It gives federal political parties the power to collect and use your personal information without your consent, and with no independent oversight or accountability.
Political parties are rewriting the law to benefit only themselves. They’re using affordability as a trojan horse to hide it, counting on Canadians to stay silent.
Introduced at the same time as other controversial legislation FIPA President Mike Larsen drafted an editorial on Bill C-2 and C-4. We’ve called on The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Finance and National Revenue as the sponsor of Bill C-4 to Withdraw Part 4, and encouraged others to send messages to the Minister, House of Commons and Senate.
Implications and comparison
Here’s a comparison of the implications of Bill C-4 to your personal information between corporations, government security agencies, and the Federal Political Parties, their agents and operatives (FPPs).
Bill C-4 is an obvious attempt to dodge accountability. The BC Supreme Court held that current provincial laws “provide a measure of accountability” to federal political parties.[1] But the very political parties currently embroiled in these court challenges now want to grant themselves a permanent hall pass; free from provincial oversight, accountability, or consent.
This is a textbook conflict of interest. Political parties want the power to legislate how they collect and use your personal data while directly benefiting from that data. It’s unethical and undemocratic. And it sets a dangerous precedent that could ripple across the country, encouraging provinces to exempt their own political parties from privacy laws.
The potential for abuse is staggering. This bill would allow political parties, their candidates, and any of their agents to harvest and exploit your personal information with almost no restrictions. They can write their own privacy policies, enforce them themselves, and shield their activities from any independent oversight. You lose all control; no opt-out, transparency, or recourse.
And it gets worse: the bill is retroactive to the year 2000. Yes, you read that right. Bill C-4 would erase liability for over two decades of potential misuse of Canadians’ data, including the years before 9/11, before Facebook, before the scandals surrounding Cambridge Analytica and its BC-based partner, AggregateIQ. It’s a sweeping amnesty for past behaviour they don’t want scrutinized.
This Bill is also a national security risk. As outlined in our 2024 Foreign Interference Commission submission, misuse of personal information creates dangerous openings for foreign influence and manipulation. The less oversight there is, the greater the risk.
Regulator comments
BC OIPC’s Investigation Report P19-01
The BC OIPC’s Investigation Report P19-01 exposes the extent of personal information collected by federal political parties. This bill is being rushed and hidden because they never want you to see this kind of truth again.
Surname, Given name(s,) Date of birth, Residential address,
Mailing address, Email address, Phone number
Other Information about the Individual
Sex, Ethnicity, Age, Language(s),
Religion, Income, Education, Familial relations
Family or marital status, Profession, Workplace name, Job title
Profession status (e.g. practicing or nonpracticing), Number of years at residential address, Neighbourhood demographics, Issues of interest to the individual
Political support tier /score, Ease of persuasion tier / score, Do not call or Do not contact notices, LinkedIn ID, Twitter ID, Facebook ID, Skype ID
Party Participation Data
Party membership status, Type of membership, Prospective member, Volunteer status,
Volunteer availability, Interest in a lawn sign, Donor status (monthly, one-time), Donation amount,
Date of donation, Previous election support level, If the individual subscribes to communications, What communications were sent and when,
Internal working group membership,
Financial Information
Personal cheque or credit card number, Name as shown on credit card, Card expiry, Signature
Election BC Data (Voters List / Voter participation data)
Electoral district, Electoral District Code, Voting area code, Previous or current election voter number
Voting card number, Federal riding, Party’s share of votes in an individual’s riding, Voting location
Municipal District, If the individual has voted in the current election, If/when the individual voted in the last election (advanced v. general voting day)
“No federal privacy laws currently apply to federal political parties. At this time, British Columbia is the only jurisdiction in Canada that regulates the privacy practices of political parties.”
Recommendation 1: Bill C-4 should establish requirements for political parties to identify the purposes for which personal information is collected, seek consent (subject to express authority in the legislation), limit collection, use and disclosure, and provide a mechanism for access and correction to personal information under their control.
Recommendation 2: Bill C-4 should reintroduce previously proposed privacy breach notification provisions, expanding upon them to require that breaches be reported to affected individuals as well as to a relevant, independent body such as the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Elections Canada and/or the Commissioner of Canada Elections without unreasonable delay and no later than seven calendar days after a political party becomes aware of the breach.
Recommendation 3: Bill C-4 should allow for formal collaboration between my Office, the Commissioner of Canada Elections and Elections Canada.
Scandalous considerations
Why Cambridge Analytica Still Matters — And Bill C-4 Should Scare You
Remember Cambridge Analytica? The company that misused millions of Facebook profiles to manipulate elections like Brexit and the Trump campaign?
Well, Canada may be opening the same door.
Part 4 of Bill C-4 would exempt federal political parties from privacy laws—giving them the green light to collect, use, and share your personal information without independent oversight. Sound familiar?
In the UK, AggregateIQ—a Canadian company—used similar data tactics for the Brexit campaign. People were targeted based on their emotions, fears, and vulnerabilities. Most had no idea their data was being used that way.
Here in Canada, we’ve been warned. Privacy experts, ethics committees, and even Elections Canada have said political parties must follow privacy rules like everyone else. But instead of fixing the problem, the federal government is making it legal for parties to write their own privacy rules—and mark their own homework.
We don’t need to guess what happens when political organizations exploit personal data unchecked. We’ve seen the damage.
Current court battles
The NDP, Liberals, and Conservatives are fighting to prevent British Columbia privacy practices applying to the federal political parties.
Q1 – Public expectations around accountability and governance
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements:
1.5 I expect all political parties and their candidates to collect, protect and respect my personal information by complying with provincial privacy laws.
The combined data tables from the poll are accessible here.
Canadian fair information principles
Canadian information principles extend back to 1996 with CAN/CSA-Q830-96Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information. FIPA believes those principles have rightly been considered to apply to every every sector. They have informed Privacy as well as Access to Information legislation governing the management of personal information in public bodies and private organizations ever since. They are most recently evident in PIPEDA fair information principles . The Canada Elections Act is relatively silent on privacy and does not conform to these principles.
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