A law professor at the University of Ottawa, Teresa Scassa has disclosed that the Trudeau government is unwilling to hold political parties to the same level of accountability it is demanding of other organizations in its current revamp of the federal privacy regime.
The expert averred that the Liberals are imposing significant new obligations on many organizations but “they’re simply not willing to hold themselves” and other parties to account as political entities.
It would be recalled that the Justice Department recently issued a discussion paper on revising the Privacy Act, which regulates the federal public sector’s collection, use and disclosure of personal data.
According to multiple reports, the launch of a public consultation follows the tabling of a government bill by Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains that would give people more control over their information in the digital age, with potentially stiff fines for companies that flout the rules.
But experts are of the view that neither initiative addresses calls from the privacy commissioner and accountability advocates who want federal laws governing personal information to apply to political parties.
While it is imperative to note that information about prospective voters is helpful to political parties for everything from door-to-door canvassing to crafting platforms, there are new concerns about how parties use such information to track and target people in the era of algorithms and vast databases.
Delineating on the development, Scassa averred that the government could ensure federal parties abide by provisions that would require them, for example, to obtain consent to use personal information, report data breaches when they happen and erase personal details upon someone’s request.
She said “There’s a lot that you could put in there that would dramatically improve the protection of individuals’ privacy, when it comes to political parties”.
The Prof added that “They seem completely unwilling to do so. It’s a very significant problem.”
In her words, it might be necessary to include exceptions in the law around how parties communicate with voters or espouse their ideas.
She further noted that basic fair-information principles can apply, “especially since the kind of information that political parties are now starting to collect and use goes way beyond what used to be the case, and some of them are in engaging in much more sophisticated profiling of people and so on”.
Meanwhile, others calling for explicit application of privacy law to parties include privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien and the Centre for Digital Rights, established by businessman and philanthropist Jim Balsillie.
Spokesman of Justice Department, Ian McLeod stated that the Privacy Act applies to federal government institutions and federal public bodies, and since political parties are private organizations, “they would not be captured by the act’s scope.”
When quizzed about the possible inclusion of political parties in federal privacy law governing private-sector organizations, Bains spokesman John Power succinctly remarked that the 2018 Elections Modernization Act created requirements for political parties to protect Canadians’ personal information.
He said parties are now required to have “a publicly available, easily understandable policy” for the protection of personal information, a document that must be submitted to Elections Canada”.
In her reaction, Scassa said these provisions fall short of what’s needed, stating that “A requirement to have a privacy policy without more, without proper accountability and proper safeguards, it’s just not good enough.”
It should noted that the discussion paper on overhauling the Privacy Act says the government faces the dilemma of updating a decades-old law so that Canadians can benefit from the many promises of the digital environment, while respecting modern expectations about how their information should be used, managed and protected.
Among the changes it proposes:
- Give federal agencies greater flexibility to use and disclose personal information that has undergone an established process for removing personal identifiers;
- Spell out rights related to public awareness of interactions with automated decision-making systems, such as artificial intelligence tools;
- Give the privacy commissioner greater powers to more effectively address complaints and expand the range of matters for which individuals can seek legal remedies.
