Your Data. Your Vote.

The loopholes politicians have built for themselves

As long as a party posts a privacy policy — however toothless — they can do nearly anything they want with your personal information.  

Here's where things stand: 

• No independent oversight. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has no authority to scrutinize how parties handle your data. 

• No meaningful penalties. Parties that fail to meet even the minimal existing requirements are unlikely to face any real consequences. 
• No real limits. Internationally accepted standards say reasonable data collection should be necessary and proportionate. Parties don't have to meet these basic standards. 
• No access rights. You can't find out what a party knows about you, ask them to correct mistakes, or delete your data if you don’t want them profiling you.

Everyone believes in privacy accountability… except the parties themselves

Privacy regulators, election experts, and the public have all consistently told the government we need privacy protections to apply to political campaigning. Even Parliamentary and Senate committees say permanent party exemption from privacy law is unacceptable.  

But the federal Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP have not only refused to permit any meaningful oversight of their activities; they’ve worked together to thwart it!  

Over the last few years, they’ve initiated court challenges and forced through legislation, most recently Bill C-4, that effectively excludes them from normal privacy obligations that would otherwise apply under provincial laws. They’ve even granted themselves immunity from past violations of these privacy laws—going back to the year 2000. 

Privacy is not partisan. With AI already supercharging voter micro-targeting, we need real privacy oversight over all party activities in place today. The basic integrity of our democracy depends on getting it right.

The parties won’t change their tune – unless voters force them to

The House of Commons recently adopted Bill C-4 almost unanimously. They will never do the right thing for our privacy on their own accord. But if enough Canadians speak up, we can force them to act.

A Parliamentary petition with many thousands of signatures will confront Members of Parliament with their own inaction and force the House of Commons to consider including federal parties in privacy legislation.