Last week, while privacy professionals in Canada were still contemplating Bill C-26 on cybersecurity, the much-anticipated Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022 — Bill C-27 — was introduced by the federal government. It is a reintroduction and, some may agree, an improvement of Bill C-11, first introduced in 2020 and failed on the order paper as a result of the federal election in 2021. The new statutory framework in Bill C-27 governs private sector personal information protection practices ... Read More

Canada's federal privacy regime is on the cusp of an overhaul with the recent introduction of Bill C-27, an omnibus legislative package for data protection and artificial intelligence. Many have called for this reform in recent years to address growing privacy issues. Former Privacy Commissioner of Canada Daniel Therrien was one who saw the need and strongly advocated for change during the final years of his eight-year term. Therrien completed his tenure as commissioner June 3, spending some ti... Read More

On June 15, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada released the results of the “2020-21 Survey of Canadians on Privacy-Related Issues.” Between November and December 2020, a 14-minute random digit dialing telephone survey was administered to 1,502 Canadian residents 16 years or older. The goal of the research was to better understand the extent to which Canadians were aware, understood and perceived privacy-related issues. In the report, the results were expressed as a percentage. Kno... Read More

The federal minority government released draft legislation to update and modernize Canada’s federal private sector privacy legislation. The present law, the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act, was initially passed in 2001 and fully came into effect in 2004. We will not go into a detailed explanation of Canada’s federal division of powers or the application of PIPEDA but will instead focus on the proposed changes. It is important to remember that a key goal of PIPEDA was to allow ... Read More