IAPP Canada Privacy Symposium 2024

The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne was first elected in 2015 as the Member of Parliament for Saint-Maurice—Champlain. He has previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, and Minister of International Trade.

He is a businessman, lawyer and international trade specialist with over 20 years of experience at large international companies in Europe, particularly in the fields of energy, engineering and innovation.

Before entering politics, he was vice-president and senior counsel of ABB Group, a leader in cutting-edge technology that operates in more than 100 countries. He also served as strategic development director, acting general counsel, and chief ethics officer and member of the group management committee of Amec Foster Wheeler, a world leader in the energy sector.

In 2009, Champagne was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He has served on several boards over the years and was notably president of the Canadian-Swiss Chamber of Commerce and the Banff Forum.

After his election in 2015, he served as a parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance until 2017, when he was appointed Minister of International Trade. During his time as Minister of International Trade, the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement entered into force, and Canada signed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. In 2018, he was named Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, and oversaw the federal government’s ambitious CAD187 billion infrastructure investment plan. He was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2019, and oversaw the creation of Canada’s Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations, which more than 60 countries have endorsed.

Champagne holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Montréal and a Master of Laws in American law from Case Western Reserve University. He also studied public and private international law at The Hague Academy of International Law, in the Netherlands.

Philippe Dufresne was appointed Privacy Commissioner of Canada on 27 June 2022. A leading legal expert on human rights, administrative and constitutional law, he previously served as the law clerk and parliamentary counsel of the House of Commons. In this capacity, he was the chief legal officer of the House of Commons and led the office responsible for the provision of legal and legislative drafting services to the House of Commons, its speaker, members and committees, the Board of Internal Economy and the House Administration.

Prior to his appointment as law clerk of the House of Commons in 2015, he was the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s senior general counsel, responsible for legal services, litigation, investigations, mediations, employment equity and access to information and privacy. During that time, he successfully represented the Commission before all levels of Canadian courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, in a number of key human rights and constitutional cases over the last two decades. He has appeared before the Supreme Court on 15 occasions, on issues ranging from accessibility and equal pay for work of equal value, to the balancing of human rights and national security. As lead counsel for the Commission in the landmark parliamentary privilege case of House of Commons v. Vaid, he helped reinforce and clarify some of the country’s fundamental constitutional principles as they apply to the House of Commons and Parliament.

A member of the bars of Quebec, Ontario and Massachusetts, he has served his profession and community in several different capacities, including as president of the constitutional and human rights law section of the Canadian Bar Association (Quebec Branch) and as a member of the editorial board for the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association’s CCCA Magazine. In 2014, he served as president of the International Commission of Jurists, an institution devoted to the protection of the rule of law and judicial independence in Canada and internationally.

He holds degrees in common and civil law from McGill University’s Faculty of Law and has been a part-time professor with the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Common Law and Queen’s University’s Faculty of Law where he taught international criminal law, human rights and appellate advocacy. He regularly speaks on issues of human rights, administrative, constitutional, and parliamentary law in Canada.

Professor Woodrow Hartzog is internationally renowned for his work in privacy and technology law. He has been influential in the debate over privacy and surveillance rules and in the creation and enforcement of information and technology laws. His publications focus on the complex problems that arise when people, companies and governments use powerful new technologies to collect, study and share human information.

Hartzog’s work has been published in numerous scholarly publications such as the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, California Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review and Michigan Law Review, and popular national publications such as the Guardian, Wired, BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, New Scientist, Slate, The Atlantic and The Nation. He has testified multiple times before Congress on data protection issues and served as a commissioner on the Massachusetts Special Commission on Facial Recognition. He is the author of "Privacy’s Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies," published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, and the co-author of "Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It," published in 2022 by Oxford University Press (with Daniel Solove).

He is a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, a non-resident fellow at the Cordell Institute for Policy in Medicine and Law at Washington University, an affiliate scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, and an external affiliate of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University. Professor Hartzog serves on the advisory board for the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Future of Privacy Forum.

Before joining Boston University School of Law, Hartzog was a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University’s School of Law and Khoury College of Computer Sciences and the Starnes professor of law at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law. He has also served as a visiting professor at Notre Dame Law School and the University of Maine School of Law. He previously worked as an attorney in private practice and as a trademark attorney for the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He also served as a clerk for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The commissioner's role is to oversee both the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, 2015, and the Personal Health Information Act. The commissioner investigates complaints from citizens who believe these laws are not being followed.

