On Thursday, the privacy commissioner for the state of Ontario, Canada has sought legal action against the Toronto Police for releasing attempted suicide information to the national police database. According to the complaint filed with the Ontario Superior Court, the privacy watchdog is seeking an injunction to stop the Toronto Police from their indiscriminate disclosure of mental health records for the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) database.
Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian, who filed the complaint on the watchdog's behalf, said the legal action would be her office's first of its kind. She told the local paper, "When we go to institutions and say, ‘You're breaking the law,' 99 per cent of the time they want to comply . . . I'm baffled. Especially considering this is a law enforcement agency there to uphold the law."
The application, which was also made available on Toronto Star's website, revealed that the Toronto Police have violated the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA) and its provincial equivalent for automatically disclosing all suicide attempts on the said database.
The legal action by Cavoukian's office came ahead of unfounded allegations of apparent disclosure of non-conviction records in police background checks. Toronto Star said that the records, which include unproven charges, withdrawn charges and mental health calls to 911, undermine volunteer service and employment for hundreds of thousands of people. Moreover, the disclosures also limited individuals' travel to the US.
Cavoukian said prior to the legal action that her office has undertaken, she did provide recommendations to Toronto Police and its chief, Bill Blair, to failure.
"I think highly of Chief Blair so I was really taken aback when he said they have no intention of changing this," she said.
Toronto Police spokesman Mark Pugash said last week in an interview that the department fundamentally disagrees with Cavoukian and insisted that the data collection is vital to police performance. "That information is for law enforcement agencies. If we, or (other police forces), are called to deal with someone with a history of threatening to commit suicide, it is relevant to police officers because they might bring psychiatric assistance," he said.
