E-mail an incumbent Conservative Member of Parliament during the campaign and this could happen to you!

Email to MP lands woman in campaign databaseMary Krohner is seen in the backyard of her Oshawa home on Apirl 14, 2011. She is upset that the Conservative Party has added her personal information to their national database after she contacted her local MP on constituency issues. (Richard Lautens/Toronto Star)

Brendan Kennedy
Staff Reporter
Friday, April 15, 2011

Mary Krohnert wrote her MP earlier this year to voice her concerns about changes to CRTC regulations. The act of civic engagement also appears to have signed her up to receive Conservative attack ads in her email.

The 36-year-old Oshawa resident says she had Tory campaign literature sent to her inbox this week, though she has never signed up for anything to do with the party.

When she called the Conservative party’s Ottawa headquarters to inquire, she says she was told her email address was added to a national campaign database after she wrote her MP — Conservative incumbent Colin Carrie — on a number of different issues in recent years.

“As far as I know I’ve never given consent for my email address to be shared,” said Krohnert, an actor who is studying to become an art therapist. “I was just communicating with my MP.”

Carrie refused to be interviewed for this story through his campaign manager, Judy Pati.

What apparently happened to Krohnert is perfectly legal because political parties are exempt from Canada’s privacy rules, said David Fraser, a privacy lawyer with Halifax-based McInnes Cooper. (emphasis ours)

“They can collect, use and disclose your personal information without your consent and they can use it for whatever purpose they want.”

Ryan Sparrow, a spokesman for the Conservatives, refused to comment on whether it was common practice for the party’s elected politicians to use constituents’ personal information when campaigning, saying he could not speak on behalf of MPs. He also three-times repeated a statement saying the party is “more than happy” to remove someone’s name “from any distribution list that we have” when requested.

Addendum:
Small world! Isn't McInnes Cooper the law firm (Majorie A. Hickey) we were able to confirm has been retained as outside counsel by the Canadian Judicial Council to investigate the Douglas-King-Chapman sexcapade?