NDP ‘sorry’ for improper use of voters list to send Christmas cards from Singh

OTTAWA -- NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s office is apologizing after a staffer improperly used information from Election Canada’s voter list to send Christmas cards to people’s home addresses. “This was an unintentional thing that happened that should not have happened,” said Singh’s spokesperson George Soule. “We are sorry.” According to the NDP the staff member was putting together the list of recipients for holiday cards and in instances where a person’s name did not have an address listed, the employee had a colleague at the party headquarters pull the information from the party’s database which is primarily built on information received from Elections Canada. “That list has now been destroyed,” Soule said. It remains unclear how many people on the Christmas mailing list had their private information accessed in this process, though it includes journalists who received these cards at their home addresses rather than to their offices, where it is common for MPs to send holiday cards to members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. The NDP is now reviewing its mailing policies and reminding staff about accessing voter information, “to ensure that this does not happen again.” Soule said the party has been in contact with Elections Canada and the Commissioner of Canada Elections’ office, who is responsible for investigating potential violations and enforcing the Canada Elections Act. The law prohibits unauthorized use of personal information contained in the list of electors, though members of Parliament are permitted under certain parameters to use the information to communicate with electors. Myriam Croussette, a spokesperson for the commissioner, told CTV News in a statement that “there is no prohibition against the use of the list of electors by registered parties to send greeting cards to electors, including outside an election period. Sending holiday greeting cards is a manner of communicating with electors. In fact, it is a common practice for parties to distribute such material.” Elections Canada information is provided under conditions that the authorized recipients take “reasonable precautions to protect the security and confidentiality of the personal information of Canadian Electors,” including restricting who has access to this information, and technical safeguards to minimize the risk of unauthorized access. Under the latest round of election law changes, the Liberal government made it so political parties had to post their privacy policies online, but stopped short of subjecting parties to tougher privacy rules and oversight for the data they harvest from the electorate, despite calls to do so.