Article content continued

While Arora stressed StatCan’s experience in collecting, protecting and utilizing information, the statistician’s comments still came amid growing public unease around data privacy.

Some specific StatsCan efforts have also faced pushback, with the financial industry and Canada’s privacy commissioner taking issue with the agency’s collection of credit data and a planned cull of banking information.

After launching an investigation in the fall of 2018, the privacy commissioner reported in December they had “very significant concerns” that both the credit and banking data projects did not adequately respect privacy. The commissioner also said they had concerns StatsCan “did not take sufficient steps” to be transparent about the projects and ensure people were notified before their personal data was harvested.

StatsCan had argued it had the legal authority to collect personal data without consent for the projects and had vowed any information gathered would be kept confidential and protected. Still, the agency put both projects on pause in the fall of 2018, and agreed to redesign them “with the principles of necessity and proportionality considered,” the commissioner noted.

Arora told the Financial Post on Tuesday it is still Statistics Canada’s intention to move forward with the redesigned banking and credit information projects.

“Absolutely,” Arora said in an interview following his speech. “We will move forward in ensuring that the needs are very clearly articulated, that all our partners are fully informed of what we’re doing and that Canadians are assured that the privacy and the confidentiality is always protected.”