Meanwhile, he's advising all Ontarians to watch for "potential unusual activity" regarding any transactions with the province, banks, utilities and retailers.

An obviously frustrated Cavoukian said she has issued several orders to provincial civil servants that if data is to be transferred from a provincial computer to a portable device either it has to be de-personalized or encrypted.

However, for some reason neither happened in this instance at Elections Ontario.

A chastened Essensa told reporters that the department's policies "were not followed" and couldn't explain why.

However, he tried to suggest that the odds of the data being misused is low.