Wednesday, July 19, 2006

OPC issues PIPEDA Review Discussion Document

The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act provides for a review of the Act every five years by a committee of the House of Commons. Since it came into force in 2001, many have been waiting for 2006 to resolve a number of outstanding questions. While preliminary consultations have been going on by Industry Canada in anticipation of the review, there hasn't been any indication of when the public review would begin.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has kicked off the public discussion with the release of a PIPEDA Review Discussion Document, which covers a number of areas where defects and ambiguities have been identified. The document doesn't offer recommendations, but raises questions to be considered by the committe in the following areas:

  • Commissioner’s Powers
  • Consent
  • Disclosure of Personal Information before Transfer of Businesses
  • Work Product
  • Duty to Notify
  • Transborder Flows of Personal Information
  • Sharing Information with Other Data Protection Authorities

The document is relatively brief and does a good job of discussing most of the issues that I expect will be considered by the committee whenever it gets going.

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