Lakeland MP Shannon Stubbs says Conservatives keep pressuring liberals to stop Stat Canada’s “unauthorized” breach of Canadian privacy.
Reports came out a couple weeks ago that Stat Canada had asked Canadian banks for financial and personal information of 500,000 citizens. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has defended what he calls an anonymous collection of data, saying that it is for statistical purposes and is “critical in ensuring government programs remain relevant and effective”. Stubbs believes the Liberal Government is now realizing the impact of the project, she says since the collection was reported they have changed their tune.
“They keep reiterating that it’s a pilot project, now that’s not what they said the first week but I think they are starting to get the message loud and clear from Canadians who’re upset and concerned about this overreach into their personal and private lives and that’s why they have suddenly changed their language.”
Stubbs says a couple of months ago Conservatives secured information on privacy breaches towards Canadians, she adds it was across all of the government through an access to information request.
“We have 800 pages that were given in that response of in some case tens of thousands of instances on each of the pages where the private information of Canadians was breached through the variety of different government departments across the whole of government.”
Stubbs says the opposition will continue the pressure to end the collection entirely, but if Liberals go through with it Canadians should be informed.
“If they are going to go ahead and not stop this then we are going to keep pressuring them to give these kind details to Canadians because Canadians have a right to know exactly why they are collecting that information and how it will be used and to be told about this government overreach into their lives.”