Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On September 27, 2019, the Centre for Information Policy Leadership at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP submitted comments on Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s Proposals to Modernize the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”) (the “Comments”).

In its Comments, CIPL highlighted that PIPEDA’s modernization is an opportunity to explicitly state that the goal of PIPEDA is to protect privacy and support innovation and prosperity.

To that end, CIPL recommends that:

• Canada should de-emphasize the role of consent in PIPEDA and instead make it one of several co-equal bases for processing personal information;
• Anonymized and truly de-identified information should be exempt from certain relevant requirements of PIPEDA;
• PIPEDA should include a right to data portability that reflects technical feasibility;
• PIPEDA’s definition of “sensitive” data should be rebuttable rather than definitive;
• Canada should incorporate co-regulation tools such as industry codes of conduct, privacy certifications and technical standards into PIPEDA;
• PIPEDA’s oversight and enforcement framework should place more emphasis on the use of formal accountability schemes; and
• PIPEDA should remain a principles-based and technology neutral law.

To read the above recommendations in more detail, along with CIPL’s other recommendations on the reform of PIPEDA, please see the full response.