Teresa Scassa - Blog

Monday, 11 June 2018 10:52

Update on privacy obligations and Canadian political parties

Written by  Teresa Scassa
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The issue of the application of privacy/data protection laws to political parties in Canada is not new – Colin Bennett and Robin Bayley wrote a report on this issue for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in 2012. It gained new momentum in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal when it was brought home to the public in a fairly dramatic way the extent to which personal information might be used not just to profile and target individuals, but to sway their opinions in order to influence the outcome of elections.

In the fallout from Cambridge Analytica there have been a couple of recent developments in Canada around the application of privacy laws to political parties. First, the federal government included some remarkably tepid provisions into Bill C-76 on Elections Act reform. These provisions, which I critique here, require parties to adopt and post a privacy policy, but otherwise contain no normative requirements. In other words, they do not hold political parties to any particular rules or norms regarding their collection, use or disclosure of personal information. There is also no provision for independent oversight. The only complaint that can be made – to the Commissioner of Elections – is about the failure to adopt and post a privacy policy. The federal government has expressed surprise at the negative reaction these proposed amendments have received and has indicated a willingness to do something more, but that something has not yet materialized. Meanwhile, it is being reported that the Bill, even as it stands, is not likely to clear the Senate before the summer recess, putting in doubt the ability of any amendments to be in place and implemented in time for the next election.

Meanwhile, on June 6 2018, the Quebec government introduced Bill no 188 into the National Assembly. If passed, this Bill would give the Quebec Director General of Elections the duty to examine and evaluate the practices of the provincial political parties’ collection, use and disclosure of personal information. The Director General must also assess their information security practices. If the Bill is passed into law, he will be required to report his findings to the National Assembly no later than the first of October 2019. The Director General will make any recommendations in this report that he feels are appropriate in the circumstances. The Bill also modifies laws applicable to municipal and school board elections so that the Director-General can be directed by the National Assembly to conduct a similar assessment and report back. While this Bill would not make any changes to current practices in the short term, it is clearly aimed at gathering data with a view to informing any future legislative reform that might be deemed necessary.

 

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