With his term slated to end this week, outgoing federal privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien made remarks which called out both Canadian businesses and the government for failing to better protect consumers’ privacy.
In an address to a symposium by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) in Toronto, Therrien called out the Liberal’s Bill C-11 as being too “pro-business”, and businesses for being willfully ignorant of the public’s worries about their privacy being compromised.
The commissioner also pointed out the unhelpful lack of input from Canadian companies in consultations with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) over the years.
“When we are met with silence when we try to understand a certain commercial reality, no one wins,” Therrien said. “Similarly, when we receive clearly self-interested and incomplete feedback, we may give it less weight.”
Therrien also commented that while the OPC and the government are aware that the public lacks trust that their privacy rights are respected, industry stakeholders instead ask the question: “Where is the evidence of a problem?”
“The reluctance by many Canadian industry stakeholders to acknowledge that problems are anything but marginal is not conducive to finding balanced solutions that instill trust while enabling commerce,” the commissioner said.
IT World Canada reported that Therrien’s statement comes as the government looks to update the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) after pending legislation, Bill C-11, failed to gain traction. Therrien panned Bill C-11, also called the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, for its failings, including the bill’s failure to establish privacy as a fundamental right.
“The former Bill C-11 would have given consumers even less control over their personal information, and organizations more control,” said Therrien, adding that organizations would have been able to collect and use information for any purpose, “subject to an undefined appropriateness standard.”
Therrien went on to specify that rights-based laws are becoming an international standard and that a Canadian privacy law would benefit not just consumers but businesses as well.
“A new law should re-introduce the knowledge and understanding elements of meaningful consent,” he said, “define an acceptable standard for accountability – namely the obligation to implement a privacy management program to ensure compliance with the law – and it should authorize the OPC , like many other data protection authorities in Canada and abroad, to conduct pro-active audits to verify compliance with the law.”
