The Centre for Corporate & Public Governance has received numerous inquiries from customers of Rogers Communications Inc. in connection with a breakdown in the safeguarding of the credit records of certain customers. The Centre notes with concern that it has taken the company five months to make information regarding the breach available to the public. Such delay is unacceptable and should again sound alarm bells with federal policy makers.
The incident comes on the heels of major breaches of privacy involving customer financial information at Winners Stores and the mysterious “loss†of a backup computer file containing financial records of clients of Talvest Mutual Funds, a unit of CIBC. The Centre expressed its concerns about these incidents previously. It is noted that neither the website of Talvest nor CIBC contains any follow-up information on whether the records were recovered or how they were lost. More troubling, the office of the federal privacy commissioner has posted no additional information on this subject since its initial media release in January. The latest breach of privacy involving Rogers appears nowhere on the commissioner’s website.
The Centre for Corporate & Public Governance renews its call for an investigation into the safeguarding of Canadians’ personal information and whether there are sufficient provisions in both statutory regulations and the Criminal Code so as to adequately guard against unauthorized access and disclosure. Additionally, The Centre reiterates its concerns about what many Canadians regard as a lack of timeliness and aggressiveness on the part of the federal privacy commissioner in dealing with privacy breaches and in establishing a culture both in government and the private sector where such incidents rarely occur and are immediately reported when they do.
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