Defendant Gowlings stalls privacy breach matter again

Gowlings has stalled the privacy breach matter again involving the plaintiff Carbone's access request for her personal information. She made that access request pursuant to the Personal Information Protection Act when she learned Gowlings and its lawyers Taryn Burnett and Megan McMahon violated her privacy by unlawfully pulling her credit report.

After Gowlings unsuccessfully applied to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) to refuse the personal and financial information request and was ordered on December 12, 2016 to respond to that request, Gowlings informed the plaintiff it would delay its response to the plaintiff for an additional 30 days.

When the plaintiff finally received some of the personal information from Gowlings she found that Gowlings did not fully respond to the access request, though Gowlings stated it provided all information subject to that access request. For example, Gowlings did not provide the names of all individuals who accessed, viewed and used her credit and financial information.

The plaintiff also noted the produced records raised further concerns about other privacy breaches of her personal information by Taryn Burnett and Gowlings.

The plaintiff needs all of the personal information she is entitled have to prepare her formal privacy breach complaint against Gowlings for submission to the OIPC. As such, the plaintiff wrote to Gowlings to obtain that credit and financial personal information it failed to provide, along with questions she had about the additional privacy breaches she found in the records from Gowlings.

Now, in a letter dated May 16, 2017, Gowlings says it views the information the plaintiff is requesting to be a further access request and insists it can take another 45 days pursuant to the Personal Information Protection Act to respond to it.

While some of the questions the plaintiff raised on the further privacy breaches she noticed may or may not be subject to a 45 day response period, she views that Gowlings has not complied with providing the records it said it did for the original credit and financial access request.