Developing An Effective Consent-Based Privacy Policy: Key Elements To Consider, And The Consequences Of Not Obtaining Meaningful Consent

In Canada, private sector privacy laws are governed by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, SC 2000, c 5 ("PIPEDA"), as well as substantially similar legislation across certain provinces such as the Personal Information Privacy Act, SA 2003, c P-6.5 ("PIPA AB") in Alberta, the Personal Information Protection Act ("PIPA BC") in British Columbia, and the Act Respecting the Protection of Personal Information in the Private Sector, CQLR c P-39.1 ("Quebec Privacy Act") in Quebec. This article will focus on developing a privacy policy for private sector corporations that handle personal information in Alberta, with federal guidance from PIPEDA.

Personal information under PIPA AB is defined as "any information about an identifiable individual". PIPEDA expands on this definition to include a number of factors such as age, name, ID numbers, income, ethnic origin, blood type, opinions, evaluations, comments, social status, disciplinary