I wrote last week about having spent a couple of days providing training to a group in Toronto. This week, it was in Ottawa — well, across the river in Gatineau, to be precise. It seems there is a growing appetite in Canada for privacy professionals to take IAPP training, and I’m loving the opportunity it provides me in terms of getting to meet people who are tackling privacy challenges on a daily basis.
Of course, not everyone who takes the training goes on to write the exam, but a good number do. Worldwide, there are more than 15,000 certified privacy professionals, and just over 900 of those are Canadian members of the IAPP. That’s a pretty significant proportion that I’m proud of.
During this past week’s training, a number of interesting topics came up, but one that resonated with me — and this is because some of the people in the room deal with it daily — is the age of the federal Privacy Act. By the end of the two days of training, it seemed like we must have talked about how badly it needs updating at least a couple of dozen times. And we didn’t stop there; there was lots of talk about the need to update PIPEDA in some respects, too.
It seems unlikely that the current federal government, being marred in the bizarre SNC-Lavalin scandal, will have the appetite to address these deficiencies prior to the election in the fall. But, maybe if the strong Canadian privacy profession exerts enough of a voice, the people running in the election will make it a priority within their platforms. Will the political parties’ platforms on data protection, privacy, big data and the digital economy influence the way you vote? Would love to hear your thoughts.