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Canada’s privacy commissioner is to be given enhanced powers to establish a new set of online regulations, protecting citizens’ privacy and their rights over the data collected on them by both private and public bodies.
In a mandate letter from Canada’s newly re-elected prime minister Justin Trudeau to minister of innovation, science and industry Navdeep Bains, Trudeau sets out 25 priorities covering issues such as data privacy, the use of data tools and the management of Statistics Canada. The news follows the publication of an official report which called for an overhaul of the country’s privacy laws, in light of a number of data privacy investigations and concerns about government agency Statistics Canada’s use of data.
In the letter, Trudeau writes that Bains should work with the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of Canadian Heritage to advance Canada’s Digital Charter, and to give the privacy commissioner powers to establish the new set of online rights.
The prime minister said these rights should include the ability to withdraw, remove and erase basic personal data from a platform; the knowledge of how personal data is being used, including with a national advertising registry, and the ability to withdraw consent for the sharing or sale of data; the ability to review and challenge the amount of personal data that a company or government has collected; and the ability to be informed when personal data is compromised, with appropriate compensation.
The new set of rights would also cover data portability; proactive data security requirements; and the ability to be free from online discrimination including bias and harassment, he said.
Time to act
In a blog post by Canadian law firm Lawson Lundell, three of its lawyers – Ryan Berger, Jocelyn McAdam and Cory Sully – write that while some of the rights outlined in the letter exist in Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and “arguably exist to some degree in existing privacy laws in Canada”, some – such as the right to know how personal data is being used – are “not well enforced”.
The letter “signals changes that we can anticipate to Canada’s privacy laws and how they will be enforced. Overall, individual rights will be strengthened and organisations will have more significant compliance obligations,” they write.
Another priority set out in the letter is to “create new regulations for large digital companies to better protect people’s personal data and encourage greater competition in the digital marketplace”. A new post of data commissioner is to be established to oversee the regulations.
The letter sets out the need to “crack down on financial crime in real estate while respecting Canadians’ privacy rights”. And it asks that Bains, with the support of the Minister of Digital Government, “continue work on the ethical use of data and digital tools like artificial intelligence for better government”.
