Senator Simons: Senator Plett absolutely made reference to the two protests outside of schools. He clearly mentioned Blaine Higgs, who —

Senator Simons: Senator Plett, I agree with you that parents should have the right to raise children according to their own principles. I wonder about the principles that support the idea of hatemongers travelling from British Columbia to come and stand outside Ottawa schools to harass queer and trans children and to punch an MPP from Ottawa in the face outside that rally.

Perhaps if you are not opposed to smacking children, you are not opposed to transphobes punching MPPs.

Senator Simons: Are you not going to answer the question I already asked?

Hon. Paula Simons: Senator Deacon, you touched quite disturbingly on the power of political parties and bad actors to weaponize this kind of data. But I wanted to ask about something much simpler. Given the low voter turnout that we’ve seen over the last decades, is there a danger that if people don’t feel that parties can be trusted to keep their data, that they won’t volunteer, that they won’t donate, that they won’t answer questions in a poll? What is the impact of this kind of lack of privacy protection on our day-to-day relationship with our democracy?

Senator C. Deacon: Thanks, Senator Simons. I would say that businesses will tell you how it affects customer bases. If the customer base doesn’t trust how they are using data, what data they’re collecting, what they’re using it for and how that benefits individuals, they tend to lose engagement with those customers.

I think the same may be true for voters, as 96% of Canadians have said they want political parties to have privacy protections. That’s a pretty clear number. There aren’t a lot of things that 96% of Canadians agree on.

I agree with the findings of the House of Commons Ethics Committee, which is that it undermines our democracy. It undermines things over time.

I know the House of Commons is not chomping at the bit to deal with this, but it is an issue that I think the Senate needs to be very well aware of. It’s worrisome that we haven’t seen any action yet. Thank you.

Hon. Paula Simons: Would Senator Plett take a question?