Privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien listens to a question during a press conference after tabling his latest annual report, Tuesday September 27, 2016 in Ottawa. Canada's privacy czar says police surveillance of a Montreal journalist's phone suggests a need for clearer laws. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
OTTAWA — Police surveillance of a Montreal journalist's smartphone suggests a need for clearer federal guidance to the courts, Canada's privacy czar says.
Parliament has a role to play in instructing the courts on when to grant police a warrant to obtain sensitive data, privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien told a House of Commons committee on Tuesday.
"This is a very worrisome issue," Therrien said under questioning at a meeting of the Commons information, ethics and privacy committee, which is conducting a review of the federal Privacy Act.
Montreal-based La Presse newspaper said this week it had learned at least 24 surveillance warrants were issued for columnist Patrick Lagace's iPhone this year at the request of city's police service.
The surveillance flowed from an internal probe into allegations police anti-gang investigators fabricated evidence.
Three warrants reportedly authorized police to get the phone numbers for all Lagace's incoming and outgoing texts and calls, while another allowed them to track the phone's location via its GPS chip.
"It's one thing to say that the courts are involved," Therrien said. "That's a good start. But this case leads me to believe that that's not adequate in itself. It may be useful to give the court tools so that they're better able to exercise their power."
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said Tuesday the Supreme Court of __canada had already explicitly laid out the test that must be satisfied when police investigations intersect with media freedoms.
Goodale played down the need for any further direction.
"It's pretty clear in the Charter of Rights. I don't know how you could make it more clear than to embed it in the Constitution of Canada," he said after a cabinet meeting.
"If there are those in the federation of journalists or others who have recommendations to make about how this can be more abundantly emphasized, I would certainly be glad to receive their recommendations."
During question period in the Commons, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair pressed Goodale to reveal whether other media members were being monitored by police or spies, but the minister did not say.
"We're not talking about police stumbling into journalists," Mulcair said. "We're talking about police surveillance of the media in Canada in the 21st century. How can we believe this government respects press freedom when the minister refuses to say whether or not other journalists are currently under surveillance?"
Among Therrien's recommended revisions to the federal privacy regime is a call for agencies involved in law enforcement to publish regular reports on the requests they make to telecommunications companies for information about subscribers.
Therrien noted that many communications outlets produce such transparency reports about the data they hand over to police and spies.
"It's one thing for companies to do it. But the ones who should really be transparent are those who ask for and use the information," he said.
"I'm not asking them to reveal law-enforcement secrets, things that would impede lawful investigations, but there is a way for departments to be more transparent."
— Follow @JimBronskill on Twitter
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