OTTAWA – The Privacy commissioner will investigate a “shocking” potential privacy breach that made the personal information of dozens of Canada Revenue Agency whistleblowers available to all for months via public court documents.
“Our office has opened an investigation into whether the provisions of the Privacy Act were contravened with respect to this matter,” Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) spokesperson Vito Pilieci said in a statement to the National Post Tuesday.
The investigation comes as a response to a request from Conservative MP James Bezan last week and on the heels of media reports that private information of dozens of CRA employees who have made allegations against their employer found their way into publicly available documents as part of unrelated legal proceedings at the federal court in the winter.
The documents were filed from the government’s ethics watchdog and investigator for the federal public servants, the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner (PSIC).
The documents, which were provided by CRA to PSIC, were filed by the latter in response to a lawsuit from two CRA employees who are asking the federal court to force the PSIC to investigate their claims of harassment from a former superior.
But buried within over 2,000 pages of documents from PSIC and CRA are multiple pages detailing unrelated allegations by whistleblowers who also worked at CRA. Those documents included their names, contact information...
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