With elections coming up from coast-to-coast, the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA) is pleased to release a new section of its online help topics, Your Political Privacy. This resource provides a guide for individuals and groups to better understand and exercise control over their personal information during an election.
The right to vote in a free and fair election is fundamental to our society. Any transparent democratic event has specific laws and processes that govern how political parties and candidates can collect and use personal information personal information. These often intersect the legal frameworks that govern privacy rights.
Every Canadian is entitled to exercise their democratic rights free from violations of their privacy. Each level of government, province and territory, has different rules about how their elections authority may collect, use, and share voter information to administer elections. Laws also vary in how that information is shared with political entities like candidates and political parties and how it may be used.
This guide provides a frank overview of both the good and the bad. It also shares your local options and the contact information for removing or redacting your personal information from the list of registered electors, or voters lists where allowed.
The guide also provides a comprehensive resource to assess gaps in voter privacy protection that can inform law reform efforts in this area. Though privacy law can protect voters’ information when used for official electoral purposes, some parties and politicians do not want to respect Canadians’ privacy. In fact, the federal Liberal Party, Conservative Party, and New Democratic Party all continue to fight a BC court decision that ruled they are subject to BC privacy law.
A big FIPA thank you to our legal researchers for compiling and updating this resource to make it available to you. The first draft was created in 2023 by FIPA legal researcher, Gage Smith, which has now been updated this summer.
Provincial Elections in 2024
This guide is here to help you understand:
The foundations section spells our core concepts. The privacy and political entities page details how political entities, such as political parties, can legally access, use, and disclose your personal information. Resources then detail specific considerations in federal, provincial, and municipal guides. Resources then highlight complaint mechanisms and how you can prevent unauthorized uses or have an unauthorized use investigated. Source material is linked throughout the resource, with Canadian election privacy frameworks providing added links to primary material.
The core concepts around political privacy laws, and the distinction between a register of electors and voters list.
What you should know about how political entities, such as political parties, can legally access, use, and disclose your personal information.
What you should know about the collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information that is collected for a federal election.
What you should know about the collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information that is collected for a provincial election.
By Province and Territory: Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Yukon
What you should know about the collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information that is collected for a municipal election.
Regarding your personal information collected for an election, here are steps you can take to:
Links to important legislation and complaint mechanisms.