Privacy deal delayed

By Dan Hilborn
Published Sept. 1, 2004


The B.C. government will wait until privacy commissioner David Loukidelis is finished his report into the effects of the U.S.A. Patriot Act before deciding whether or not to contract out the billing and administrative arm of the Medical Services Plan to the Canadian division of an American corporation.

"There will be no deal between now and mid-September," B.C. Management Services Minister Joyce Murray said Monday afternoon, on her first day back at work after a month-long holiday in Europe. "We have said all along that our contracts will protect people's privacy.

"So we're looking forward to the Loukidelis report and I'm confident that his recommendations will help us craft our legislation that we'll be working on this fall," she said. "And (that report) will help us fine-tune the contractual revisions we're planning at this point."

The Right to Privacy Campaign and other critics of the proposed deal believe the U.S.A. Patriot Act could compel the company in question - Virginia-based Maximus - to provide the private medical records of British Columbians to the American government.

Murray said the government has taken several steps to ensure that Canadians' privacy rights are protected.

"We assessed the risk as being a small incremental risk, but one worth acting on," Murray said. "We have taken immediate action and already we are building in additional protection measures to any contract we are negotiating."

Murray also said the proposed Maximus contract has specific provisions that should provide adequate protection of British Columbian's privacy - "measures such as contracts being cancelled should the company violate our laws of not supplying information to the Patriot Act."

In addition, Murray said the Canadian division of Maximus would be transferred to the ownership of the provincial government should those provisions be violated.

When asked if that was not the equivalent of closing the barn door after the horses have been let out, Murray said: "Yes, but that's what laws are all about. No matter what the issue is, we, as a society, say this is not allowed and this is the penalty.

"That is what laws do, and I think the key thing that the BCGEU is ignoring is that outsourcing is not the problem," she said. "The problem is that the provisions in the Patriot Act could allow the FBI to reach around existing agreements and treaties. It could allow them to do that in a far, far wider range of issues than outsourcing. So stopping outsourcing does not solve the problem."