The committee met at 12:32 p.m.

Election of Chair and Deputy Chair

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant, Committees and Interparliamentary Relations): Good afternoon, committee members. Welcome to this first meeting of the Special Committee to Review the Personal Information Protection Act.

As it’s our first meeting, our first order of business is the election of a Chair. Are there any nominations?

M. Elmore: I nominate Rachna Singh for Chair.

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): Okay. Mable has nominated Rachna.

Do you accept the nomination?

R. Singh: I do accept it.

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): Any further nominations? Any further nominations? Seeing none, all those in favour?

Motion approved.

[R. Singh in the chair.]

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): Congratulations.

R. Singh (Chair): Thank you so much. I’m honoured to be Chair of this committee.

Now we have the other business of nominating and electing the vice-Chair. The nominations are open. Any nominations for vice-Chair?

S. Thomson: I’d like to nominate Dan Ashton.

R. Singh (Chair): Dan, would you accept the nomination?

D. Ashton: Yes, thank you.

R. Singh (Chair): All in favour?

Motion approved.

R. Singh (Chair): Congratulations. Thank you.

Now I’ll ask Susan to guide us through the process of this committee.

I’m new on this, so I would really like your input on this. Thank you so much, Susan.

Committee Workplan

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): Sure. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Members.

You have in front of you a package which includes a copy of the committee’s terms of reference, a copy of the Personal Information Protection Act and a copy of the last committee’s review, which was done in 2015.

As you may know, the Personal Information Protection Act, section 59, requires that a special committee review the act every six years. The last time the review was done…. The committee was appointed in February 2014 and reported in 2015. This is the third review of the act since the act came into force in 2004.

As you probably know, the act applies to private organizations — so not public bodies — and it governs the collection, use and disclosure of personal information. The committee has a year to do its work. Again, it’s prescribed in the act that the terms of reference are a year.

[12:35 p.m.]

Typically, the committee will hear from stakeholders, including the Ministry of Citizens’ Services and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, and then invite submissions — usually, again, from the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the ministry after the closing date for submissions. Then the committee drafts its report with its recommendations.

It would be up to the committee how they want to plan out in terms of when you want to hold the public consultations and where. They’re typically done in Victoria or Vancouver.

M. Elmore: Thanks, Susan.

I just have a question with respect to the public consultations. Is that, I guess, together with the stakeholder consultations? We announce the consultation period, so that’s where the stakeholders would come forward. Is that correct?

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): It’s entirely up to the committee. There can be invited stakeholders, and there can be a call for submissions from the public, either oral submissions or written submissions. It’s entirely up to the committee how it wants to proceed.

M. Elmore: In the previous reviews — how did the consultation…?

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): So they had an invited list of stakeholders. Actually, I should say a distribution list…

M. Elmore: …went out.

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): Over 200 stakeholders were notified that the committee was reviewing the act. Some chose to appear in person, and some chose to send in written submissions. There was also a general call for submissions from the public as well, and they could either appear or submit written submissions.

M. Elmore: Do you know offhand how many in-person submissions there were?

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): In terms of in-person submissions in the last report reviewed, there was one.

M. Elmore: Was that the Privacy Commissioner?

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): No, the Privacy Commissioner is in addition. The Privacy Commissioner and the ministry are considered submissions but also briefings, provide briefings.

In terms of stakeholders, there were, I think, three or four stakeholders that actually made in-person submissions to the committee. Four organizations, sorry. Four organizations and one individual made oral submissions, and the committee received 42 written submissions.

M. Elmore: Okay. It just gives an idea in terms of what the response will be.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just a question to staff. The hearings were conducted in Vancouver and Victoria last time. Is that correct?

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): I believe they were all in Victoria.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): In Victoria?

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): I’ll just have a quick look. Yes, they were all in Victoria.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just one thought. I know this isn’t like the Finance Committee, the travel involved in it. And I know budgets. We have to look at them, and we should be looking at them. But I hope the opportunity presents itself to take a look at other than Victoria — i.e., Vancouver and maybe up British Columbia somewhere. I’m just going to throw Prince George out, or somewhere else, to cover the north, because it is difficult for people to get down. I’ll just leave it at that.

I think there are opportunities to try and get more input into it. It’s great for us just to come to Victoria or to go to Vancouver, but to make sure that the province is aware of it.

A lot has changed in five years — a lot — especially with digital media and also the opportunities presented by Facebook, etc., and everything else. I just think there’s an opportunity to be a little bit more forthcoming to the citizens that we represent. But I’ll leave that to staff and the Chair.

R. Singh (Chair): We can definitely discuss that goal.

I remember that I was sitting on a committee to review the police complaint process, and we did Vancouver and Victoria for those number of meetings, and that covered most of British Columbia.

Definitely, that’s a really good suggestion that you have given. I’ll have a chat with Susan to find out more details about it.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): I appreciate it. Thank you.

R. Singh (Chair): Any other…?

S. Thomson: Do we have a mapped-out workplan or timeline in terms of…? I presume there’ll be a public announcement about the call for submissions and letter to stakeholders, timing around potential opportunities for direct public submissions, where we decide where it is and a workplan for that.

[12:40 p.m.]

Is that something that will get drafted and laid out for us in terms of what we anticipate over the next little while? I presume there’s an ad that goes in the publications and things like that, letting people know about the opportunity.

Maybe a little bit of how far we go and where we go and things like that may depend on the amount of requests. For instance, if we’re only going to have five submissions, as we did last time, then depending on who they are and where they come from, you may question whether you need to have another one in Prince George or something like that, just depending on the requests we get.

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): Thanks, Steve. Yes, we will prepare a workplan for the committee that would be approved by the committee before anything goes ahead. The workplan would include whatever locations the committee chooses. It would include an estimated budget of what it would cost, the advertising, timelines for report writing and meetings. It’ll be a fulsome overview of the timelines as well as all the aspects of the committee’s work.

We’re working on that, and at our next meeting, we’ll have that for the committee, as well as lists of stakeholders that could be invited. It’ll be a more fulsome discussion about what the committee would like to do.

R. Singh (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you so much, Susan. Thank you for all this information and all your support in this matter.

What we can do is…. Right now, this is the information we have. What would you suggest? Is the next process setting up more dates for the meetings, which you will send around?

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): Yes, the next meeting would be, as I said, to review a business plan and stakeholder lists. I’ll work with the Chair and Deputy Chair and find some dates that are convenient for committee members once we have the information assembled, and then we can go from there.

R. Singh (Chair): That’s great information. Thank you so much.

This was all the business we had for today. I need a motion to adjourn.

Okay. We are adjourned now, and hopefully we’ll get more information about the upcoming dates.

The committee adjourned at 12:42 p.m.