The B.C. court ruling could force political parties across Canada to reveal publicly how much data they are gathering about voters.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
Federal political parties have lost their bid to keep tight control over the information they gather about individual voters after a B.C. court ruled they are subject to the investigative powers of provincial privacy commissioners.
The federal Liberals, NDP and Conservatives had argued that B.C.’s privacy commissioner does not have the authority to force them to turn over the data, but in a ruling earlier this week, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Gordon Weatherill disagreed.
The ruling could force political parties across Canada to reveal publicly how much data they are gathering about voters as they compete for electoral advantage.
“The ability of an individual to control their personal information is intimately connected to their individual autonomy, dignity and privacy. These fundamental values lie at the heart of democracy,” Justice Weatherill wrote.
The collection of data about individual voters – their names, ages and potentially even their occupations and political leanings – is mostly unregulated by either federal or provincial law. This ongoing regulatory vacuum leaves ordinary Canadians with no established legal right to inquire about how much data is being kept on them by political parties, critics say.
In 2019, three anonymous B.C. citizens tried to change this by petitioning the parties for the release of their data. They also launched a follow-up legal complaint with the province’s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, an entity that has recourse to some of the strongest provincial privacy laws in Canada.
But the three federal political parties banded together and hired lawyers to argue the privacy commissioner’s investigation could not go ahead because federal entities are not subject to provincial privacy laws.
Justice Weatherill rejected that argument, ruling the B.C. privacy watchdog’s powers do extend to federal political parties. This oversight function is vital because political parties are getting more sophisticated in terms of collecting data about who may vote for their candidates, he found.
“The rapid advancement of technological tools allowing for the harvesting of private information for the purpose of profiling and micro-targeting voters has created risks of misuse of personal information,” Justice Weatherill wrote. His ruling says that federal laws leave this issue unaddressed.
“The Parliament of Canada has not yet taken any significant action. The Legislature of the British Columbia has.”
The federal political parties have the right to appeal.
“We are currently reviewing the decision,” said Parker Lund, a spokesman for the federal Liberal Party.
NDP spokeswoman Alana Cahill said in an e-mail her party is also reviewing the ruling. But she added that privacy laws need “to be uniformly applied across the country” and that “allowing provincial bodies to determine how federal political parties operate in different jurisdictions will create a patchwork approach across the country that is unmanageable.”
In 2019, a B.C. review of data by the province’s privacy commission found that provincial political parties kept some surprisingly detailed records about voters. Database fields went beyond voters’ names, addresses and phone numbers and included records about their jobs and workplaces, ethnicities, marital status, social-media handles. At times, even “issues of interest to the individual” and their “ease of persuasion“ was among the information noted.
Jim Balsillie, who founded the Centre for Digital Rights, said his group funded the legal challenge. He said federal parties may keep records at least as detailed as those found to be collected by B.C. political parties.
“This is an exceptionally important ruling because we finally have a beachhead here of transparency,” said Mr. Balsillie, who is best known as the former co-CEO of Research in Motion (now named BlackBerry).
In an interview he said that artificial intelligence could accelerate political surveillance in Canada and that it behooves federal political parties to reveal more about their data-gathering practices.
“It’s troubling we live in a country where political parties are so contemptuous of the basic privacy rights of Canadians,” Mr. Balsillie said. “What are they trying to hide?”
University of Victoria political-science professor Colin Bennett said that the B.C. ruling may inspire better federal laws or lead other provinces to tackle political parties’ use of data in their own privacy legislation.
“It’s a very, very strong statement of privacy rights, a strong statement that the provincial law should apply here,” he said.
In an e-mailed statement, lawyers Bill Hearn and Young Park, who acted for the complainants, said that the federal political parties have 30 days to file a notice of appeal. If no appeal is filed, B.C.’s privacy commissioner could proceed with its investigation of the 2019 complaint from the voters.
In a statement from the commissioner’s office, Noel Boivin said the commissioner is consulting with its legal team to determine next steps.