Greens leader Elizabeth May has said the party will investigate and conduct a ‘root to branch review’ of all its data retention systems after membership information was mistakenly published online.
“We take this very seriously,” said the leader of the Green Party. We will ensure that this cannot happen again.”
Speaking to reporters in Fredericton, Ms May said she doesn’t know how the security breach happened, but she says the information, including names and addresses of donors, was available online. via Elections Canada before being mistakenly published on the party’s website.
Although the party pointed out that the information could not be found on Elections Canada, Ms. May argues that the breach was unintentional and the information was not meant to be posted on the party’s website.
The Elections Canada website shows how much individual donors give to a registered political party along with their names and addresses.
Ms May assured the Green Party will seek to regain trust by taking responsibility for the leak and will contact those affected.
The party says its internal investigation into the breach will also determine if any other mistakes were made, with the aim of ensuring they don’t happen again.
On a tour of Atlantic Canada ahead of Parliament’s return next week, Ms May is trying to rebuild a Green Party that has seen infighting, poor fundraising and weak election results in recent years.
Her efforts come after she stepped down from the managerial role in 2019, only to return last year.
Jonathan Pedneault, the deputy party leader who stood alongside Ms May in proposing a co-leadership model, said it’s no secret that it’s been a tough two years for the Greens.
“We have a new chief executive, we have a new president within our federal council, which is our highest governance body. So now we are very stable,” he said.