For the children (and parents)
of Ontario, the Education Act of Ontario cancels all privacy safeguards
enshrined in Ontario Civil Rights Legislation. The Act allows the Minister
of Education to secretly investigate and record every aspect of a student's
identity, including fingerprints, race, colour, religion, sexual preferences
and political opinions. The Minister may then disclose this information,
and the Education Act carefully removes the right of the student (or their
parents or guardian) to even know what's going on. This unprecedented
violation of civil rights begins in a deceptively innocuous manner the
assignment of an education number to each student in the province.
First we are given a series
of definitions:
In Ontario's Education Act,
section 266.2 (1) states: "The Minister may assign an Ontario education
number to a person who is enrolled or who seeks admission to be enrolled
in a prescribed educational or training institution."
Section 266.2 (2) states: "For
the purpose of assigning an Ontario education number, the Minister and
prescribed educational and training institutions are authorized
to collect, directly or indirectly, personal information."
Directly obtained personal
information is information that is given freely by the individual or their
parent or guardian; indirectly obtained information is information
that is obtained by any other means. Already, alarm bells should
be ringing.
Naturally we need to know
exactly what type of information the Minister wants to collect and we
would expect to find this clearly stated in the Education Act. Instead
we get a curious run around, with definitions referenced and cross-referenced
to other Acts. Here is the trail that we must follow:
To find the nature of the personal
information that is being encoded into an Ontario student's identification
number, we must first back up to section 266.1 of the Education Act. There
we find it defined as follows: "In sections 266.2 to 266.5, "personal
information" means personal information within the meaning of section
38 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and section
28 of the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act."
If we look up these Acts,
we find that the specified sections are identical, and state (section
38 (1), Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act) "In this
section and section 39, "personal information" includes information
that is not recorded and that is otherwise defined as "personal information"
under this Act."
Finally we come to it. Here
is the list of characteristics which the Minister feels she must have
the power to collect on our children (and us) in order to have quality
education. Notice that the list even includes hearsay comments
(gossip).
In the definitions section
of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, we finally
can see the nature of the personal information that is to be encoded
into the student's identification number. The Act states: "personal
information" means recorded information about an identifiable individual,
including,
(a) information relating
to the race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex,
sexual orientation or marital or family status of the individual,
(b) information relating to the education or the medical, psychiatric,
psychological, criminal or employment history
of the individual or information relating to financial transactions
in which the individual has been involved,
(c) any identifying number, symbol or other particular assigned to the
individual,
(d) the address, telephone number, fingerprints or blood type of the
individual,
(e) the personal opinions or views of the individual except where
they relate to another individual,
(f) correspondence sent to an institution by the individual that is
implicitly or explicitly of a private or confidential nature, and replies
to that correspondence that would reveal the contents of the original
correspondence,
(g) the views or opinions of another individual about the individual,
and
(h) the individual's name where it appears with other personal information
relating to the individual or where the disclosure of the name would
reveal other personal information about the individual."
The terrible irony here, is
that this list is given in a document whose purpose is to protect the
privacy of Ontario citizens. This list was compiled for the "Protection
of Privacy." Unfortunately, (especially for a "democracy"), Ontario's
Education Act perversely inverts the intention and uses the list to invade
the privacy of our children (and ourselves).
It's a great relief to know
that "Personal information does not include information about an individual
who has been dead for more than 30 years." However, any (or all) of
the above information could be encoded into a student's number.
Now, if we go back to the
Education Act and continue reading, we see that (section 266.2 (3))
says: "Subsection 39 (2) of the Freedom of Information and Protection
of Privacy Act and subsection 29 (2) of the Municipal Freedom of Information
and Protection of Privacy Act do not apply to a collection under subsection
(2)."
The authors of the
Privacy legislation also wanted to guarantee that when a government agency
collects information about its citizens, that the citizen must be told
about that process and given access to the data. Ontario's Education Act
takes great care to specifically remove this basic right from our children
and their parents.
Note that the Education Act
is now saying that the relevant subsections of these protection Acts
do NOT apply to subsection 266.2 (2) of Bill 160.
Again the specified subsections
of the two protection Acts are almost identical. (Subsection 39 (2)
is slightly more detailed.) It states (under the heading of "Notice
to Individual"): "Where personal information is collected on behalf
of an institution, the head shall, unless notice is waived by the responsible
minister, inform the individual to whom the information relates of,
(a) the legal authority for
the collection;
(b) the principal purpose or purposes for which the personal information
is intended to be used; and
(c) the title, business address and business telephone number of a public
official who can answer the individual's questions about the collection."
It appears that this
information can be accumulated secretly, without telling the student involved,
or their parents or guardian. However, the Minister can disclose the information.
One of the fundamental safeguards
in our society is that information collected about an individual by
the government may not be revealed to anyone, without that individual's
permission. This fundamental safeguard is also denied to our children.
The Education Act, Subsection
266.2 (4) states: "For the purpose of assigning an Ontario education
number, the Minister and prescribed educational and training institutions
may use or disclose personal information and the disclosure shall be
deemed to be for the purposes of complying with this Act."
When can the Minister disclose
this information? If we go on to read Subsections 266.3 (3) and 266.5
(1) (b), we find that the Minister and a person to be named by the Lieutenant
Governor in Council (Provincial Cabinet) may disclose a student's personal
Ontario education number "for purposes related to education administration,
funding, planning or research."
This government has
effectively turned the provincial Freedom of Information and Protection
of Privacy Act upside down, giving the Minister access to the types of
personal information that were meant (by the Act) to be kept confidential,
denying the individual the right to know that personal information is
being accumulated about them, and worst of all, they're using our children.
This language was incorporated into Ontario's Education Act when the infamous
Bill 160 was passed into law a few years ago, by the Mike Harris Tories.
Now we have Bill 81 passed
by the Legislative Assembly, and, among other dictatorial powers, it
gives the government the power to assign school suspensions as follows:
"The minimum and maximum duration may be varied by regulation, and different
standards may be established for different circumstances or different
classes of persons". Different lengths of suspensions for different
classes of persons! Wow! I wonder which part of the personal information
that this government has been collecting about our students will be
used to establish these "different classes of persons?"
When are we, the people
in the province of Ontario, going to wake up and see what's going on here?
When it's too late?
Rick Jones e-mail: rickjone@kitwat.enoreo.on.ca
NOTES:
If you receive a hard copy of this and would like your own electronic
version to pass around, then e-mail me, tell me what word processor
you are using, and I will send it to you.
Please feel free to copy,
e-mail, and/or fax this letter province-wide. Get it to the media,
parents, human and civil rights organizations, community groups, and
the various faith communities.
At the time that Bill 160
was being passed, a legal counsel in the education ministry confirmed
that Bill 160 would give the government the power to delve into private
information about our children.
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