On April 8, 2014, the Harper government introduced Bill S-4 in
the Senate. The new Bill, known as the "Digital Privacy
Act" is touted as providing new protections for Canadians
when they search the web and shop online. However, for privacy
observers, the Digital Privacy Act largely represents a
retabling of two previous Bills introduced in the House of Commons
to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic
Documents Act ("PIPEDA"), the most recent of which
was Bill C-12, introduced in 2011, which died when Parliament was
prorogued in 2013.
The Digital Privacy Act contains a number of
administrative amendments and, of the recycled amendments to
PIPEDA, the following are noteworthy:
