Key opportunities and challenges going forward

Securing Canadians’ Trust

The online public consultation showed that, in the eyes of the Canadian public and most stakeholders, the Privacy Act lags substantially behind comparable personal information protection instruments elsewhere in Canada and internationally. The Act’s definitions; its rules on the collection, use and disclosure of personal information; its treatment of “publicly available” personal information; the scope of its rules on who can request access to their personal information; its accountability and transparency frameworks, as well as its oversight regime – all these are widely seen as unlikely to meet the challenges of a modern, digital Canadian society. An overhaul of such elements, as proposed in Justice Canada’s discussion paper, would help restore and secure Canadians’ trust in their federal government’s activities involving personal information.

Aligning Public and Private Sector Frameworks

Canada’s federal private sector personal information protection framework is seen by key stakeholders as providing useful points of reference for modernizing the Act. For instance, its principles-based approach to the regulation of personal information, as well as its more modern oversight and enforcement framework could inspire amendments to the Act. Further, Canadians and other stakeholders have consistently signaled their support for a much closer alignment between the federal public and private frameworks for the protection of personal information.

Harnessing Innovation in the Public Interest

Canadians and other stakeholders showed support for various approaches to addressing the widespread view that technological innovation can also give rise to increased privacy risks. Justice Canada heard that federal public bodies’ activities involving either de-identified or “publicly available” personal information collected digitally, as well as their increasing reliance on automated decision-making tools, were top-of-mind for most stakeholders. On one hand, Canadians and other stakeholders recognize, and even welcome, the benefits of advanced technology for carrying out government activities in the public interest. On the other hand, they insist that those benefits should not come at the cost of protecting Canadians’ privacy. Including improved transparency requirements as well as stronger oversight mechanisms in a modernized Act would help to address these concerns.