One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Bill C-36 Modernizes Canada's Privacy Law, Then Delays It to 2030 - Michael Geist

Canada’s private sector privacy law is more than 25 years old and there is broad consensus that a modernization is long overdue. Bill C-36, tabled on Monday, is the government’s third attempt at updating the law, following the failed efforts with Bill C-11 in 2020 and Bill C-27 in 2022. My first post on the new bill focused on what I think remains both the most important development and the biggest mistake: the decision to push the Privacy Commissioner of Canada out of private-sector privacy and to place the file with an overloaded digital safety commission. For years, privacy critics have argued that, given the absence of order-making powers or serious penalties, Canada’s biggest shortcoming has been weak enforcement. Yet just as the government adds much-needed new rights and penalties to the privacy law framework, it undermines enforcement once again by introducing a new regulator that will take years to establish. The consequence is that, rather than updating the law for 2027, it is updating it for 2030 or later.