SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO REVIEW THE PERSONAL INFORMATION PROTECTION ACT
2014 Legislative Session: Second Session, 40th Parliament
SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO REVIEW THE PERSONAL INFORMATION PROTECTION ACT
SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO REVIEW THE PERSONAL INFORMATION PROTECTION ACT | |
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
9:00 a.m.
Douglas Fir Committee Room
Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C.
Present: Mike Bernier, MLA (Chair); George Heyman, MLA (Deputy Chair); Donna Barnett, MLA; Dr. Doug Bing, MLA; Simon Gibson, MLA; Sue Hammell, MLA; Marvin Hunt, MLA; Doug Routley, MLA
1. There not yet being a Chair elected to serve the Committee, the meeting was called to order at 9:03 a.m. by the Clerk to the Committee.
2. Resolved, that Mike Bernier, MLA, be elected Chair of the Special Committee to Review the Personal Information Protection Act. (Donna Barnett, MLA)
3. Resolved, that George Heyman, MLA, be elected Deputy Chair of the Special Committee to Review the Personal Information Protection Act. (Sue Hammell, MLA)
4. The Committee reviewed and discussed its terms of reference.
5. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 9:16 a.m.
| Mike Bernier, MLA Chair | Susan Sourial |
The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.
TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 2014
Issue No. 1
ISSN 1913-4746 (Print)
ISSN 1913-4754 (Online)
CONTENTS | |
Page | |
Election of Chair and Deputy Chair | 1 |
Committee Terms of Reference | 1 |
Chair: | * Mike Bernier (Peace River South BC Liberal) |
Deputy Chair: | * George Heyman (Vancouver-Fairview NDP) |
Members: | * Donna Barnett (Cariboo-Chilcotin BC Liberal) |
* Dr. Doug Bing (Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows BC Liberal) | |
* Simon Gibson (Abbotsford-Mission BC Liberal) | |
* Sue Hammell (Surrey–Green Timbers NDP) | |
* Marvin Hunt (Surrey-Panorama BC Liberal) | |
* Doug Routley (Nanaimo–North Cowichan NDP) | |
* denotes member present | |
Clerk: | Susan Sourial |
Committee Staff: | Byron Plant (Committee Research Analyst) |
TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 2014
The committee met at 9:03 a.m.
Election of Chair and Deputy Chair
S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): Good morning, Members, and welcome to our first meeting of the Special Committee to Review the Personal Information Protection Act. As this is our first meeting, we do not yet have a Chair or Deputy Chair. First order of the day is to elect a Chair. Are there any nominations?
D. Barnett: I nominate Mike Bernier as the Chair.
S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): Donna has nominated Mike. Any further nominations? Any further nominations? Any further nominations? Seeing none, I'll put the question.
Motion approved.
[M. Bernier in the chair.]
M. Bernier (Chair): It was a hard-fought battle. It's amazing when you're surrounded by good staff.
Thank you. I'm looking forward to this opportunity. The next issue that we have to go through is the election for Deputy Chair. I guess I will be calling for nominations for that.
S. Hammell: I'd like to nominate George Heyman.
M. Bernier (Chair): I guess we have to call three times for that too. Any other nominations? Second time, a third time. Seeing none, congratulations.
That was the hardest part of today. I'm going to turn things back over to Susan, and maybe we'll introduce Byron, too, as we go forward. Thanks, everybody, for all the work we're going to do on this committee. I'm looking forward to it. I'll turn things over to Susan.
Committee Terms of Reference
S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): As Mike mentioned, we have with us today Byron Plant, the committee research analyst for the committee. Some of you will be familiar with Byron from either the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services or the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth. You'll have worked with Byron before.
We've distributed a few documents for your review, to take away with you. We've got a copy of the act and a copy of the report of the last committee that reviewed the act, which was in 2008. The report was dated 2008. We are statutorily required to review the act every six years. The last time that was done was in 2008. Also, Byron has prepared a backgrounder for committee members which gives a bit of the historical context for the act, a legislative history, as well as some recent developments in Canada.
You may know that the act was introduced in 2003, and it came out of the recommendations of a special committee that was looking at information privacy in the private sector. That committee tabled a report in 2001, and one of those recommendations resulted in the creation of the act, which came into force in 2004. Essentially, the act prescribes how the private sector can collect, use and distribute personal information.
As I mentioned, the last review was…. The report was tabled in 2008, and at that time the committee felt that the act was working well and that large corporations had a good grasp of the act but that the public was not as aware of the purpose, rules and scope of the act.
Now, the committee made 31 recommendations. As I've said, I've left a copy of the act with you for your review. There have been no amendments to the act since that report was tabled. There were amendments. You'll see through the legislative history of the act that there have been amendments to the act, but not since 2008.
We're here — our office, parliamentary committees — to assist the members procedurally, administratively. Committee research will be available to prepare backgrounders and briefing notes.
I'll let Byron speak a little bit to some of the other services and deliverables that we provide.
B. Plant: Sure. Just very briefly, I'm the research analyst of the committee, so I will be assisting wherever necessary and providing research and analytical support. I will also assist with the preparation of the draft report.
