Including personal health numbers on driver’s licences raises risk of fraud, privacy commissioner says
Publish Date: 2026-06-08 08:00:00
Source Domain: www.cbc.ca
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Alberta’s privacy commissioner says putting personal health numbers (PHN) and citizenship markers on driver’s licences pose new risks to the protection of personal information in the province, including fraud.
“It creates a risk that now we have more information in one place that could be subject to snooping or hacks,” Commissioner Diane McLeod told CBC News Thursday.
Last week, the province announced it would start to roll out the integrated driver’s licences on July 2 to eliminate the paper health cards Albertans have used for decades.
Amendments to the Health Information Act regarding health information sharing in December enabled the change, according to a June 4 press release from the Office of Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta.
McLeod said one of her biggest concerns is that the Registrar of Motor Vehicles — which is responsible for issuing driver’s licences — is not subject to provincial privacy laws.
“PHNs are actually a desired commodity on the black market and now you have driver’s license information — also a wanted commodity — together with PHNs all in one place,” she said.
Diane McLeod is Alberta’s information and privacy commissioner. She says her office will be issuing guidance in the coming weeks on how Albertans can protect their personal information on their driver’s licences. (Craig Ryan/CBC News)
“[The Registrar does] have certain provisions in their legislation to protect the information, but that is not the suite of rights that individuals have under privacy laws,” she added.
The citizenship markers could also lead to discrimination, McLeod said, a concern she previously voiced when the province announced the change last August.
McLeod’s concerns come a month after the personal information of nearly three…
