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OTTAWA—The Liberal government should move to impose privacy laws on political parties and actors in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandals, according to a parliamentary committee investigating the matter.
The House of Commons’ ethics committee recommended sweeping changes to Canada’s privacy regime, including “immediately” moving to implement tough new data protection standards similar to those recently adopted by the European Union.
The committee also recommended applying existing privacy laws to political parties — who currently enjoy few rules around the collection, storage and use of Canadians’ personal information — or drafting a new law to govern parties’ data use.
“The (Cambridge Analytica and Facebook) scandal has brought to light issues relating to mass data harvesting, the use of data for nefarious purposes, and the threats and challenges these questionable methods can create for democracies around the world,” the committee’s report, tabled in the House of Commons Tuesday morning, reads.
“The evidence that the committee has heard so far gives rise to grave concerns that the Canadian democratic and electoral process is similarly vulnerable to improper acquisition and manipulation of personal data.”
The all-party committee has for months been examining the fallout from revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a U.K.-based consulting firm, used the personal information of 87 million Facebook users to attempt to inform political campaigns and influence political outcomes.
The study has “only scratched the surface” of the problem, the report reads.
More to come.
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