In case you didn't read last week's digest, let me do a quick recap because it's relevant to what happened Thursday in Ottawa.
The parliamentary committee studying Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act, began its hearings last week. The first witness to appear was Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne, who is sponsoring the bill.
Champagne gave a statement to the effect that after hearing from stakeholders, the government was going to amend several important aspects of the omnibus bill, which covers federal privacy reform and artificial intelligence regulation, but he refused to provide specifics. So, essentially, Champagne was asking the committee to study a moving target — without full knowledge of how the laws were going to be amended.
The committee, out of frustration, moved to have the minister re-appear with the actual amendments in hand.
There was silence for almost a week since. That is until Thursday when Champagne sent along a letter to the committee to explain in a bit more detail how the government plans to amend the legislation.
Apparently, the Department of Justice's legal drafters have still not written the specifics, so this is a bit of a stalling tactic by the government. Sure, they provided a bit more information on how and why they are planning on amending the laws, but the specifics remain to be seen.
A few highlights of the minister's letter:
- They plan on making it explicit in the law — in both the preamble and purpose clause — that privacy is fundamental right.
- They plan to recognize and reinforce privacy protections afforded to children.
- They plan to provide the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada more flexibility to reach compliance agreements — essentially allowing the commissioner and a noncompliant organization to enter into an agreement to pay a financial penalty.
There are also a number of planned changes to the part of C-27 that would create the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act.
It's not clear if the minister's letter will be enough to have the committee resume its hearings. While these amendments generally respond to some of the criticisms we've been hearing about the bill, we all know the devil can be in the details. We still don't know what the amendments look like in terms of legal language and little bits of wording in a law can end up making a big difference.
Something tells me I'll have an update for you next week on this saga.
Have a great weekend.