Privacy Commissioner advocates update of Privacy Act before Ethics committee

Canada’s Privacy Act needs to be updated, Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien told the House of Commons Ethics Committee Monday, repeating a longstanding call the Privacy Commissioner has been making since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Therrien was joined in that view by the Canada Research Chair for Medical Artificial Intelligence, Khaled El Emam, who also appeared as a witness at hearings into the Public Health Agency of Canada’s (PHAC) tracking of mobility data. Therrien told members of parliament that his office had been informed of the tracking plan in 2020 and offered further advice to PHAC and to the Department of Innovation, Science & Economic Development (ISED). That offer was declined by the departments, which sought guidance from outside experts. He said initial examination of the proposal determined that nothing violated the Privacy Act. When asked at the committee hearing if that was a normal situation, the commissioner replied that his office could not be involved in every case of presumed privacy breaches. “We should have greater powers,” he said. He later stated the current Privacy Act is “badly outdated.” El Emam echoed those sentiments, saying national standards are needed. “There are good guidelines but they need an update,” El Emam stated. The committee has been investigating the data tracking since January when a quartet of parliamentarians asked for a special session of the committee. Last week Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos and Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam appeared as witnesses. Therrien said he was not opposed to the gathering of depersonalized aggregated data by PHAC. Such use can protect public health, but reuse of the data raises questions, he added. To that end, his office is investigating several complaints about the practice that have been filed. Because of those investigations, he would not answer specific questions about some aspects of the data collection by PHAC. He could not guarantee that his report would be available by the time the committee is ready to release its findings into the matter. One of the questions revolves around whether or not the reused data serves a social purpose. Similarly agencies must ascertain whether the data was properly de-identified. “There are risks that it’s not good policy,” the commissioner stated. “I do not think most users knew how their data was used.” Under questioning from Conservative MP John Brassard, who has been spearheading the fight over data collection, Therrien said he was not upset by the government deploying outside experts. “We are not the only experts,” he noted. “The government and the telcos have their own experts.” He later told NDP MP Matthew Green that he would have preferred intense consultation rather than merely being informed by PHAC of its intentions. The office has been holding sessions with the agency every two weeks. “Here we did not have a chance to look under the hood.” Earlier, Therrien told Bloc Québécois MP René Villemure there should be greater measures on the government and on Telus Corp., which collected the data for PHAC, in order to protect data privacy. “There’s always a risk of re-identifying through data matching,” he said. “Canadians want to use modern technology while trusting their rights are not violated.” Villemure raised the issue of assumed consent having been given when Telus subscribers did not opt out of data collection. Therrien agreed that most cell phone users did not know their data was being used. They are unlikely to read the lengthy and legalistic privacy agreements set out in cell phone contracts. During his testimony El Emam said the risks of re-identifying user information were very small but it could be done. He agreed with the commissioner that it would be impractical to ask for consent from users before the fact. During the committee meeting, there were disputes between opposition and government MPs over how much data was at risk. The Conservatives maintain that the information of 33 million users was accessed; Liberals claim the figure is more like nine to 14 million. El Emam said even the lower figure would provide enough data for a proper modelling. Under questioning from Villemure, El Emam praised Telus’ standards, pointing out the telecom had won an international award for privacy. Asked by Green which international rules had the highest standards of privacy protection, he said the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union was a good example –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca

Privacy Commissioner advocates update of Privacy Act before Ethics committee

Broadcast | February 7, 2022

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Privacy Commissioner advocates update of Privacy Act before Ethics committee

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