A pair of Northern BC federal politicians visited Washington DC this week to talk about a study on the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
Conservative MP for Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies Bob Zimmer, and NDP MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley Nathan Cullen joined other members discussing the topic with their US counterparts.
The meetings come days after a cyber-security breach with Equifax took place, affecting nearly 8,000 Canadians.
Zimmer says the credit monitoring company’s meltdown is an example of how improvement needs to happen between the two countries.
“Homeland Security really was at the front of discovering the breach, and it brings back the obvious question about ‘who’s doing the equivalent in Canada?’ and we just don’t know. So, we have to come back and understand if we under similar protection, and are there road blocks in front of us too.”
In Washington at @facebook w Access to Info, Priv & Ethics Committee discussing personal information protection. #ETHI pic.twitter.com/AFdsyYXFke
— Bob Zimmer MP (@bobzimmermp) October 3, 2017
He adds in terms of preventing similar events for the future, it doesn’t matter what political party you represent or side with.
“It doesn’t matter at this point if we’re Conservative, Liberal, or NDP; we’re all similarly concerned about that preservation of privacy and data. We want to bring back some of what we learn, and don’t get me wrong we are doing some really good things in Canada, but we also want to make sure we’re sharp.”
He believes Canada needs to be on the front lines on how to properly handle everyone’s data in the current information and digital age.
Zimmer is the Chair of the Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics Committee within the House of Commons.
#ETHI met w Chair of the Sub-Committee on Communications & Technology @MarshaBlackburn from Tennessee about personal information protection pic.twitter.com/9e7oS4vkr6
— Bob Zimmer MP (@bobzimmermp) October 4, 2017