84% of Albertans want privacy law to extend to political parties
New poll bolsters privacy commissioner's push for oversight after massive voter data breach.
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At least four in five Albertans believe the privacy law that applies to businesses should also cover political parties, according to a new Ipsos poll conducted for a B.C. privacy advocacy organization.
Alberta Information and Privacy Commissioner Diane McLeod says the poll results strengthen her long-standing call for her office to have oversight of political parties. This comes after a massive breach that exposed nearly three million Alberta electors' personal information in April.
Elections Alberta determined that the Republican Party of Alberta's legally obtained voter list—containing full names, street addresses, postal codes, phone numbers, and unique election identification numbers—ended up in the hands of the Centurion Project, a separatist group, and was posted in an online database.
McLeod called it "the worst breach in Canadian history involving voter data." She said the law currently prevents her from investigating the Republican Party, which she finds "troubling" and confusing to the public.
"I felt helpless, quite frankly," McLeod said in an interview Thursday. "As a person who's advocated for privacy rights for nearly 30 years, it's difficult to sit in a situation where someone is looking to you to do something and there's nothing you can do."
The Ipsos poll, conducted May 22-26 with 801 adults, also found about two-thirds of Albertans think political parties should have a legal duty to protect voter information and to inform regulators if there's a breach. McLeod and her predecessors have called for decades for Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act to apply to political parties. The provincial government is currently reviewing the act, which McLeod sees as a key opportunity to make the change.