Michael Harvey was appointed as the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Newfoundland and Labrador effective 5 August 2019. Michael joined the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador in January 2006 and his time had been divided between executive council (Intergovernmental Affairs Secretariat and Cabinet Secretariat) and line departments (Departments of Children, Youth and Family Services, and Health and Community Services).

His first executive appointment was in 2012 as executive director of planning and coordination in Cabinet Secretariat. In early 2015, he was seconded from that role to another within Cabinet Secretariat to lead a transition team drawn together to spearhead the government’s acceptance of the recommendations of the 2014 Statutory Review of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. These recommendations involved the passage of an entirely new act — the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, 2015 — through the House of Assembly and an associated, public-sector wide, change management exercise.

Harvey was appointed as assistant deputy minister of policy, planning and performance management for the Department of Health and Community Services in August 2015. During his tenure in this role, his interest in access to information and privacy continued to grow. In this capacity, among other things, he was responsible for the ongoing statutory review of the Personal Health Information Act. He also worked extensively on the government’s eHealth agenda, including promoting and facilitating the development of the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Information Data Warehouse and Data Lab, increasing data analytics capacity for clinical decision making and decision support, and advancing virtual care. He was also responsible for the department’s mandate to promote health research in the province. To advance these objectives he served on the boards of directors of NLCHI and the Health Research Ethics Authority.

Harvey has lectured in political science and public administration at Memorial University, the University of Guelph and the University of Toronto. He is a graduate of Memorial University, with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in political science; has a Master of Arts in political studies from Queen’s University; and holds an Executive Certificate in Conflict Management from the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law/Stitt Feld Handy Group. He is a father of two, an avid cyclist and skier when conditions allow and an avid swimmer even when they do not.

Kris Klein, CIPP/C, CIPM and FIP is one of Canada’s leading legal experts on privacy, access to information and information security issues. He is the founder and managing partner of nNovation LLP, Canada’s leading boutique firm specializing in data protection. Kris has more than two decades of experience working with, as well as within, public, private and regulatory environments, which gives him a unique perspective, as well as significant depth and breadth on data protection challenges. Kris is well-known for his expert guidance, strategic advice and concrete, practical solutions to increasingly complex and ever-changing privacy, cybersecurity and technology matters. Kris’ leadership in the field extends beyond legal services. He helps shape the next generation of professionals, teaching the Privacy Law course at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. Kris is also Managing Director of IAPP Canada, where he helps to support and grow the privacy profession in Canada. He also provides frequent training to corporations and government departments. Kris has been published extensively, including co-authoring several instrumental works. Kris has litigated and counseled extensively on federal regulatory law. His experience includes working for a national firm and for the Department of Justice, where he provided legal advice to the Privy Council Office. He also worked as legal counsel with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, where he gave legal advice on legal, policy and strategic issues. Kris is often sought after to speak at conferences and with the media on privacy, access and information management and security matters.

Patricia Kosseim brings to her role as commissioner significant experience and a wealth of knowledge in the areas of privacy and access law, having worked in public, private and health sectors, and across various jurisdictions.

Previously, Kosseim was counsel in Osler's Privacy and Data Management Group and served for more than a decade as senior general counsel and director general at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

She has held executive positions at Genome Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and has taught part time at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law.

Kosseim obtained her business and law degrees from McGill University, and a Master’s Degree in Medical Law and Ethics from King’s College, University of London, U.K.

Kosseim is a member of the Law Society of Ontario and the Barreau du Quebec, and is fluently bilingual in English and French.

Tricia Ralph has been closely involved in access and privacy matters throughout her career. Her experience in the field began when she worked as a legal and legislative advisor for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment in the Northwest Territories. She then began giving legal advice on access and privacy issues to all government departments as legal counsel for the territorial government. She worked closely with the territorial health authority and Department of Health and Social Services on its implementation of the Health Information Act and on various privacy issues related to it.

In 2019, she began working for the Information and Privacy Commissioner of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Tricia was appointed as the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Nova Scotia in March 2020.

Tricia holds a Bachelor of Laws and Masters of Health Administration from Dalhousie University as well as a Bachelor of Science from Trent University in her hometown of Peterborough, Ontario. She is a member of the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society. Outside of work, Tricia enjoys spending time with family, friends and her dog Hank.