Canada's privacy law landscape is often described as a patchwork. The various private, public and health sector privacy laws we have complement each other, overlap and, in some cases, leave enormous gaps in statutory privacy protections for Canadians.

Our constitutional division of powers between federal and provincial governments is at the root of this: It is under its "trade and commerce" power the federal government regulates privacy in the Canadian private sector. Meanwhile, provincial governments regulate the same under their "property and civil rights" power and regulate health privacy using their jurisdiction to legislate in health care.

In case you are wondering, the provinces also enjoy the power to regulate shop, saloon and tavern licenses — a somewhat amusing testament to the time in which the Constitution Act was drafted (revisiting sections 91 and 92 sheds interesting light on the priorities of that bygone era).

There are clear advantages to this arrangement ­— namely the fact that local governments are best positioned to handle local matters. But when one level of government fails to legislate in an area where it has sole jurisdiction, gaps inevitably arise.

One such gap that has boggled my mind since joining the privacy profession is the lack of statutory privacy protections for Canadian employees in all but three provinces.

Of course there are those employees who work in federally regulated industries like banking, telecommunications, aviation and rail who enjoy some form of protection under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act regardless of the province in which they reside. Other than that, if you are outside of Alberta, British Columbia or Quebec, it's tough bananas for you. Unless there is something in your employment or collective agreement, privacy protections are relatively hard to come by.

It is with this in mind that Canada's privacy watchdogs recently passed a joint resolution concerning employee privacy. Among other things, it calls on Canadian governments to "acknowledge the legislative gaps in their respective jurisdictions, and in those jurisdictions with no or limited legislative protections for employee personal information, take action to close those gaps."

I don't know about you, but that sounds reasonable and long overdue to me. It also calls on those governments to "work collaboratively to ensure there is a harmonized or consistent statutory framework of protections for employees across Canada that leaves no worker behind." Say, that also sounds pretty good.

We will see where it goes, but I'm sure many Canadian employees would be shocked at the lack of privacy protections they enjoy and wouldn't mind having something on the books to guide employers and keep them accountable.