Bill C-4, a federal bill named “An Act respecting certain affordability measures for Canadians and another measure”, silently included a measure weakening privacy laws. The “[other] measure” would explicitly legislate that provincial and territorial privacy laws not apply to federal political parties and third-party services they employ. The bill provides for each party to create and publish its own privacy policy. It does not include a sufficiently robust federal regime to oversee this new change. This self-serving provision is dangerous as it undermines democratic processes, punishes grassroots movements that lack the digital firepower to rival their counterparts, and erodes privacy regulation in Canada.
This is an unwelcome setback in privacy policy. It provides a pathway for political campaign services to further merge with political parties. As each party is now responsible for its privacy policy, applications will have increased leverage with sensitive private information from party databases and vice versa. With this growing market, this unholy alliance between surveillance and politics will grow and pose a great threat to democracy. Campaign expenditures can be used to delegate privacy policies to third-party applications who can skirt enforcement as they hide behind their association with political parties. When local communities push back against privacy violations, they will no longer have their own local laws as a recourse.
Technologists for Democracy strongly condemns this provision, along with how it was silently added into a bill that has nothing to do with privacy. Democratic integrity is at stake and no one has asked for this.
