The Department of Justice has released its Charter Statement for Bill C-4, the affordability measures bill that also exempts political parties from the application of privacy protections on a retroactive basis dating back to 2000. The provisions give political parties virtually unlimited power to collect, use and disclose personal information with no ability for privacy commissioners to address violations. Charter statements are designed to identify Charter rights and freedoms that may potentially be engaged by a bill and provide a brief explanation of the nature of any engagement, in light of the measures being proposed. The Bill C-4 Charter statement is notable for its brevity:

The Minister of Justice has examined Bill C-4, An Act respecting certain affordability measures for Canadians and another measure, for any inconsistency with the Charter pursuant to his obligation under section 4.1 of the Department of Justice Act. This review involved consideration of the objectives and features of the Bill. In reviewing the Bill, the Minister has not identified any potential effects on Charter rights and freedoms.

The finding that there are no Charter effects is surprising since the Department of Justice examined many of the same provisions in the Bill C-65 Charter statement and concluded that they engaged Section 2(b) (freedom of expression) and Section 3 (democratic rights) of the Charter. The political party privacy rules in Bill C-4 are a weaker version of Bill C-65 as both seek to override provincial privacy protections but Bill C-4 drops provisions on security breach disclosure and restrictions on the sale of personal information. However, many of the core provisions, including the need for a privacy policy, the elimination of provincial privacy rules, and the role of the Elections Act, are the ones that just last year were invoked in the Bill C-65 Charter statement.

The arguments in that statement were very weak. For example, it argued that the provisions “would support the development of, and compliance with, context-sensitive rules addressing fundamental privacy principles recognized in other federal privacy law regimes”, while failing to acknowledge that the rules are missing many of the core elements of private sector privacy law and entirely sideline Canada’s privacy enforcement framework.

Yet at least the government recognized that privacy reforms have Charter implications. With Bill C-4, the government has either changed its mind and no longer believes that privacy measures have Charter effects or perhaps the decision to bury the political party privacy provisions in an affordability measures bill were so effective that the Department of Justice missed them entirely by not reading to the end. I’m not sure what is worse, but the tire fire that is Bill C-4 continues to blaze.