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Privacy Legislation and The United Church of Canada
Jane Bowe McCarthy, MAS ANW Conference Archivist
On January 1, 2004, The United Church of Canada and Alberta and Northwest Conference became subject to federal privacy legislation known as The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and provincial privacy legislation in Alberta and in British Columbia entitled the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA). This new reality has resulted in a number of initiatives on the part of The United Church of Canada to adhere both to the spirit and the letter of privacy legislation.
As a religious denomination incorporated federally by an Act of Parliament in 1925, The United Church of Canada as a national entity is subject to PIPEDA and privacy implementation has occurred through the national church Privacy Working Group located in Toronto. Regionally, those Conferences subject to provincial legislation, namely Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia have been working to ensure that implementation is compliant with both the provincial and federal legislation. Alberta and Northwest Conference is in a unique situation in that it is subject to three privacy acts by the very nature of its composition: PIPA (AB) for the pastoral charges, presbyteries and Conference office situated in Alberta, PIPA (BC) for the pastoral charges and presbytery situated in northeastern British Columbia, and PIPEDA for pastoral charges and presbytery operating within the Yukon and Northwest Territories.
Implementation has been planned in stages, starting with General Council staff and officers located at Church House in Toronto. General Council Executive has approved for use The United Church of Canada Privacy Standards Policy and has agreed to follow the ten principles for handling personal information as set out in Schedule 1 of PIPEDA. The next phase of implementation is set to deal with conferences, and then presbyteries and finally pastoral charges throughout Canada.
In ANW Conference, the Executive Secretary has been appointed as the Privacy Official acting on behalf of The United Church of Canada and will address any official requests or concerns that arise in this jurisdiction. The Conference Archivist has been appointed the Privacy Officer with responsibility for implementation and education. To date, we have been requesting that the United Church of Canada Privacy Standards Policy be approved for use in each pastoral charge and presbytery, as well as in the Conference; and that each pastoral charge and presbytery appoint a privacy officer. Further work is ongoing to review what personal information is being collected on church forms, and where applicable, the UCC privacy statement is being added. Further work is being done to assist pastoral charges with providing extracts from church registers, dealing with requests for corrections to entries in church registers, and undertaking an audit of where personal information is located in pastoral charges.
Unlike businesses and organizations with paid staff to achieve implementation, the challenge for us is to achieve this new work within the reality of limited resources and part time or voluntary workers. Furthermore, not all church records are located within church buildings since church members on boards and committees maintain records in their homes. Likewise, while there are United Church guidelines for record keeping and managing archival records there are as many record keeping systems as there are churches.
The benefit of having privacy legislation is that it makes all of us in the Church accountable for good stewardship of the records and information in our custody and control and makes us responsible for the personal information that we collect, use and maintain. The legislation also helps us guard against improper use, collections and dissemination of the personal information entrusted to us and aids in the prevention of identity theft and unintentional breaches in privacy for our church members.
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