By Jim Bronskill and Sue Bailey

TORONTO, ONTARIO – The national privacy watchdog says the RCMP is illegally hiding sensitive information about Canadians in secret data banks.

In a special report to Parliament, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart says the Mounties broke the law and their own policy by unnecessarily squirrelling away files or keeping them longer than they should in what are known as “exempt” information banks.

“What we found when we took a close look at the RCMP’s exempt data banks is disturbing and important to Canadians,” Stoddart told a news conference Wednesday.

Stoddart said people could become the subject of an exempt bank file as a result of information passed on by a neighbour, by talking to the wrong person, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The commissioner cited one case in which a man on a bus tour was reported to U.S. customs for joking that maybe he should “hijack” the bus to get even with a chronically tardy tour guide. Some five years later, the incident was still in RCMP exempt files even though it was clearly a bad joke and not a security threat, she said.

In the face of the hard-hitting audit, the Mounties immediately accepted her recommendations for improvement, including a re-examination of files and documents in the banks.

The Mounties have two exempt information banks, one containing criminal intelligence records, another with records about national security investigations.

Those secret repositories “were crowded with thousands of files that should not have been there,” Stoddart said.

Government departments and agencies which control exempt records can refuse to confirm or deny the existence of the information when someone asks to see it.

“Government transparency and accountability are fundamental concepts in democratic countries like Canada,” Stoddart said. “It’s incumbent upon government institutions to ensure that data banks which are closed to citizen access are restricted to files that legitimately warrant inclusion.”

Otherwise, she said, the consequences can be severe. They may include trouble getting security clearance for a job or difficulties travelling abroad.

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