During Wednesday’s legislative debate on the Beneficial Ownership Transparency and Register Act, opposition senator Karina Goodridge has raised urgent calls for aligning penalties for unauthorized confidential information disclosure with the strict sanctions already outlined in the nation’s Data Protection Act, warning that the currently proposed weak penalties fail to act as an effective deterrent against harmful leaks.
Goodridge drew direct attention to a stark discrepancy in punishment between the two pieces of legislation: under the new beneficial ownership framework, unauthorized disclosure of sensitive personal data carries a maximum penalty of just a $40,000 fine or one year of imprisonment. By contrast, the Data Protection Act, which governs similar sensitive confidential information, imposes penalties that reach up to $500,000 in fines and three years of prison time for identical offenses.
The opposition lawmaker emphasized that once sensitive confidential information is leaked and distributed, the damage is irreversible. Information that falls into malicious hands, she warned, can open the door to widespread misuse, fraud, and other harmful outcomes that have lasting impacts on affected individuals. Goodridge specifically pointed to Section 9 of the new beneficial ownership act, which addresses data breach incidents, but argued that the proposed penalties do not match the severity of this serious criminal offense.
Questioning the logic behind the divergent sentencing guidelines, Goodridge asked why identical confidential information deserves far weaker legal protection simply because it is stored and regulated under a different act of parliament. She called on legislative members to adopt the same tough penalty structure already enshrined in the Data Protection Act for unauthorized disclosures of beneficial ownership data.
Goodridge also dismissed the proposed one-year prison sentence as inadequate to discourage potential offenders, noting that the short sentence is too minor to create meaningful deterrence: “One year imprisonment, that is only one Christmas missed. That is not really a deterrent. Some people may look at it and say, well, one Christmas… I don’t miss that.” On the topic of financial penalties, she added that a $40,000 fine is easily manageable for many potential offenders to save up over time, while a $500,000 fine poses a significant financial consequence that would push most people to comply with the law and avoid risky, illegal behavior. Maintaining that all unauthorized leaks of confidential information are equally serious regardless of what legislation governs the data, Goodridge pressed lawmakers to revise the penalty structure before finalizing the new bill.