Canada’s privacy commissioner told a House of Commons committee on May 1 that having more legal teeth would allow his office to better do its job.
Philippe Dufresne was appearing before the committee on national defence. He said while his office usually gets good cooperation from government officials, that is not always the case.
“The reality is we do need to have order-making powers and to have binding authorities,” Mr. Dufresne told MPs. “It’s not because I want to issue those orders. But the mere existence of that possibility tends to focus the mind of decision makers and it helps to prioritize efforts in those aspects,” he said.
He said his office does have authority to get information. But what it lacks is the legal teeth to order someone to follow its recommendations if that is not happening.
He was responding to questions from NDP MP Lindsay Mathyssen, who was asking about delays that people have complained about, even accessing their own information.
“The department refuses sometimes to disclose information, whether it’s to CAF members going through the grievance process or veterans or journalists or researchers,” said Ms. Mathyssen. “It’s only when your office gets involved that they can get anything.”
“We‘ll investigate it, we’ll make a finding, we'll make recommendations,” said Mr. Dufresne. “And in many cases, the recommendations are followed—and that’s a good thing—but not always. And so that’s where the order-making power comes in.”
In response to questions from other MPs, Mr. Dufresne said if a recommendation from his office is not being followed, currently the only option for people in some cases is to go to federal court to ask that information be handed over.
“That almost seems almost impossible for an individual to be able to go to court to do that, correct?” asked Conservative MP Dean Allison.
“Which is where the recommendation for order-making powers to be able to have a decision that will be binding is something that we’ve been recommending,” said Mr. Dufresne. “And so instead of having to go to court and take those steps, that order applies, and then it would be up to the department to challenge that order in a court process,” he said.
“So you don’t have the ability to hold the department, the minister, the assistant deputy, or the deputy minister, or the chief of defence staff accountable for failure to comply with the act?” asked Conservative MP James Bezan.
“Not through a binding order,” replied Mr. Dufresne. “I will not minimize the impact of a public ruling, a public recommendation, and also the role of committees and so on, but I don’t have the ability to issue a binding order.”
“Okay. So that’s one of the recommendations we should be looking at,” said Mr. Bezan.
The committee is studying transparency within the Canadian Armed Forces and Department of National Defence.
The privacy commissioner of Canada is an agent of Parliament and oversees compliance with the Privacy Act, which covers the personal information-handling practices of federal government departments and agencies.
It also oversees Canada’s private-sector privacy law.
Another recent case found the operator behind Pornhub and other pornographic sites contravened Canadian privacy law by allowing intimate images to be shared on its sites without the consent of everyone depicted.
The OPC could only issue recommendations aimed at bringing Aylo into compliance with Canada’s federal private-sector privacy law.
