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ARTICLE · 25 JUNE 2018

Understanding The GDPR—Comparing Consent Provisions To PIPEDA, PIPA And CASL

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The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force on May 25, 2018. To assist Canadian organizations with their potential compliance efforts with respect to this legislation ...

CanadaPrivacy
Stephen D. Burns
Stephen D. Burns
J. Sébastien Gittens
J. Sébastien Gittens
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The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force on May 25, 2018. To assist Canadian organizations with their potential compliance efforts with respect to this legislation, the following is intended to provide a non-exhaustive, high-level comparison between the consent provisions of:

  1. the GDPR;
  2. Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA);
  3. the Personal Information Protection Acts of Alberta and British Columbia (collectively, the PIPAs); and
  4. Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (widely known as CASL).

While there are important nuances to each of these regulatory frameworks, they broadly draw on fair information practices that result in substantial commonality among them. In fact, a number of elements in Canadian private sector privacy law, especially in the PIPAs, have anticipated some provisions in the GDPR.

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