Parliamentary Report on Canada's Private Sector Privacy Law

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics has released its statutory review of PIPEDA, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

The Act, which is intended to protect privacy in the private sector, mandates a review of the statute every five years. This is the first such review.

The co-operative blawg Slaw.ca lists the 25 recommendations made in the report.

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist has a less than enthusiastic reaction:

"The public sector privacy law has been waiting decades for reform with no sign of change and this first attempt at private sector reform suggests that the wait on PIPEDA may be just as long. With strong business opposition to reform, opposition to the law itself from the Bloc (which issued its own dissent to remind everyone that it opposes the law), and privacy commissioners facing pressures to moderate their public position on reform, I fear that it is going to be years before Canadian privacy law changes in any significant way".