The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada recently released the results of a survey and it contained some troubling numbers.

The survey was conducted this past winter and 751 businesses were contacted to conduct a 15-minute interview. The last time the OPC did a similar survey was in 2019 and as a general observation, it looks like businesses (large and small) are not taking privacy as seriously today as they were pre-pandemic.

Here are some of the stats, per the report:

• "Privacy practices have changed since 2019: 57% of companies had designated a privacy officer, down from 62%; 51% had developed internal policies for staff to address their privacy obligations, a drop from 55%; and 51% said the company had procedures in place to respond to customer requests for their personal information, down from 60% in 2019."
• "The percentage of companies that provide staff with privacy training and education has dropped to 34% from 39% in 2019."
• "Fewer companies (59%) report having a privacy policy in place than in the previous survey (65%). As in previous surveys, larger companies were more likely to have such policies — 79% of large businesses, compared to 66% of medium-sized and 58% of small businesses."
• Additionally, as companies report experiencing no change in the amount of privacy breaches, "High concern about privacy breaches has declined from a high of 37% in 2019 to 28%." 

It’s disappointing, but maybe not too surprising, to see compliance measures and concern for privacy is down. One obvious explanation is the pandemic forced businesses to prioritize other concerns, pushing privacy to the back burner.

Another possibility is businesses don’t see a need to pay as much attention to privacy as they did a few years ago. My suspicion is that this will change when our laws get modernized, starting in September with Quebec and probably not too far behind with the federal law to replace the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. There’s nothing like legislative reform and the prospect of monetary penalties to get the business world to wake up and pay attention again.

Have you looked at the survey results? Would you say they align with where your organization stands on privacy? Would you say that privacy issues and compliance has gone up or down these past few years? 

Have a great weekend.