Canadian privacy law 2.0: Artificial intelligence (AI) and Bill C-11, the Consumer Privacy Protection Act

 and In a recent announcement, the Canadian federal Privacy Commissioner of Canada (“OPC”) released a report containing recommendations on how AI should be treated under Canadian privacy law, and what protections need to be in place to ensure AI applications reach their potential without negatively impacting privacy rights of Canadians. The report entitled “A Regulatory Framework for AI: Recommendations for PIPEDA Reform” is the result of the consultations with stakeholders earlier, as discussed in our previous blog article, earlier in the year. The Commissioner received 86 submissions and held two in-person consultations.
Almost concurrently, on November 16, 2020, the federal government announced a tabling of legislation that will overhaul Canadian privacy law, namely, Bill C-11, “An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act and the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts.” We reported on Bill C-11 and the proposed replacement of Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”), being the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, in our first article in a series on the potential impact of Bill C-11. The Commissioner released a statement shortly after Bill C-11 was announced, commending many of the proposed changes, such as increased enforcement and order-making powers, but Commissioner Therrien also voiced significant concerns. In particular, the OPC is concerned with how the new law does not place privacy rights in the context of individual and human rights and fails to entrench it as such in the proposed Bill C-11.

This article was written by Myron Mallia-Dare and David Krebs from Miller Thompson LLP and published in Lexology on December 7, 2020. Myron is an advisor to the CRTA.

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