Articles 2019

Two recent BC Court of Appeal decisions revive support for Canadian data breach class actions after the viability of such proceedings was recently stifled by a trio of decisions by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Privacy regulators across Canada are signalling an increased focus on a particular risk area: namely, reliance on service providers. This article explores various key developments.

Canadian organizations implementing artificial intelligence products to process personal information are currently working in a vacuum, with no definitive standards or frameworks to guide them. However, a recent report by Ontario's IPC provided recommendations for ensuring the privacy-protective adoption of such technologies.

After experiencing a cyber attack, organizations tend to keep a tight grip on incident-related information, often by asserting some sort of legal privilege. In LifeLabs LP v. Information and Privacy Commr. (Ontario), a panel of the Divisional Court of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice found that legal privileges asserted by LifeLabs did not apply to, among other things the forensic investigation report prepared by a third-party cybersecurity consultant.

In R v. Bykovets, the Supreme Court found that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in IP addresses and, as such, law enforcement need judicial pre-authorization to obtain access to them. This article provides a brief overview of the SCC’s decision and discusses important considerations under Canadian privacy law when determining the extent to which a business may disclose personal information to law enforcement without consent.

On February 2, 2024, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s mandate letters issued to his cabinet ministers in 2018 are exempt from public disclosure.

This article examines how existing law and upcoming legal reforms can be applied to address AI revenge porn. So far, the law has been slow to respond, though federal AI legislation on the horizon aims to regulate organizations that develop AI systems and make them available for use.

As another year has come to an end and we have already embarked on a new year, we take this opportunity to reflect on a number of significant changes to Canadian privacy law. From promising developments to proposed legislation to a groundbreaking investigation, there is much to review as we head into 2024. This article reviews the top five recent developments we encountered this year.

On December 7, 2023, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada released an article with nine principles intended to guide developers, providers and organizations to properly navigate the development and use of generative artificial intelligence. Privacy concerns arise where the AI is trained on data sets that include personal information.

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Cohere, and DALL-E2 are popular tools that allow organizations to generate images, text, sounds and creative content based on a prompt. While these tools can provide practical benefits such as improved efficiency and productivity, they raise privacy risks which are important to mitigate.