Canada

Certain amendments to Québec’s Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, introduced by Bill 64, will come into force on September 22, 2022. A draft Regulation specifying the requirements of these new provisions was published on June 29, 2022, subject to 45 days of consultation, to come into…

Note: this is the first in a series of blog posts on Bill C-27, also known as An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act. Bill C-27 is a revised version of the former Bill C-11 which died…

Over the past several weeks, there have been several important privacy developments in Canada including troubling privacy practices at well-known organizations such as the CBC and Tim Hortons, a call from business organizations for privacy reform, the nomination of a new privacy commissioner with little privacy experience, and a decision by a Senate committee to…

Remarks at the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) Canada Privacy Symposium 2022 May 26, 2022 Address by Daniel Therrien Privacy Commissioner of Canada (Check against delivery) This will be my last speech to the IAPP as Privacy Commissioner of Canada. For that occasion, Kris Klein expressed the hope that I would…

Earlier this month, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (“OPC”) released a summary of its key recommendations for a new federal private sector privacy law (the “Key Recommendations”), one that would update or replace the existing Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”).[1] The federal government most recently attempted to amend…

“The past,” wrote novelist L.P. Hartley, “is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Although Hartley wrote those words in 1953, they’ve never been truer than they are today in our highly digitized society. Just 40 years into the past, for example, the adjective “digital” was often used to…

The privacy environment has changed significantly since I took office in 2014. Following 9/11, the need to protect against further terrorist attacks seemed to outweigh privacy interests of individuals. This trend has changed with time, in part due to the Edward Snowden revelations made in 2013. The urgency of adopting…

In Simpson v. Facebook, Inc., the Ontario Divisional Court upheld the dismissal of the plaintiff’s certification motion against Facebook in a proposed class action alleging that the personal data of Canadian Facebook users was improperly shared with the Cambridge Analytica Group (“Cambridge Analytica”). The Divisional Court concluded that the action was…

Summary Bill 64, An Act to modernize legislative provisions as regards the protection of personal information, was adopted by the National Assembly on Tuesday, September 21, 2021 and has received official assent on September 22, 2021. It will come into force in three stages following assent, with some provisions coming into…

Limitation of liability clauses are common in IT service contracts, and are well accepted under Québec civil law. In 6362222 Canada inc. v Prelco inc., 2021 SCC 39, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously held that such a clause could not be nullified based on the doctrine of breach of…