Senator Plett: I think that if you had been listening to my speech, Senator Dupuis, you would find out that, no, I’m not in agreement with that. We’ve dealt with this 17 times before, and each time it was rejected. I do believe in a democracy. If it is again rejected and next year somebody brings it forward — I’m only here for two more years, I only have two more kicks at this — I will oppose it the next two times, as I did the last time.

Do I agree that we have the right? No, I wish that we would kill this bill now. I’m not going to oppose it going to committee; it has been decided. I spoke today as the critic, Senator Dupuis. That in itself should tell you that I do agree with legislation being studied at committee. It will go to committee tonight.

Hon. Colin Deacon: I’ll finish off my last two sentences now. Like corporations and governments, political parties need to start adhering to strong international norms and give individual Canadians control over their personal data and its use. Not only is this resulting trust central to individual and collective sovereignty of Canadians, it’s foundational to our future prosperity and democracy. Thank you, colleagues.

Hon. Paula Simons: Senator Deacon, you touched quite disturbingly on the power of political parties and bad actors to weaponize this kind of data. But I wanted to ask about something much simpler. Given the low voter turnout that we’ve seen over the last decades, is there a danger that if people don’t feel that parties can be trusted to keep their data, that they won’t volunteer, that they won’t donate, that they won’t answer questions in a poll? What is the impact of this kind of lack of privacy protection on our day-to-day relationship with our democracy?

Senator C. Deacon: Thanks, Senator Simons. I would say that businesses will tell you how it affects customer bases. If the customer base doesn’t trust how they are using data, what data they’re collecting, what they’re using it for and how that benefits individuals, they tend to lose engagement with those customers.

I think the same may be true for voters, as 96% of Canadians have said they want political parties to have privacy protections. That’s a pretty clear number. There aren’t a lot of things that 96% of Canadians agree on.

I agree with the findings of the House of Commons Ethics Committee, which is that it undermines our democracy. It undermines things over time.

I know the House of Commons is not chomping at the bit to deal with this, but it is an issue that I think the Senate needs to be very well aware of. It’s worrisome that we haven’t seen any action yet. Thank you.