The Portfolio Management Association of Canada (PMAC) is pleased to have the
opportunity to respond to British Columbia’s (BC) request for comments on
modernizing the Personal Information Protection Act (Consultation). PMAC is
supportive of BC’s efforts to enhance British Columbians’ individual privacy rights,
while providing the appropriate flexibility within a harmonized national privacy
framework to allow our member firms to serve investors in Canada and across the
globe.

Overview

PMAC’s mission statement is “advancing standards”; we are consistently supportive
of measures that improve standards for the benefit of investors (the clients of asset
managers). Clients choose to invest their assets with portfolio managers for a number
of reasons, including the fact that clients delegate the responsibility for asset
management to PMs on a discretionary basis. This means that PMs do not check in
with their investors for every transaction they make in a client’s account. Rather, PMs
have the authority to act on the client’s behalf – and in their best interest. Ensuring
broad access to discretionary investment management through a wide variety of portfolio manager business models – including on-line and traditional – is beneficial
to Canadians and to the Canadian economy. As is further discussed below, privacy
laws must be sufficiently flexible to ensure that PMs are able to carry out their
responsibilities to clients without undue restrictions, such as the need to frequently
obtain client consent.

PMAC has been supportive of proposals that provide assurances to individuals that
their privacy is protected, that their data will not be misused, and that companies
communicate privacy matters in a simple and straightforward manner. We agree that
BC’s privacy regime should be modernized and streamlined in a way that
simultaneously supports innovation and protects the privacy expectations of British
Columbians.

Read the full submission here.