Senator Milne: I believe there has never been a complaint about the release of historic census data. As far as I have been able to discover in my search and from the search done by others of the Canadian, British and American records - and over the last 92 years that adds up to about 160 million people - there has never been one complaint in any one of the three countries. At present, in Newfoundland, the 1945 census information is available to the public and there have been no complaints whatsoever. Thus, I have some problems with lengthening the period of time. I think that 92 years is a perfectly reasonable and historically valid period of time in Canada. On the one hand, census data is time sensitive. On the other hand, if we were to be bound by the wishes of the dead, we would all be carrying stones up pyramids for some long dead pharaoh. Mr. Phillips: Until somebody invented a better machine. I understand what you say. However, there must be some more examination of these issues. That is the best case I can make. It is not for me to ask questions here, so I will try to make my point otherwise. I ask myself: What is the point of writing a will in which I wish to make some disposition of my personal papers when half of the information is being let out anyway? Is there a complete extinction of a person's rights to privacy because of death? I think not; otherwise, we would not bother writing wills. Senator Milne: Am I correct that the provisions of a will extend 25 years after death? Mr. Phillips: The Privacy Act stipulates that information cannot be disclosed for 20 years after the death of a person. If I were drafting the bill, I would have changed that provision. Senator Carstairs: Mr. Phillips, I should like to address a slightly different area. You mentioned the social insurance number. My sense is that people feel intimidated and do not want to provide information that they do not have to give, but they do because they feel a certain pressure to submit that information. I will give you an example. Standing in line at Canadian Tire, I was among a group of people, all passing in their Visas or alternate credit cards, and underneath the line provided for their signature was another space where they were to provide their telephone number. Six people in the line all provided their phone numbers, but I refused to provide that information and, to be fair, the clerk did not question me when I did not fill in that space. Canadians feel that they must give information if it is requested. How do you deal with that as an issue? Mr. Phillips: That is a very good point. The only way you can deal with that, senator, is to educate the public about the hazards involved in voluntarily giving out personal information. Companies will ordinarily ask for more information than is ever required to do a transaction because they want it for their files for marketing purposes. If you decline to give it, 99 times out of 100, it will make no difference to them. They will transact the business in any event. However, if you wish to provide the information, many inducements are offered, inducements such as lowered premiums. In a sense, they are offering to pay you, or at least give you a chance to get something for nothing. The interest of Canadians in knowing what happens to their information is growing. I think recent events have probably demonstrated that more clearly than anything else to which I could point. I do not want to reopen a discussion about the census here, but if people do not know - and if they are dead it is hard to know - then you will not get many complaints. That is why many institutions and companies do not make a point of telling the public what they are doing with the information. We are now reaching a new age. Bill C-6 will see to that. Companies will have to disclose their informational practices. That is the way to develop a civilized relationship. You must have transparency so that both sides know what is going on. Senator Carstairs: Do you know of any educational programs, particularly in high schools or of any junior high programs which explain privacy rights to young people? Mr. Phillips: Yes, I do. Currently, the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario is developing a program for distribution throughout the Ontario school system, primarily at the secondary and post-secondary levels, dealing with these consumer issues. My office has never had a public education mandate. However, under Bill C-6, we will be given one. If we are given some reasonable funds to do it, which is always the next important question, we will be doing that kind of work. Senator Kinsella: Building on this point, commissioner, at page 48 of your report you mentioned that, heretofore, the Commissioner has no legislative mandate to educate the public about information privacy rights. Are you satisfied that need will be responded to in the new regime? Mr. Phillips: The answer to that question is both practical and theoretical. No privacy commissioner would ever be satisfied that enough funds were made available for that purpose because it is open-ended. That is to say, the more dollars you get, the more educational work you can do. If the question is whether will we have enough for it, well, it will not be of a Cadillac style. Our funding discussions are still going on and they will be ample, as far as I can see, for the introductory phases of Bill C-6. However, whether there will be enough left over for a serious public education mandate remains to be seen. I have to grant the Treasury Board some slack here because it is very difficult at this stage of the game to know how much business Bill C-6 will generate by way of complaint investigations, audits, and so on, which can chew up resources in a great hurry. My hope