California Consumer Privacy Act — Preparing For Compliance

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is coming into force in less than two months, on January 1, 2020. The CCPA has an extraterritorial scope, as discussed below in section 1, which means that certain Canadian organizations may be covered by the statute. In order to comply with the law, these organizations will need to observe new transparency requirements (such as by adding specific notices on their websites and revising their privacy policies), adjust their practices to respond to new consumer privacy rights and adjust their contracts with service providers.

As opposed to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which provides for monetary penalties only in limited circumstances¹ and does not provide a private right of action,² non-compliance with the CCPA can result in important monetary penalties: