commissioner came to that conclusion. There's been a long series of analysis on this issue. I would make the point that Canada is probably the only country in the world where the issues of access to inf