This goes to the very core of the draconian legislation passed by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and his Fintrac officials wherein they have deputized nearly 100,000 Real Estate sales people to gather information from their clients, such as drivers licence ID, health card numbers, social insurance numbers, passport numbers, and make hard copies and are forced to store them for five years, and if they don’t comply they can face fines of two million dollars and jail time.

In a typical Real Estate transaction here is what is now happening under Flaherty’s legislation. The Realtor collects the ID, then the Bank collects the same ID, then the Lawyer collects the same ID, then the Insurance Company collects the same ID. These groups are all tied to the purchase of a real estate transaction.

There are approximately 600,000 thousand Real Estate transactions per year in Canada. If you multiply the information gathered you have a ‘staggering’ 2.4 million pieces of ID floating around the marketplace waiting for a theft of identity documents to happen,and that is just doing Real Estate transactions.

I urge the Federal Privacy Commission to shut down Fintrac completely, until we can get this ‘ludicrous legislation’ sorted out, and preserve the identity of all innocent Canadians.