Rob Aske

As we wrote about earlier, Canada’s federal government has proposed a replacement to our national privacy law for commercial transactions known as the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”).

The new bill is the Digital Charter Implementation Act, and this bill in turn would create a new Consumer Privacy Protection Act (“CPPA”) which would replace the privacy portion of PIPEDA.

The CPPA will likely not come into force for a year or more, while consultations and the drafting of regulations proceed.

However, the proposed CPPA does restate and expand on the existing privacy law requirements of PIPEDA, and if your business needs a privacy tune-up then CPPA can provide a useful guide, with better detail than PIPEDA offers now.

Privacy management program

For example, CPPA requires all organizations (including businesses) to implement a “privacy management program” including policies, practices and procedures for protection of personal information, complaints handling, training of personnel and for explaining these practices to the public. This program must take into account the “volume and sensitivity of the personal information” under the organization’s control.

CPPA also obliges an organization to provide the federal Privacy Commissioner with access to all policies, practices and procedures of its privacy management program, merely upon request, which of course could give the Commissioner a good look into any program gaps. If the Commissioner has reasonable grounds to believe that a breach of privacy obligations has occurred, then the Commissioner may choose to “audit” these practices.

Further detail on consent

The required consent for use of personal information is also described in CPPA in greater detail, and states that consent is only valid if at or before the time that the organization seeks the individual’s consent, it provides the following information in “plain language”:

(a) the purposes for the collection, use or disclosure;

(b) the way in which the personal information is to be collected, used or disclosed;

(c) any reasonably foreseeable consequences of the collection, use or disclosure of the personal information;

(d) the specific type of personal information that is to be collected, used or disclosed; and

(e) the names of any third parties or types of third parties to which the organization may disclose the personal information.

Consent must be obtained at or before collection, and must be express unless it is appropriate to rely on implied consent, taking into account the reasonable expectations of the individual and the sensitivity of the personal information.

Plain language privacy policies

CPPA also gives clearer guidance on privacy policies to be made available to customers and others providing personal information, which must again be in “plain language” and include at least the following:

(a) a description of the type of personal information under the organization’s control;

(b) a general account of how the organization makes use of personal information, including how the organization applies any permitted exceptions;

(c) a general account of the organization’s use of any automated decision system (e.g. AI systems) to make predictions, recommendations or decisions about individuals that could have significant impacts on them;

(d) whether or not the organization carries out any international or interprovincial transfer or disclosure of personal information that may have reasonably foreseeable privacy implications;

(e) how an individual may make a request for disposal or access; and

(f) the business contact information for your privacy officer.

While the policy requirements above about automated decision systems and international and interprovincial transfers are part of many policies now, they are new as express requirements of the law.

Therefore, all businesses that may be considering a tune-up of their privacy practices and policies should review the standards as outlined in the proposed CPPA, including those above.

This article is provided for general information only. If you have any questions about the above, please contact a member of our Privacy group.

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