An Ottawa-area woman says she's among the more than half a million student loan recipients whose personal data was lost after a federal government's hard drive went missing, and she plans to join a class-action lawsuit expected to be filed Thursday.
Jennifer Britton, a mother of three, said she learned of the privacy breach on Facebook over the weekend. She then called Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) to confirm her information was lost.
Officials from the federal department informed Britton how to protect her credit information from potential fraud. But they also said she would be on the hook for the approximate $14 per month to do that.
"I mean $14 a month doesn't sound like a lot, but if this is going on for years and years, it's a fee," said the mother of three. "I've got little kids, I'm on maternity leave and every dollar counts."
Britton also said the government should cover any costs associated with protecting people who could be affected because it was responsible for the lost information.
"I absolutely don't think that it should be on me and other former students to pay this when it's the government's mistake," she said.
More than 4,000 people contacted lawyer
Lawyer Bob Buckingham of St. John's has reached out to clients across Canada about filing a class-action lawsuit in response to the lost information, which belonged to some recipients of Canada Student Loans between 2000 and 2006.
His website, which outlined the pending lawsuit he intends to file, received 75,000 hits as of Wednesday and more than 4,000 have contacted him. To proceed, however, a class action has to first be certified by a judge.
"We're saying hold tight while we file the class action and see if we can get the government ... to assist people in protecting their identities, in the short term and the long term," said Buckingham. "The government has to acknowledge that this is a circumstance that could exist and put something in place to protect these individuals."
Buckingham said a lawsuit would push the government to cover such credit protection safeguards and compensate for the stress and fear on those involved ? not just the students who took the loans, but parents, spouses and guarantors whose information may also be on the missing hard drive.
"If that's the case, then this is much more serious than the government's letting on," he added.
For Britton, it's already too serious.
"I never in a million years would've thought that that type of information that has those sensitive things attached to it would be misplaced, and it's a huge violation," she said.
A spokesperson for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said the minister was not available for comment.
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