Library of Parliament Legislative Summary of Amendments to Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act

The Library of Parliament recently published a legislative summary of Bill C-29: An Act to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

PIPEDA is the Canada's privacy legislation covering the private sector:

"PIPEDA applies primarily to the collection, use or disclosure of personal information in the course of commercial activities by a private sector organization. It regulates all such activity not only at the federal level and in the territories, but also in every province, unless that province has passed its own legislation requiring the private sector to provide comparable protection, referred to as substantially similar legislation (...)"

"Bill C-29 adds several new definitions to PIPEDA. It preserves the existing definition of personal information as 'information about an identifiable individual,' but removes the wording excluding the names and coordinates of employees, and creates a new definition for business contact information (clauses 2(1) and 2(3)). It also specifies that PIPEDA's provisions on personal information do not apply to business contact information (clause 4)."

"In addition, the bill expands the coverage of PIPEDA to the personal information of applicants for employment with federal businesses, works and undertakings, instead of just employees (clause 3)."