Announcement

Commissioner appears before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics to discuss the 2021-22 Main Estimates

May 10, 2021

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada appeared today before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics to discuss the 2021-22 Main Estimates.

In his remarks, Daniel Therrien noted that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) had been able to leverage temporary funding to reduce significantly its investigative backlog of complaints older than a year. The OPC met and even surpassed its target and reduced the overall backlog of complaints by 91%.

The Commissioner also noted that Bill C-11, the federal government’s proposed new private-sector privacy legislation, imposes several new responsibilities on the OPC, including the obligation to review codes of practice and certification programs, and give advice to individual organizations on their privacy management programs.

He added that it will be important that modern privacy laws are capable of addressing risks to privacy posed by new technologies, while also providing for an effective regulator. This would include providing adequate financial and legislative resources to the OPC to protect Canadians’ privacy rights.