I think I may still be coming down from last week’s high as a result of the largest and most exciting IAPP Canada Symposium yet. It’s been nice to hear from so many of you that you, too, found it extremely valuable to spend some time in Toronto. As the event organizers, we need and appreciate your feedback on what you liked and what could be improved. We’ve created a tool to make it super easy for you to chime in and let us know what sessions you really liked and what you’d like to see more — or less of — next year. Just go to the conference app and scroll to “session surveys” and “post-event survey.”
Now, substantively, this week I’ve been trying to gauge whether there’s any chance of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology starting its work to examine Bill C-27. There isn’t much movement yet, although it seems a few organizations have made submissions to the parliamentary committee. This is in addition to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's submission, which I assume most of you know about. Anyway, you can access all of them here.
A few organizations have echoed the privacy commissioner’s recommendation to have privacy rights codified in the law as a fundamental right. I heard some debate last week during the conference about this concept, and I know some don’t agree with this position. It will be interesting to see if anyone makes a submission focused on why they feel this isn’t needed.
One of the submissions available on the site is from UNICEF Canada, and they focus on kids. They have a number of recommendations to make the new privacy law even stronger when it comes to the protection of children and youth. I think we can expect more and more dialogue on this particular topic in the next while.
What about you and your organization? Are you going to be making a submission to the committee about what you like or don’t like about the bill? If so, what recommendations would you make? It’s unlikely that they will hear witnesses before the fall, but from the strength of several submissions already there, it’s clear there will be some serious summer reading going on. C’mon privacy pros — what do you think? Should we add a bit more to their reading list?