Conservatives fail to protect Canadians’ personal information: Privacy czar

OTTAWA – New Democrats welcomed the privacy commissioner’s calls this week for the Conservatives to better protect Canadians’ privacy and personal information.

“Government has a duty to protect the privacy of Canadians, but since the Conservatives came to power, the personal information of over one million Canadians has been compromised – in over 3,000 privacy breaches,” said NDP Privacy and Ethics critic Charlie Angus (Timmins–James Bay). “And to make matters worse, most incidents were never reported to the Privacy Commissioner and the breaches weren’t properly tracked.”

The Privacy Commissioner’s briefing note, done in response to a question on the Order Paper from Angus, exposed worrisome patterns in how federal departments handle Canadians’ personal information.

“In February, I urged the Conservative-dominated privacy committee to study mandatory government data breach reporting but unfortunately the study never materialized,” said NDP Digital Issues critic Charmaine Borg (Terrebonne–Blainville). “The Conservative government simply hasn’t taken these privacy issues seriously enough – while Canadians are being put at greater risk of identity theft and other online fraud.”

Conservative failure to protect privacy came to the forefront last year after it was revealed that a 2012 privacy breach at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada put the personal information of over 600,000 Canadians’ at risk, and a Public Works and Government Services Canada breach compromised the privacy of another 350,000 people.