is that the volume will not be great and that, in the beginning phases of Bill C-6, it will take a while to catch on so that we can get a good educational program going, but I just do not know. Senator Kinsella: I should like to draw the attention of honourable senators to page 65 of your report, where you speak of the Longitudinal Labour Force File, which has been very much in the news this last little while. In the second paragraph, on page 65, you write: Successive Privacy Commissioners have assured Canadians that there was no single federal government file, or profile about them. We were wrong... When, commissioner, did your office come to the conclusion that you were wrong about that and there was a single government file on Canadians? Mr. Phillips: I will try to give you the short history of the Longitudinal Labour Force File and our involvement. First, you must understand that we have limited audit resources. I had four people available at that time, in 1997. Given the colossal size of HRDC, and because it was responsible for supervising so many programs and originating programs that dealt with the personal lives of Canadians, we wanted to have a look at their personal information holdings and the management thereof. I wrote to the then deputy minister and asked if, rather than invoking our formal audit authority, a team could come over and do a thorough sit-down review of all their databases to see what was in them and what was happening. I had 100 per cent cooperation in that review. I want to make that clear. In the course of going over all these holdings, we encountered the Longitudinal Labour Force File. We asked what it was and they told us. My staff examined it and had some questions about it. Senator Kinsella: When was that? Mr. Phillips: It would have been in 1998 that we responded formally to the department, saying that we were very concerned about the Longitudinal Labour Force File. Senator Kinsella: When was the first time that Canadians were made aware of the existence of a single file? Mr. Phillips: In the broad sense of the general public at large knowing about it, this would have occurred as a consequence of this year's annual report. When we encountered the Longitudinal Labour Force File, we then engaged in a conversation back and forth, over the ensuing two years, in an effort to redress what I thought were serious problems. Having failed to get it done that way, I felt it was necessary, at that stage of the game, to inform Parliament. The duty of the commissioner is to inform Parliament about significant developments in information management by the government. That is why it is there. Senator Kinsella: Maybe other senators will be pursuing this matter. [Translation] Senator Bolduc: Mr. Phillips, today we heard Minister Stewart say that she was dismantling the file. Are you satisfied with the minister's decision, or are there still problems bothering you? [English] Mr. Phillips: I am not just satisfied with the minister's decision; I am delighted by it. I say this on behalf of Minister Stewart. In so doing, I realize that I may be treading into places I ought not to go, but it has been my experience from past dealings with this particular minister on privacy issues that when she has been fully informed and on top of the case, she has responded very quickly. The protocol they presented to me last week for discussions could not have been much improved upon if I had written it myself. It contains the ingredients for the proper management of data in a way that allows for transparency in public reporting so that people know what is going on. It has put in place a proper process for conducting research projects by which, first, you define the project and identify the information necessary for its completion, and then you go out and get the information. Second, it subjects all those research projects to a proper process of review by qualified experts, and it involves the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in a monitoring capacity. Third, the minister has agreed that the legal framework surrounding database usage needs to be improved and has obtained the concurrence of the Minister of Justice. I expect that will be addressed. That is one of the things we have been pressing for. There are a couple of other issues there. An advisory committee will be established - not a review committee, which might have been a little better - and my office will be a member of that committee, which will look at data-based management in the department. Those are all things that were not present in the database as it was constructed originally. Essentially, what we had there was an ever-growing mountain, lake, ocean - you name it. It was "ever-growing" because they kept dumping in more and more personal information for no defined purpose except "research," which is a fairly elastic term. It stood the whole process on its head. First, we will get all this information; then we will all sit around and think of a way to use it. That was bad to begin with. I have no doubt that the people who did this were well motivated. I do not have any problem there. As one of my staff said, doubtless those people thought they were doing the right thing, but were they asking the right questions? Yes, the minister was quite right when she said in her earlier responses that the database did comply with the strict letter of the Privacy Act. However, it did not, in my opinion, comply with the spirit of the act as expressed by the guiding principles that are at the forefront of that act, which are, as far as this database is concerned, that you do not use information for unrelated purposes without the consent of the person from whom you received it in the first place. You do not disclose it without the consent of the person