Opinion: BC privacy rule over political party data collection is a victory for voter privacy

Colin Bennett is a professor of political science at the University of Victoria where he studies dateriven elections. He has written and helped develop many articles and reports on privacy and elections new guidelines on the Council of Europe’s political campaign.

On March 1, the British Columbia Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner issued a very important decision requiring federal political parties to respect BC privacy laws when collecting, using or publishing personal data about residents of the province.

This is a significant victory not only for the privacy of the voters, but for the integrity of our elections and democracy. It should bring more transparency to the way political parties use data about Canadian voters in their campaigns.

Contemporary elections in Canada, as elsewhere, are date-driven. Political parties have become increasingly sophisticated in counting voters, mainly through social media. When Michael McEvoy, BC’s privacy commissioner, surveyed provincial parties in 2019, he found that they collect a variety of sensitive details about voters – such as income, ethnicity and religious association – from a variety of sources, and often without their knowledge and consent. . Data brokers help parties in these endeavors.

BC privacy law applies to federal political parties, commissioner office finds

It is a risky process, which is why most advanced democracies apply their privacy laws to political parties. The Gold Standard for Privacy, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, refers to political data as a sensitive category of information that is collected only with the express consent.

In Canada, data governance experts, regulators, and civil liberties associations have for years ensured that federal political parties are governed by the same legal principles that apply to all other private not-for-profit organizations and businesses. Digital rights advocates have cynically criticized the excerpts of political parties from the federal government’s recent data protection law – the Digital Charter Implementation Act. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has repeatedly made the same recommendation to Parliament, only to ignore it.

Voters vote. In a 2019 survey by Campaign Research and commissioned by the Center for Digital Rights, the vast majority of Canadians said they were subject to political parties under robust privacy regulations. In the wake of so many scandals and abuses of digital campaigning in recent years, arguments for more transparency and independent surveillance are undisputed.

The recent BC decision for federal political parties came after three residents asked the Liberal, Conservative, NDP and Greens for the personal information the parties had about them. The parties responded, but the complaints were not satisfied. Supported by the Center for Digital Rights, she complained to Mr McEvoy, who opened an investigation.

The NDP, Liberals and Conservatives then replied that the Privacy Commissioner had no jurisdiction over their data operations. (The Green Party did not challenge the lawsuit.) As federal organizations, they have argued that they are not bound by BC’s Personal Information Protection Act, a provincial privacy law. Mr.

What is so interesting is how the three parties fought so hard this case, hiring high-power law firms to get back on the claim of the Privacy Commissioner of the jurisdiction. They presented exceptional arguments that only led to reinforce how critical the unregulated collection of voter data is for their operations.

The NDP claims that the BC Privacy Act was an unconstitutional expression of provincial power and that it violated the guarantee of suffrage and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Liberals have argued that they are not “organizations” within the meaning of the law. Each of the parties has argued that the provincial law “above all” frustrates federal laws and in particular the electoral law, and that it hinders the exclusive power of the federal government over federal elections.

But the electoral law does not protect the full range of personal data that parties can collect – it only applies to the use of the list of registered voters. And the Electoral Commissioner has already refused to investigate how the parties use the voter list as a basis for their internal databases.

After a very detailed legal analysis, Mr Loukidelis rejected these arguments and concluded that the law is constitutional, its definition of “organizations” applies to the federal political parties and that it is not replaced by the federal law. He presented the victory to the three BC residents.

But in this case, it is not just about the rights of these specific voters to access their data. Privacy regulations impose much broader obligations on parties to collect, process and publish personal data only with the consent of the individual. That’s what it’s about and why the parties have fought so hard against this case. The BC Data Protection Commissioner’s order would also mean some rules in the province, and another for the rest of Canada.

So what practices are trying to hide from political parties? Why should compliance with this law be considered as such a threat to their interests? If nothing goes wrong, they should not fear that an expert regulator will lift the lid on their practices, advise them on good privacy and security management, and give Canadians the insurance they need.

The decision of the BC Data Protection Commissioner may seem like a small step, but it could be a big leap to protect the privacy of voters and improve the integrity and transparency of our elections.

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