TORONTO – Tridel, one of Canada’s largest condo builders, had its banking information made public on a City of Toronto website recently and now an investigation into the matter is underway.
A few months ago, Tridel’s bank account information was posted on a City of Toronto’s online Application Information Centre, which provides information on all active Community Planning, Committee of Adjustment and Toronto Local Appeal Body applications in the city. The development application information was also posted on the website.
“We became aware of this by staff at Tridel going on the website to look at various information and found it that way,” said Michael Mestyan, vice-president of development with Tridel. “There was that administrative incident which was the breached information involving one of our applications and we became aware of it sometime, it would have been mid- to end of April. We brought it to the city’s attention as quickly as we could get ahold of them to let them know that this information inadvertently made it to the website.”
He said the city did take the information down after it was made aware of the situation.
“We can confirm that in April, the City of Toronto became aware through Tridel that their financial information was posted on the city’s website,” said Russell Baker, media relations manager with City of Toronto, in an email to the Daily Commercial News. “The city immediately removed the information and an internal investigation is underway.”
A bank account number, branch number and transit number was posted on the site. It is not known how long the information was on the website before it was taken down or how it occurred.
“We closed the bank account to protect our own interest once we became aware of the situation,” Mestyan said. “There is nothing more for us to do. It’s the city’s responsibility to ensure that privacy is maintained. We will be more diligent. We will be looking at our files more closely once we do submit all the material to the city. I don’t want this to happen to me and I don’t want it to happen to anybody else.”
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