As in previous statutory reviews, we will be producing a binder to help facilitate the process with relevant information, with backgrounders as a start to that. We'll be providing that at a later date to assist members with this process.
M. Bernier (Chair): Okay, thank you.
As I mentioned, today would be just an opportunity, really, to get our feet wet and get all this information. Are there any questions at this point, then, from anyone?
Going forward, one of the things we talk about, if it works for the committee, is the Deputy Chair and myself will get together with staff. We'll look at maybe some steps going forward and how we want to plan some future meetings and really look at how this wants to unfold. But for the next couple of weeks, obviously, we've been given some reading material to really let people wrap their heads around what we have in front of us.
More importantly, I think, looking at the last report will be really important, to look at what was done there. That will give us some context, going forward, for what's
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expected out of us for this one.
I think I remember this, though. Susan, timelines in order to have our report were…? We have to have a report in by next spring, was it?
S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): Yes. Essentially, the committee has a year from the day that it received its terms of reference to table its report. We received the terms of reference on February 25, so we have until February 25, 2015, to table the committee's report.
M. Bernier (Chair): Are there any further questions from anyone?
M. Hunt: Since we haven't looked at this yet and I'm just sort of flipping through, I'm trying to figure out: since they had 30-some recommendations, and none of which were responded to, that tells me what?
Does it tell me they were recommendations for amendments to the act, or were they just recommendations of policy, or were they just recommendations that said don't do anything? When I have that number of recommendations with no response, the first thing I have is a big question mark asking why.
S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): Yes. There's a summary of the recommendations on page 38. Some deal with the act. Some are higher-level recommendations.
One option: to begin the review, we could have both the ministry responsible for the act as well as the Information and Privacy Commissioner present to the committee and give an overview of what has changed since the last time the committee did the review. Certainly, there have been no changes to the act. But also, I think, with advances in technology, there have been a lot of changes in how personal information is handled.
D. Routley: I notice that many of the recommendations in the Alberta review were adopted. In fact, I think the review recommendations as a whole were adopted. I see the links in the printed copy here, but will we have links to their report and their recommendations and the subsequent act that was amended?
B. Plant: Yes, certainly, we'll provide this electronically, where the links will be functional. We can certainly compile that information as well.
S. Hammell: Mine follows more on what Marvin was saying. On page 38 some of these are recommendations that directly impact the act. Perhaps those can be highlighted. They're embedded in all these recommendations, right? If there was a way of clustering them or….
I mean, I kind of share Marvin's point of view. There were recommendations made. They haven't been implemented. We need some kind of understanding of why. Then that should be, I think, reflected back against what Doug is talking about — where changes have been made and why, from another point of view.
I assume some of this will come from the researcher, right? Some of this will be clarified rather than having all of us try to sort that out. It will be sorted out and put in front of us so we can understand the historical context of what we're dealing with.
S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): We'll do up a list of the amendments that were recommended. Some of the recommendations were that no amendment be made, so we're not going to touch those. But we'll make a list of the areas of the act where the committee had recommended amendments, so you'll have those in front of you. We won't be able to speak to why they weren't implemented. That will be up to, I think, the ministry responsible for the act.
M. Bernier (Chair): To your point, too, we'd also look at having the Privacy Commissioner and others come and make a presentation to us and give us an opportunity to ask more questions as well.
D. Routley: As part of the FIPPA review committee two years ago, we reviewed the previous report and recommendations that were made. Then, after collecting all the submissions and appearances at various meetings, we again went through the list of recommendations that were made and then refreshed them. Some we adopted as whole that had not been adopted by government and reintroduced them as new recommendations.
Maybe there's a two-stage process where we can review, collect information and then review that information against the previous recommendations, keep some, maybe not others — of course, at the pleasure of the Chair and vice-Chair.
M. Bernier (Chair): No, that's a good idea.
G. Heyman (Deputy Chair): Would there be any record anywhere of a response from the minister or the ministry on any of the recommendations? Or is it just the nature of this kind of committee…? I know that in Public Accounts, if the Auditor General makes recommendations, the ministry responds. That's different. That's an independent officer of the Legislature.
Is there a practice of actually having a response to a committee report, or is the response the action or inaction?
S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): In British Columbia the reports are tabled in the House, and there's no obligation on any ministry or on the government to respond
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to a committee report. Sometimes you will see, I guess, in a later review that the government has implemented recommendations from a committee, but there's no formal process of notifying the committee or indicating that these recommendations have been adopted.
M. Bernier (Chair): Okay, thanks. Any other questions at this time? I know, lots to read.
S. Gibson: Our apologies for our delay in arrival. We were in a meeting that we couldn't get away from.
M. Bernier (Chair): That's okay. We'll talk later.
S. Gibson: Thanks for your understanding.
M. Hunt: You'll be reprimanded later.
M. Bernier (Chair): Is there anything else you want to do?
With the committee’s indulgence, then, the Chair and Deputy Chair will get together with Susan and Byron. We'll have a bit of a strategy, plan of attack. Then we'll communicate back to everybody the next steps, at the next meeting. In the meantime, there's some great reading material to help you sleep at night to go forward. Okay?
With that, I'll thank everybody, and we will adjourn.
The committee adjourned at 9:16 a.m.
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