OPC welcomes ‘interim relief’ from budget pressures

The 2019 federal budget is boosting funding to the office of the privacy commissioner by $22 million over the next five years, following years of requests for more money to deal with new resource pressures. But the office admits it isn’t totally clear yet on what the new funding was set out for. The Liberal government’s election-year budget, tabled in the House of Commons Tuesday, sets out an extra $4 to $5 million a year for the privacy watchdog until 2023-2024. The office’s budget boost is noted in the back-pages of the federal budget, under the heading “Other Budget 2019 Measures” in a line-item titled “Protecting the Privacy of Canadians.” No other information was provided in the document. Finance department media relations manager Anna Arneson said in an email that the funds will “enhance the office’s capacity, including its ability to engage with Canadian individuals and businesses, address complaints, and respond to privacy issues as they occur,” although she didn’t have any additional information on the new funding. The commissioner’s office welcomed the announcement Wednesday but said it was still waiting to hear “further details about which activities this money will fund.” “We are awaiting information from the government, but we believe the funding should help us to provide better service to Canadians, reduce our investigative backlog and improve our engagement with businesses and Canadians,” said OPC spokesperson Tobi Cohen. “This is a step in the right direction and interim relief pending much needed legislative reform,” he added. “Unfortunately, rapidly evolving privacy threats have placed unprecedented pressure on our office’s finite resources.” The federal privacy watchdog has called for a boost to his office budget for a few years now. In 2017, Daniel Therrien said the office would need a “relatively modest increase in our budget” as it looks to take on bigger issues more proactively. In a letter the next year to the House of Commons ethics committee, Therrien asked for a 30 per cent permanent funding increase to its budget -- about $8 million in “interim relief.” The letter also said, though, that to have a “true impact in protecting Canadians’ privacy rights, a more realistic budget increase of $23M (90%) might be required.” “The former would allow us to undertake a limited number of proactive promotion and compliance activities and reduce but not eliminate our backlogs of complaints,” it said. “The latter would equip my office with a full suite of properly resourced Promotion and Compliance tools. We have already experienced a great deal of interest in our office providing more advisory services to business.” “Right now,” the letter continued, “our limited advisory program would not come close to meeting such expressed demand.” Therrien’s annual report last year also called for a more substantial budget increase. “While our modest ask for increased funding would have an interesting but limited impact, a significantly larger budget might be required to actually have a true impact in terms of protecting Canadians’ privacy rights, as envisaged by .” That committee had recommended boosting the commissioner’s enforcement powers. “This was the conclusion reached by the U.K. government recently, which decided to double the resources available to my counterpart, the Information Commissioner’s Office.” Ottawa is also granting $3 million this year to the information commissioner in a one-time funding bump to support access to information activities -- a system constantly under strain. — With reporting by Kyle Duggan at kduggan@thewirereport.ca, and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

OPC welcomes ‘interim relief’ from budget pressures

News | March 20, 2019

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OPC welcomes ‘interim relief’ from budget pressures

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