CWTA predicts ‘adversarial’ relationship if OPC power boosted

OTTAWA — Canada’s privacy commissioner should not be vested with order-making and fining power because doing so would harm the collaborative relationship his office has with wireless companies, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) told Parliamentarians studying the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). “By investing the commissioner with the power to issue fines and impose orders, Canadian businesses would find themselves in an adversarial relationship that would discourage the informal and expedient resolution of complaints, which would be at the detriment of consumers,” Robert Ghiz, CWTA president, told the committee on Thursday. “I think you’re going to take away that relationship to collaborate by introducing more powers,” Ghiz said, adding new technologies such as autonomous cars and the implementation of 5G technology would benefit from collaboration with the privacy commissioner. In February, the same committee heard from federal privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien, who suggested his office be vested with the ability to make orders and levy fines against companies that break privacy rules so they would better comply with PIPEDA. Ghiz said the commissioner is already naming companies that are in violation of PIPEDA. That potential reputational damage of non-compliance, he said, is a “sufficient deterrent, given the importance of consumer trust in the digital economy.” “We would argue that fines would be no stronger deterrent than the damage to the business reputation,” Ghiz said, adding reputation is the most important thing in his industry. Ghiz said he would like to see regular, “proactive” guidance from the privacy commissioner, who can “explain how PIPEDA’s general principles should be applied to new business models.” The CWTA also touched on whether Canada should consider including a “right to be forgotten” provision in the privacy legislation, which was raised by former privacy commissioner Chantal Bernier in front of the same committee in February. The European Union already has right to be forgotten legislation, which allows people to have harmful information about them removed from search engines. While Canada has no such laws, in February a Canadian court ruled that a foreign website be taken down and content be removed from search engines because it violated privacy law. Bernier said during her appearance the right to be forgotten is one of the updates Canada needs to make to its privacy law in order to maintain its adequacy status under new European Union data protection regulations, set to come into force in 2018. Ghiz urged the committee to “be mindful of the potential burden some measures could play in the operation of Canadian businesses involved in the digital economy.” “It’s the burden about implementing the right to be forgotten is where our issue comes from,” Ghiz said of the issue. “There’s cost associated with it, there’s how do you track it down? Who do you go through? I just think that it’s too much work for us to adapt to that European model.” He added that his organization would like to avoid the regulatory burden such a provision would have on companies and businesses in Canada that he said “could perhaps slow down innovation.” — With reporting by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

CWTA predicts ‘adversarial’ relationship if OPC power boosted

News | May 11, 2017

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CWTA predicts ‘adversarial’ relationship if OPC power boosted

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