Organizations doing business in Quebec face new compliance obligations as the right to data portability came into force at the tail end of September, spelling the end of a one-year leniency period following the entry into force of Quebec’s sweeping overhaul of its privacy regime.
Quebec introduced sweeping changes to its privacy regime, making it the most consumer-friendly privacy law in Canada by giving individuals much greater control over their privacy while compelling private and public sector organizations to implement onerous prescriptive obligations that will be challenging to fulfil within two years, according to privacy experts.
An ambitious overhaul of Quebec’s privacy law would introduce new privacy rights, new accountability and governance requirements, new obligations, and hefty monetary penalties.
Privacy commissioner launches consultation on artificial intelligence.
The majority of European and American firms are not yet ready to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), reveals a recent report.
You can still download the application if you want. But if you believe what Kyle Zak has to say about it, it’s not something you would do. Not unless you don’t mind the trade-off between ease-of-use and the reams of information you will allegedly provide to the popular audio maker Bose Corp.
The lawsuit filed by Zak against Bose is the latest to allege companies of surreptitiously tracking consumers, without their consent, to collect data and then to either solicit more business or sell it to third parties.
Early this year Ottawa-based sex toy maker We-Vibe settled a privacy lawsuit for $5 million after a line of its vibrators were found to have secretly collected and transmitted “highly sensitive information” about consumers without their knowledge or consent.
A month after the parent company of the controversial adult dating website Ashley Madison settled a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and state charges over the 2015 data breach that exposed the personal data of more than 36 million users and highlighted the site’s unfair and deceptive practices, the firm is now trying to thwart 20 class actions against it by invoking online arbitration agreements the plaintiffs signed when they subscribed to its matchmaking services.
Quebec, once a pioneer that lead the movement towards greater government transparency, is now among the least transparent provinces in Canada after successive provincial governments introduced more than 150 legislative exemptions that undermined the province’s access to information legislation, according to a recently published comprehensive report by Quebec’s Commission d’accès à l’information.
With Quebec ranking 10th out of 14 jurisdictions in Canada, and 57th in the world, behind Honduras and Romania, the Quebec government should overhaul the provincial access to information legislation to compel all public bodies, even those partially financed by the provincial government, to be subjected to the access to information law, noted the 214-page, five-year report that issued 67 recommendations.
The consent model, the cornerstone behind the federal legislation that governs how private sector organizations may collect, use or disclose personal information in the course of commercial activities, is under the microscope after the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) published a consultation paper that examines its viability in today’s digital information ecosystem.
A call by Canada’s privacy watchdog to the life and health insurance industry to voluntarily refrain from requesting clients for access to existing genetic test results is going to be ignored, setting the stage for a divisive debate over access and the use of such personal information.
Workplace privacy, an issue few seriously thought about even a decade ago, has become a conundrum for employers.