Selling Canadians’ basic proper to privateness, addressing the privateness impacts of latest applied sciences like synthetic intelligence, and championing kids’s privateness rights would be the priorities of the federal Workplace of the Privateness Commissioner (OPC) for the following three years.
Commissioner Philippe Dufresne revealed the strategic plan Monday initially of the annual observance of Knowledge Privateness Week.
“This plan provides a high-level overview of the sorts of initiatives that we’re enterprise, the areas the place we are going to focus our efforts, and the outcomes that we intend to realize,” Dufresne mentioned in a press release. “It is going to drive our responsiveness and our proactivity and assist us make decisions about the place to focus our sources. It requires us to persistently equip and proceed to develop our gifted staff and recruit new workers to deal with the complexities within the area and the modifications forward.”
The plan partly depends on Parliament passing a brand new privateness legislation protecting federally-regulated industries and companies in provinces and territories that don’t have their very own non-public sector privateness laws.
That proposed legislation, C-27, which incorporates the Shopper Privateness Safety Act (CPPA) and the Synthetic Intelligence Knowledge Act (AIDA), remains to be earlier than the Home of Commons business and know-how committee.
Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne has mentioned the proposed act can be amended earlier than a last vote to make it clear Canadians have a proper to privateness.
As a part of the CPPA, the privateness commissioner would get new powers, together with the power to advocate fines for violating the act.
To make sure kids’s privateness is protected, the privateness commissioner will work for legal guidelines that acknowledge kids’s rights, and compel organizations to embed privateness of their services.
“Our dedication to this situation stems from the assumption that kids should be kids, even within the digital realm, free from misleading practices and with the liberty to navigate on-line areas securely,” the strategic plan says.
The strategic plan is an overview of priorities, and never an in depth checklist of what the Workplace of the Privateness Commissioner intends to perform.
For instance, to realize the objective of addressing the privateness impacts of technological advances, the OPC intends to ascertain privateness requirements for rising tech, situation steerage to companies, and type partnerships “that complement and acknowledge the breadth of our areas of involvement and our technological capability.”
Dufresne grew to become privateness commissioner in the summertime of 2022. He signaled his path when he testified final October earlier than the Home of Commons Standing Committee on Entry to Data, Privateness and Ethics. At the moment, he mentioned that “it’s vital that authorities and organizations take motion to make sure that younger individuals can profit from know-how and be lively on-line with out the danger of being focused, manipulated, or harmed consequently.”
A number of weeks earlier, when presenting the OPC’s annual report back to Parliament, Dufresne mentioned the impression of rising applied sciences on private privateness was additionally certainly one of his priorities.
