Emergency Powers Were No Excuse for Privacy Infringements During Convoy Protest, Says Commissioner

Privacy Commissioner of Canada Philippe Dufresne waits to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, in Ottawa on Aug. 8, 2022. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

The federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act in response to the Freedom Convoy protests last winter was no excuse for infringing on Canadians’ privacy, says federal Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne.

“I recognize emergencies evolve rapidly and require swift and effective responses to address extraordinary public needs,” Dufresne wrote to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency on Jan. 30, according to Blacklock’s Reporter. 

“However even in an emergency, public institutions must continue to operate under lawful authority and act responsibly particularly with respect to handling information that may be considered sensitive.”

Dufresne, who was appointed Canada’s privacy commissioner in June 2022 by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, also told the committee that protecting privacy “is not just a set of technical rules and regulations.”

“Rather [it] represents a continuing imperative to preserve fundamental rights and democratic values even in exceptional circumstances,” he wrote.

Dufresne also said he will publish his first series of reports examining privacy complaints over federal pandemic measures by June 21.

Cabinet’s use of the Emergencies Act against the Freedom Convoy is one of the measures Dufresne’s report will examine.

“Measures taken by institutions to address a public order emergency should be necessary and proportionate. This applies both within the context of existing measures and in deciding on new actions taken to address a crisis. Necessary means that measures are more than potentially useful,” he wrote.

Complaints

Dufresne added that his report would also address a complaint by Conservative MP James Bezan concerning the unauthorized disclosure of personal information of certain Freedom Convoy donors online.

“We know that during the Freedom Convoy in the city, the government was harvesting data and that data was then shared by some means,” Bezan said in the House on Nov. 28, 2022. “With GiveSendGo, the data was mined off of it, shared on Google Maps and distributed across the country.”

“People’s individual financial information, the ultimate piece of privacy that should be protected, went across this country and the government failed to intervene.”

Dufresne said his office received a complaint from Bezan on March 15, 2022, saying that there had been a “series of breaches at a crowdfunding site that resulted in the exfiltration and partial publication of Canadians’ personal information.”

“We are currently investigating the breach, including whether the site had adequate safeguards in place and whether breach reporting requirements were met,” Dufresne wrote to the committee.

The privacy commissioner said he expects the investigation to be complete by this spring.