A Critical Investigation of Canadian Political Discourse

Defining Privacy: A critical investigation of Canadian political discourse by Sandra Schwab A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degrees of Master of Arts in Humanities Computing & Master of Library and Information Studies Humanities Computing / Library and Information Studies University of Alberta © Sandra Schwab, 2016 Schwab ii Abstract Canada’s federal privacy legislation does not include a definition or explanation of the word ‘privacy’, yet an understanding of the meaning of ‘privacy’ is essential to understanding how much or how little privacy to expect in terms of the protections afforded within the law. The purpose of this thesis is to uncover the definition of ‘privacy’ in the House of Commons as it is used by Members of Parliament (MPs) by examining the language and context within which the word is used. To prepare for the text analysis, a comprehensive literature review was conducted, summarizing the two key pieces of federal privacy legislation in Canada: the Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. This review also investigated other related pieces of legislation, government documents, and jurisprudence on the topic of federal privacy protection in Canada. The text analysis was conducted using the XML transcripts of the House of Commons Debates, commonly known as Hansard, spanning a ten-year period that included all of the proceedings from the 39th to the 41st Parliaments. This period, between 2006 and 2015 inclusive, consisted of the entirety of Right Honourable Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada governance in the House of Commons. The first stage of text analysis used natural language processing modules in Python to generate frequency counts and concordances with a focus on the word ‘privacy’. Between 2006 and 2015, there was an observable overall increase in the frequency of the word ‘privacy’. The analysis of the concordance data uncovered that ‘privacy’ was commonly used in the phrase ‘privacy rights’, and a further frequency analysis on this phrase uncovered that it was most frequently used in 2014. Another finding from the concordance data was the occurrence of the qualifying phrase ‘law-abiding Canadians’, accompanying both ‘privacy’ and ‘privacy rights’. These two trends--the high frequency of the phrase ‘privacy rights’ in 2014, and the occurrence of the phrase ‘law-abiding Canadians’--formed the basis for the second stage of the text analysis, a Critical Discourse Analysis of a debate that occurred on May 5, 2014. This specific transcript was selected because it had the highest frequency of the phrase ‘privacy rights’ compared to all the other Sittings in 2014. Through the Critical Discourse Abstract Schwab iii Analysis of the debate, based on the methodology of Fairclough, it was determined that MPs do not have a clear understanding of the two core pieces of federal privacy legislation in Canada, nor do they comprehend the relationship between ‘privacy’ and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This was evinced by multiple unrefuted references to a ‘Charter right to privacy’, which is a false characterization of the Charter, as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of what comprises ‘personal information’ in Canadian privacy law, something that is clearly defined in the Privacy Act. Furthermore, the repeated reference to the ‘privacy rights of law- abiding Canadians’ uncovered a strong ideological bias among all MPs that narrowly defines privacy as secrecy, preferencing the protection of privacy afforded to Canadians who abide by the law and marginalizing the protection of privacy afforded to those who don’t. According to Westin, a broader conceptualization of privacy as anonymity rather than secrecy allows individuals to freely express their thoughts, viewpoints, and political beliefs, without the fear of ridicule, alienation, or punishment (33-34). The narrow definition of privacy held by MPs as a ‘right to secrecy for Canadians who abide by the law’ can have what Solove describes as a ‘chilling effect’ on society as a whole, within which the perceived lack of anonymity has the result of suppressing the autonomy and creativity of all individuals (765). Abstract Schwab iv Acknowledgments I would first like to thank my thesis supervisors: Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell of Humanities Computing in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta; and Dr. Michael McNally of the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta. I would also like to thank the members of my examining committee: Dr. Harvey Quamen of Humanities Computing in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta; and Dr. Tami Oliphant of the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta. I wish to express my gratitude to the donors of the J Gordin Kaplan Graduate Student Award and the Michael Silver Memorial Travel Award in Library and Information Studies. Both awards made it possible for me to present my thesis research at the international conference for the International Association for Social Science Information Services & Technology (IASSIST), in Bergen, Norway. I am also grateful for the generous assistance of Hedmark University College and Dr. Hans Kristian Rustad of the Department of Humanities at Hedmark University College for sponsoring my three month student exchange in Hamar, Norway; the place where I began to write my thesis in earnest. I would also like to express my gratitude for the support, guidance, and mentorship of those who supervised my employment at the University of Alberta: Dr. Sean Gouglas of Humanities Computing, who gave me a lot of good advice and was the source of many passable puns; and the librarian Anna Bombak along with the rest of the Digital Initiatives unit in the University of Alberta Libraries, who welcomed me into the wonderful world of Data Librarianship. Finally, I am grateful for the support of my husband, the love of my life, and my friends and family. Acknowledgments Schwab v Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgments iv 1 Introduction 1 2 Privacy 7 2.1 Privacy Legislation in Canada �� 9 2.2 Definitions and Taxonomies �� 19 2.3 The Function of Privacy �� 28 3 Text Analysis 33 3.1 Corpora �� 35 3.2 Word Frequencies �� 41 3.3 Concordances �� 46 3.4 Results �� 53 4 Critical Discourse Analysis 55 4.1 Politics and Power �� 61 4.2 Text and Interpretation �� 69 4.3 Explanation �� 83 5 Conclusion 87 Works Cited 94 Appendices 100 1 - Letter to former Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart in response to her request for information from the Canadian Wireless Telecommunication Association, 14 December, 2011 �� 100 2 - Speakers and number of speeches during the House of Commons Debate on 5 May 2014 �� 107 Table of Contents Schwab vi List of Tables Table 3-1: Sessions of Parliament by date . 38 Table 3-2: Raw and relative frequency of the word ‘privacy’ �� 43 Table 3-3: Raw and relative frequency of the phrase ‘privacy rights’ �� 43 Table 3-4: Raw and relative frequency of the phrase ‘right to privacy’ . 44 Table 3-5: Raw and relative frequency of the phrase ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ . 44 Table 4-6: Comparison of raw and relative frequencies of ‘privacy and ‘privacy rights’ . 70 Table 4-7: Distribution of seats in the House by party compared to number of speakers and speeches in the debate �� 73 List of Tables Schwab vii List of Figures Figure 3-1: Sample of the Hansard corpus with XML markup . 39 Figure 3-2: Sample of the Hansard corpus with XML markup removed �� 39 Figure 3-3: Frequency of the top 50 words in the Hansard corpus �� 42 Figure 3-4: Selection of 25 random concordance lines . 46 Figure 3-5: Selection of 25 concordance lines sorted alphabetically at N+1 . 47 Figure 3-6: Selection of concordance lines with a ‘personal’ context �� 50 Figure 3-7: Selection of concordance lines about ‘privacy and people’ . 50 Figure 3-8: Selection of concordance lines about ‘privacy and rights’ . 50 Figure 3-9: Selection of concordance lines with a ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ context . 51 Figure 3-10: Selection of concordance lines with ‘privacy’ as a phrase �� 51 Figure 3-11: Selection of concordance lines with the phrase ‘law-abiding Canadians’ . 52 List of Figures Schwab 1 1 Introduction

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