from whom you received it. Those are the rock-bottom principles of respect for people's privacy rights. This database did not comply. There are extremists in my office, and we recognize - and so does the Privacy Act - that there are occasions when governments, for good reasons, must collect information or use it or disclose it without getting consent. However, constructing a database of this nature for such a vaguely defined purpose did not comply with the spirit of the act. It met the test of the law, but when you are dealing with a rights issue, more than a lawyer's view of the law matters. There are essential questions: What is the right thing to do? Does this reflect the spirit and the ethics as well as the letter of the law? Senator Bolduc: Are you confident that the message is clear that the information contained in our tax returns will remain with the Department of Revenue? (1730) Mr. Phillips: No, I cannot give you that guarantee. I can tell you that the income tax information that was contained in that database was, in fact, returned to Revenue Canada. That is because my staff was there to see that done. It is now back with Revenue Canada. That is not to say that Revenue Canada will not, at some future time, share it with somebody else. There is a common misconception among the public at large that information given to Revenue Canada goes there, stops there, and goes nowhere else. That is quite wrong. Revenue Canada has hundreds of information-sharing agreements with other departments of government and other governments, both domestic and foreign, for the sharing of income tax information. Let us not all panic about that. Some of this is necessary sharing. Senator Bolduc: I can understand that process when it is between revenue departments. It is reasonable. The federal service is doing its job. However, I was scandalized when I heard that our tax reform information was going outside of that department. I have been in the civil service for 35 years. Mr. Phillips: There is one point I want to make about all of this. The essential element of transparency was absent here, and it is also absent with respect to Revenue Canada's information-sharing agreements. I think it is high time that a lot more attention be paid to informing the public about what the government is doing. The more the public knows, the less alarmed the public will be. There has been an extraordinary reaction to this labour force file. However, I think there should be a much better educated public about the necessity and uses of information, and by and large the very responsible way in which it is handled. If that information were out, and if the government made a point of regularly informing the public, we would not have the kinds of responses that we got with this issue. We might not have the labour force file, to be sure, but trust and confidence depends on knowing what is happening. That is the bottom line. Senator Andreychuk: Perhaps I could follow up in that area. A number of bills on taxation about the sharing of information with other countries have come through the Senate. It was a surprise to us to find out that, when we sign a tax agreement with another country, Revenue Canada, and its predecessor, would assess whether a certain tax system was viable and whether those other countries had processes and procedures of which we should be aware. Does the Canadian public know that, when they work in another country where we have signed a tax agreement, their information will be processed by that government and that that Canadian will not have even the assurances, however minimal, we have in Canada? Have you looked at that area at all? It is a growing field because we are signing taxation agreements with a whole host of countries with which we did not anticipate signing such agreements. Mr. Phillips: I regret to say that the answer to that, senator, is no. It is a darned good idea, and maybe sometime we will get around to it. We will certainly take note of what has been said here. I must tell this committee that, early in my own time as a privacy commissioner, while considering the act and the very broad authorities that are given to the government for sharing information in a way that circumvents the basic principles of the act, I did try to get a handle on the scope of information sharing in the government. We circulated a questionnaire to all departments asking them to tell us the number of sharing agreements that they had, and the particulars of what they were sharing. I think it would be embarrassing to those departments if I were to drag that document out today because the return was, I knew on the face of it, "incomplete," using is the most generous word that occurs to me. I subsequently discovered that the reason for that was that they did not have a very good catalogue themselves. Just two days ago I returned from a meeting of my provincial counterparts in Winnipeg. The subject of information sharing was on the agenda. They are all most anxious to see what kind of information sharing is being done between federal and provincial governments, for what purpose, and the details. I would include in that, senator, foreign governments. Yes, indeed, a lot of Canadian citizens' information does, I am sure, become involved in those transactions, and we should know about that. I would like to return to the point I made a few moments ago. This is not to imply that there is necessarily anything wrong with any of this information sharing. On the contrary, I am sure most of it is necessary, and for the public's benefit. Nevertheless, I am not at all certain that the end users feel that they are under the same obligation as the Government of Canada of safeguarding the information and not misusing it. It is a field ripe for careful study.