While some privacy advocates are upset, most of the legitimate email marketing world is happy this week. This is because the government is not going to proclaim into force the private right of action under CASL. The original intention was that this nifty enforcement option was going to come into play on Canada Day, but now it may never see the light of day. It will only ever come back to life after CASL gets its full Parliamentary review.

Speaking of Parliamentary matters, I mentioned last week that the ETHI committee was going to hear from witnesses (me included) on the privacy rights of Canadians when they travel to the United States. The hearing was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon but was canceled at the last minute.  

I had hoped to tell our MPs that Canadians do have less privacy than some Europeans when their information is in the United States. Not only is there a statute in the U.S. that protects most Europeans (called the Judicial Redress Act), but the Privacy Shield treaty also affords protection. Canadians have nothing to rely on, and, as such, I was going to urge the politicians around the room to think about how it’s unfair that most Europeans have the protection we don’t. Why doesn't our leadership press the United States to designate Canada as a country covered by the Redress Act? I was also hoping to get them interested in the fact that the rest of the world has had their privacy laws evolve. So much so that when you compare them to Canada’s regime, the way we protect the privacy of Canadians within the country is almost as bad as our efforts to protect Canadians abroad. Well, that was the gist of it, anyway, and hopefully, we will get a chance to resume this debate. 

Hope you have a great weekend.