Canada’s Politicians Hate You: Passes Party Privacy Immunity Law

The pillaging of personal information by political parties just became quite a bit easier with the passage of Bill C-4.

If there is one thing that the politicians from across the political spectrum (save for the Green Party) can agree on, it’s that they hate the idea of ordinary Canadians having anything resembling privacy rights. In fact, they hate you so much, they stonewalled and slow walked any and every half hearted attempt at privacy reform that affords Canadians even a modest amount of privacy protections. At the same time, in 2023, they passed a privacy reform bill aimed at making it easier for politicians to plunder your personal information. This while tabling warrantless wiretapping legislation because fuck you, that’s why.

Another way that Canadian politicians are giving their own constituents the middle finger on the privacy file is through Bill C-4 – a so-called “affordability” bill. Buried in the legislation is the notorious Section 4 which contains the following text:

Provincial or territorial Act
446.‍4 (1) When participating in public affairs by endorsing one or more of its members as candidates and supporting their election, a registered party or eligible party, as well as any person or entity acting on the party’s behalf, including the party’s candidates, electoral district associations, officers, agents, employees, volunteers and representatives, cannot be required to comply with an Act of a province or territory that regulates activities in relation to personal information, including the collection, use, disclosure, retention and disposal of personal information, unless the party’s policy for the protection of personal information provides otherwise.
For greater certainty
(2) For greater certainty, the registered party, eligible party or person or entity acting on the party’s behalf cannot be required to provide access to personal information or provide information relating to personal information under its control or to correct — or receive, adjudicate or annotate requests to correct — personal information or omissions in personal information under its control.
Policy for the protection of personal information
446.‍5 (1) A registered party or eligible party, as well as any person or entity acting on the party’s behalf, including the party’s candidates, electoral district associations, officers, agents, employees, volunteers and representatives, must comply with the party’s policy for the protection of personal information.

(emphasis mine)

This is one of the ways that political parties are basically telling their constituents “fuck you”. It simply means that federal political parties don’t need to follow any stinkin’ privacy laws set out by the provinces. Instead, they can do whatever they like with the personal information they harvested from who the heck knows where (shady data brokers?). They set the rules surrounding that and have legal immunity from the provincial and territorial rule of law. It really is that asinine.

Of course, digital rights organizations such as Open Media have been fighting hard against this for obviously understandable reason. While this nasty provision couldn’t get deleted entirely, there was a brief victory when a sunset clause was introduced. From OpenMedia:

Debate in the Senate

Bill C-4 was being simultaneously reviewed by two Senate committees: the LCJC being responsible for examining Part 4 (which deals with privacy rules for political parties), and the National Finance studying the tax measures and responsible for final proposal of any amendments to Bill C-4, with consideration of the LCJC’s recommendations.

In LCJC’s February 18 report, the committee sharply criticized Part 4 for being inadequate to protect Canadians’ privacy, democratic interests, and national security, and called for either its removal from Bill C-4, temporary application, or further study before permanent implementation––a HUGE win for our fight!

But hold your horses: on February 25, 2026, resolutions to strike Part 4 or add additional privacy safeguards were defeated by the full Senate. One key resolution did win majority support: a three year ‘sunset’ clause for Part 4 of Bill C-4, meaning that without further legislation, the impunity of federal parties will expire in 2029. Proponents of the sunset clause asked MPs in the House to take this issue seriously in the meantime, and create more binding privacy law for their parties that C-4’s self-rule setting.
What this decision means

This is a small, incremental win; but even with the sunset amendment, federal political parties in Canada will remain largely exempt from federal and provincial privacy laws. Instead of being subject to independent oversight and enforceable legal standards, and other basic privacy protections recommended by experts and civil society organizations, they will legally operate under self-regulated privacy policies that they design and enforce themselves for collecting, using, and storing voter data, with retroactive immunity reaching back to 2000.

Modern political campaigning is continuous, data-driven, and increasingly reliant on predictive analytics. Campaign databases now include or infer sensitive characteristics such as age, ethnicity, religion, language, gender, or race, which raises human rights implications.

This gap is especially concerning at a time when emerging technologies, especially AI-driven microtargeting, can be used to influence and profile individual voters in unprecedented ways. As political persuasion becomes more individualized and opaque, the decision not to wholly remove Part 4 leaves a significant gap in Canada’s privacy framework that undermines Canadian democracy.

So, hey, small victory is a small victory, right? Well, that small victory didn’t last very long, unfortunately. When those half reasonable amendments made it back to the House of Commons, the House of Commons respectfully declined the sunset provision, effectively vetoing the Senate. The senate then responded to the veto with a frowning face and said, “OK, sorry to bring it up, sir. It won’t happen again.” Shortly after, the bill received royal assent without the sunset clause.

About the only politician in the House of Commons that had any problem with any of this was Elizabeth May of the Green Party who scolded the other parties for doing this in the first place, rightfully calling this an “abomination” and an “embarrassment”.

As a result, federal political parties now don’t have to follow provincial and territorial privacy laws. They set the rules and can do whatever the heck they want with your personal information. While Green Party leader, Elizabeth May objected to this, it seems no one else really cared about this. After all, the major political parties really only care about themselves. For the rest of Canada, elbows down, you’re on your own.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.