Privacy czar decries ‘gap’ in law for political parties handling personal info
OTTAWA — The fact that political parties are excluded from federal laws on handling personal information — such as social media data — amounts to “an important gap” that could jeopardize the integrity of the electoral process, Canada’s privacy czar says.
There should be a law governing the use of personal data by parties to prevent manipulation of the information to influence an election, privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien said Thursday in an interview.
“From a privacy perspective, personal information is unregulated with respect to political parties, so that’s clearly not a good thing,” Therrien said.
Neither of the two federal privacy statutes — one for government institutions, the other for private-sector organizations — covers political parties.