BC United holds a massive trove of personal information. What happens to it now that it has surrendered to the BC Conservatives?

Every political party is sitting on top of a mountain of people’s personal information. The most obvious is information about their members and donors. But this pales in comparison to information they have gained from telephone and door-knocking canvassing in the lead up to elections.

When it comes to the personal information held by BC United, BC’s Information Commissioner may have some questions.

When BC United surrendered to the BC Conservatives the most obvious change was the withdrawal of their candidates and the zeroing out of campaign accounts for their constituencies. But the much bigger question is, what happens to the mass of personal data BC United holds? If the BC Conservatives can get their hands on this it might be the most valuable part of the surrender.

Donor information is already largely available on the Elections BC reporting site (https://contributions.electionsbc.gov.bc.ca/pcs/Options.aspx ). But in political parties, membership information and information gained about voters through canvassing is a closely held secret. It is a secret about BC United that the BC Conservatives would love to have.

But there is a hitch here. Under BC’s Personal Information Protection Act sets out pretty strict rules about how organizations can use personal information. That includes political parties. In August 2022 BC’s Information Commissioner published a guidance document for political parties on “Political Campaign Activity.” https://www.oipc.bc.ca/documents/guidance-documents/2537

The document outlines how persona information can be collected and used. The guidance lists three rules for how the information may be used or disclosed:

“Political organizations may use or disclose collected (or inferred) information:

1. With the explicit consent of the individual;

2. With implicit consent, when the collection is voluntary and the purpose for the use or disclosure would be obvious to a reasonable person; or

3. Without consent, as authorized by an enactment, such as a provision of PIPA that permits use or disclosure without consent”

BC United, like its predecessor Liberal Party and before that even Social Credit was a united group of Liberals and Conservatives determined to keep the NDP out of power. It is hard to imagine that many BC United members, particularly federal Liberals, and almost all people who were canvassed by BC United, either explicitly or implicitly gave their consent for their information to be handed over to another political party.

While there has been a lot of reporting on other aspects of the BC United surrender this issue has not been discussed. So far there is no mention of it on the Information Commissioner’s web page. If it is not already happening the Commissioner needs to investigate the issue.