Parliament recently approved Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart’s re-appointment for an additional three-year term. In a speech at the University of Ottawa, she outlined some of her priorities for her new term: 1) ensuring social networking and online dating sites respect privacy, 2) educating Canadians to better understand their privacy rights and to make well-informed choices, and 3) ensuring privacy complaints made to her office are dealt with in a timely manner.
Stoddart also indicated that she wants to strengthen PIPEDA, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. With PIPEDA facing a mandatory review by Parliament this year, it is likely that at least some legislative change will take place. In a future post I’ll explore some of the possible changes to PIPEDA.