It is finally here: the long-anticipated Online Harms bill. It was tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2024 as Bill C-63. It is not as bad as I expected, but it has some serious issues that need to be addressed if it is going to be Charter-compliant. It also has some room for serious improvement and it represents a real missed opportunity in how it handles “deepfakes”, synthetic explicit images and videos. The bill is 104 pages long and it was just released, so this will be a high level overview and perhaps incomplete. But I will also focus on some issues that leapt out to me on my fi ..read more

There’s a bill working its way through the Parliament that presents a clear and present danger to the free and open internet, to freedom of expression and to privacy online. It’s a private member’s bill that shockingly has gotten traction.  You may have heard of it, thanks to Professor Michael Geist, who has called the Bill “the Most Dangerous Canadian Internet Bill You’ve Never Heard Of.” In a nutshell, it will require any website on the entire global internet that makes sexually explicit material available to verify the age of anyone who wants access, to ensure that they are not under ..read more

So Bill c-27, also known as the digital charter implementation act of 2022 has been before Canada's Parliament for consideration for quite some time. Even before this parliamentary session, a bill substantially similar to the present one was tabled and then died on the order paper in the previous parliamentary session. After more than 20 years of the personal information protection electronic documents act, people have had a long time to think about improvements that perhaps could or should be made to our national privacy regime . One thing that I've heard over and over again, particularly fr ..read more

I also had the oppotunity to talk about this silly take with CBC Information Morning Halifax and Cape Breton. You can listen to the interviews here: Halifax, Cape Breton ..read more

Decision follows trend starting in BC that a virtual presence in Canada is enough to be ordered to produce records The Federal Court of Canada, in connection with an application for a warrant and an assistance order under the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, was required to consider whether an assistance order under s. 22.3(1) of that Act could be issued to order a legal person with no physical presence in Canada to assist CSIS with giving effect to a warrant. The order would have extra-territorial effect. In a redacted decision, Re Canadian Security Intelligence Service A ..read more

So someone from CSIS just called …. There’s a first time for everything. You get a call from an “UNKNOWN NUMBER” and the caller says they work with Public Safety Canada and they’re looking for some information. This happens from time to time at universities, colleges, telecoms, internet-based businesses and others. Likely, they actually work for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (known as CSIS) and they’re doing an investigation.  So what happens – or should happen – next? You should ask them what they’re looking for and what is their lawful authority. Get their contact inf ..read more

Recently, the information and privacy commissioner of British Columbia issued a decision that essentially shuts down most use of facial recognition technology in the retail context. What’s interesting is that the Commissioner undertook this investigation on his own accord. In order to see how prevalent the use of facial recognition was among the province’s retailers, the OIPC surveyed 13 of the province’s largest retailers (including grocery, clothing, electronics, home goods, and hardware stores): 12 responded that they did not use FRT. The remaining retailer, Canadian Tire Corporation, re ..read more

Can someone legitimately try to stop you from taking photos or recording video in a public place? There are some laws to know about, but the answer for Canada is that you generally have the right to take photos or record video in a public place, and nobody can lawfully stop you from doing so. How it came up This past week on Twitter, I saw a couple of discussions about people taking photos in public places, either being called out about it online or being told in person to cut it out. In the first example, Canadian journalist James MacLeod took it upon himself to get a radar speed gun and doc ..read more

Given the current dumpster fire at Twitter and the recent ban on outbound links to other social platforms, I thought I'd do a post of where to find me: Twitter: https://twitter.com/privacylawyer Mastodon: https://twit.social/@privacylawyer YouTube: https://youtube.com/@privacylawyer My firm, McInnes Cooper: https://www.mcinnescooper.com/people/david-fraser/ My blog, the Canadian Privacy Law Blog: https://blog.privacylawyer.ca ..read more

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada just released a report of findings about a company contracted by the Airport of Montreal to do on-arrival covid testing. The company added the people tested to their mailing list and sent them unsolicited commercial electronic messages. The investigation was done jointly with the Information Commissioner of Quebec. The finding raises more questions than it answers. The complainant in this case arrived at Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport. To comply with the Public Health Agency of Canada’s rules, the individual had to undergo on-arrival COVID testing ..read more