OPC needs budget doubled, Therrien says in swan song

If the government reintroduces its online privacy bill, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) will need to see its funding doubled, the commissioner told MPs. The previous version of the legislation died on the order paper when last year’s election was called. Daniel Therrien was making his final appearance before the House of Commons Ethics Committee Thursday. He is retiring from the public service this month. “The regulator must have adequate enforcement powers, be properly funded and be given regulatory discretion to manage its workload so it can protect the greatest number of individuals effectively within limited resources,” he said. The OPC has asked the government for additional money in anticipation of greater responsibilities being given to it. The government is still considering the request, Therrien remarked. The government is expected to introduce new legislation soon, perhaps before the summer recess. The commissioner said the provisions of the old bill were being considered by his office to anticipate what new powers it will be given. “The idea is to get ahead of the curve, think about how we would exercise these responsibilities so that we’re not caught off-guard if the transition period, say, after the adoption of the bill is shorter than we would hope,” Therrien told the MPs. The privacy commissioner gave a wide-ranging review of the scope of the work his agency does. Many controversial topics arose over the past few years including the use of facial recognition technology by Clearview AI; misuse of data by Cambridge Analytica; the collection of mobility data by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC); and the tracking of consumer information by Tim Hortons. The OPC declared in a report Wednesday that the Tim Hortons app violated federal privacy law. He said the deployment of Clearview technology by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police amounted to subcontracting violations of the privacy laws. A study of PHAC’s data dive is still ongoing, he added. Tim Hortons has agreed to purge all data it collected illegally. There are no investigations of geolocation excesses by other companies, Therrien assured Parliamentarians. The commissioner was questioned about a bill currently before the Senate regarding the searching of digital devices at border crossings. OPC representatives will speak on the legislation at a Senate committee hearing next week. “We have underlined an electronic device, a cellular device is not the same as luggage or a piece of mail,” Therrien noted. “There is much more personal sensitive information contained in an electronic device.” The commissioner said we are living in a fourth Industrial Revolution–the Digital Revolution. Care must be taken to respect users’ privacy as technology progresses. “While disruptive technologies have undeniable benefits they must not be permitted to disrupt the duty of a democratic government to maintain its capacity to protect the fundamental rights and values of its citizens. What we need, then, is real regulation of digital technologies, not self-regulation,” he stated, according to simultaneous translation of the original French. The former Bill C-11 relied on self-regulation, he asserted. The Privacy Act is 40 years old, he noted, while the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) is 20 years old. Both of those predate the invention of Facebook, he added. Any changes to those two laws will have to have objective standards, not subjective ones. They need to consider changes in technology that so far are only dreamed about. “A standard that might be good in 2022 might not be a standard in 2028 so this would need to be reassessed with technology,” Therrien said. Asked about ensuring workers’ privacy when working from home over platforms like Zoom, he reported his office has had informal talks with the platforms and has provided advice. It is good to have regular conversations with private sector firms regarding privacy, he noted, and said there could be jurisdictional issues as many employers fall under provincial regulation but that does not prohibit the office from being interested in the matter. Next month provisions of the Privacy Act will apply to foreign nationals, which they did not before. Therrien expects a deluge of applications into his office, especially on immigration files. The backlog that currently exists in the OPC will only get worse, he said. He was questioned about examples of good privacy legislation. He cited the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). “I’m not advocating Canada adopt a carbon copy of the GDPR but there are elements of the GDPR that make a lot of sense: the rights basis, proactive audits, objective standards.” MPs from all parties thanked Therrien for his service and gave him a round of applause when he finished his opening statement, which the chair allowed to run longer than usual. –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

OPC needs budget doubled, Therrien says in swan song

News | 06/03/2022 5:19 pm EDT

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