Cybersecurity Among Factors Driving Privacy Law Reform In Canada

The digital economy has changed the way we live and the way organizations carry on business. It has also raised unique privacy challenges that were not imaginable when Canada's private-sector privacy laws were originally drafted. Organizations are increasingly collecting and compiling considerable amounts of personal information, including sensitive personal information, and using it for a wide range of purposes, including data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), to better serve their customers.

Legislators across Canada and the rest of the world are attempting to modernize legislation to keep up with these advances. The European Union bolstered its privacy laws in 2018, enacting the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Legislatures in other jurisdictions followed, including in California, Japan, Korea and Brazil. In Canada, the federal government and several provincial governments have signalled their intention to modernize their privacy legislation.