Forthcoming changes to federal Privacy Act allow insurers to share information without a person’s consent for the purpose of suppressing fraud

Intended to help insurers suppress fraud, Bill C-29 amends Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) to allow disclosure of personal information without a person’s consent under certain circumstances.
PIPEDA generally prohibits companies from releasing a person’s private information without his or her consent.
Clauses 6 to 8 of the proposed bill, which has passed first reading in the House of Commons, outline a number of exceptions to consent requirements.
One new exception is if the personal information is contained in a witness statement and is needed to assess, process or settle an insurance claim.
A second new exception would allow insurers to exchange a person’s personal information with other companies or government bodies “when an organization has reasonable grounds to believe that a contravention of the laws of Canada, a province or a foreign country is being, has been, or is about to be committed.”
“Bill C-29 would allow disclosure without consent to organizations in general, presumably including other companies, if necessary to investigate a breach of an agreement or a contravention of laws…or to ‘prevent, detect or suppress’ fraud,” as the Parliament of Canada describes on its Web site. “In the case of fraud, the bill further permits disclosure without consent of an individual’s personal information when notifying the individual could be reasonably expected to frustrate attempts to deal with fraud (clause 6(9)).”
“That’s new under this bill,” Bob Clint, chief counsel and chief compliance officer at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, told the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC)’s 11th Annual Regulatory Affairs Symposium in Toronto on Oct. 27. “I think that is a very significant development for us in terms of the disclosure of this information.”