International Law

Assistant Commissioner takes the show on the road

By David T.S. Fraser

Over the last couple of days, representatives of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada have had a real blitz through Halifax. Elizabeth Denham, the current Assistant Commissioner responsible for PIPEDA and her predecessor, Heather Black, have been in town as part of an outreach effort to determine what it takes to raise awareness of and compliance with privacy laws in the eastern hinterlands. As part of this, the office has hired a representative who is based in Halifax to lead these outreach efforts.

I had the pleasure of hearing Heather Black speak at Dalhousie Law School on Wednesday night about the genesis and drafting of PIPEDA. It's an interesting story about how we ended up with two pieces of legislation (the Personal Information Protection Act and the Electronic Documents Act) thrown together and how, at the last minute, the proposed bill was changed to go beyond the federally regulated sector.

Yesterday, the Information Technology Industry Alliance of Nova Scotia (of which I'm the Director of Advocacy) hosted a roundtable with representatives of the IT, telecom, health, marketing, retail and small business sectors to talk about why awareness of PIPEDA is so low among consumers and small business, and what can be done to change that. Earlier in the day, they had participated in a fraud prevention forum, also at Dalhousie: Nova Scotia News - TheChronicleHerald.ca.

I understand the mission in Halifax continues today ...

Full post as published by The Canadian Privacy Law Blog on March 07, 2008 (boomark / email).