QUEEN’S PARK - The Ontario PC Caucus wants Elections Ontario to provide answers about the breach of privacy – the largest in Canadian history – resulting from the loss of unencrypted voter information, Ontario PC Accountability Critic John O’Toole said today.
The Ontario PC Caucus wants the Chief Electoral Officer, Greg Essensa, to appear before a Standing Committee of the Legislative Assembly to explain the deficiencies listed by Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner in a report tabled today. “We are all accountable to the people of Ontario,” Mr. O’Toole said.
The Information and Privacy Commissioner said in her news release today, “personal information is the currency in which Elections Ontario trades.”
“I’m disappointed that such a privacy breach could occur in the first place,” O’Toole said. “What’s more alarming is how Elections Ontario, even up until a week ago, failed to correct its course by continuing to use unencrypted data.”
“The privacy of up to 2.4 million Ontarians has been breached,” O’Toole said. “It seems the opposition parties are the only ones looking out for the people of Ontario. How many scandals do we have to have before this government recognizes its own incompetence on almost every file?”
It has taken nearly four months for the Chief Electoral Officer to bring this situation to the attention of Ontarians and the Legislature. Furthermore, rolling this out in the doldrums of summer when the House was not sitting is unacceptable.
“While I appreciate that Elections Ontario is an independent agency, this seems to be yet another scandal happening under the watch of the tired and scandal plagued McGuinty Liberal government,” O’Toole added.
O’Toole recently wrote both the Chief Electoral Officer and the Information and Privacy Commissioner to get more information on how the privacy breach could occur. Furthermore, despite the breach, elections Ontario continued to use unencrypted information until very recently.
O’Toole said it is important that we get answers quickly. “Why is it that Elections Ontario continued to do the wrong thing twice? Why is it that Election’s Ontario has failed to protect our privacy?”
The public must be made fully aware of what went on, what is the nature of the criminal investigation currently taking place, and what continues to apparently go wrong with Elections Ontario.
O’Toole concluded “Tim Hudak and the Ontario PC Caucus will work with the other parties to put in place proper protocols to restore the faith of Ontarians in Elections Ontario and keep residents safe from ID theft.”
