Sidewalk Toronto subject to privacy laws and principles
Canada is known for a lot of things — beautiful landscapes, friendly people, our cultural diversity, our social openness. At the same time, we’ve built a reputation as leaders in privacy protection, tackling the tech giants before everyone else.
With Sidewalk Toronto, we are showing our commitment to privacy through healthy debate over how personal information and data will be treated. But that debate overlooks the reality of existing privacy protections in Canada, and I hope to contribute to the crucial discussion around privacy and Sidewalk Toronto by offering three points of clarification.
First, the project is not evolving in a privacy law vacuum. Solid privacy laws in Canada govern the use of all personal information. For the private sector, the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act keeps companies in line.
In Ontario, the Ontario Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act restricts use of personal information by the provincial government. Personal information that is used by the federal government is protected by the Privacy Act.
Surveillance is often mentioned in the context of Sidewalk Toronto. The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario as well as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada already have well-established guidelines that state the limits for the use of video surveillance and how that information can be used. Sidewalk Labs is subject to these rules.
Any corporation operating in Ontario is subject to the laws of the land. In fact, there are examples in both the public and private sector where organizations have had to adjust their practices to ensure proper consent or to demonstrate necessity for the use of personal data. Sidewalk Toronto will be no different.
There are many cases where the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario have been successful in bringing improvements, however imposing, to the protection of personal information by compelling both public and private sector organizations to comply with Canadian privacy law if they are to function within our borders.
This is not a reason to be complacent. This is a reason to leverage the strength of Canadian privacy law.
Second, the right to privacy is recognized in Canada as a fundamental right. The strength of Canadian privacy law, however challenging the current technological context may be, rests on its foundational principles.
As a fundamental right, privacy cannot be restricted except through demonstrably reasonable limits. This means that a proper balance must be reached between privacy and the legitimate need for organizations to use personal information, as appropriate in the circumstances and only with valid consent.
As a fundamental right, privacy is protected in Canada through principles rather than through a set of specific rules that would become obsolete with every new technology. Our privacy law is structured around principles of individual empowerment. Personal information is protected in any form it is recorded (for example, print or digital), consent must be informed to be valid, individuals have a right to access their personal information and organizations entrusted with it are legally bound to use it only for the purposes for which it was provided, and to protect it.
There is also recourse if needed. You can file a complaint with either the federal or provincial privacy commissions. If you are unaware of a violation of privacy law, the commissioners can proceed on their own initiative, through their own vigilance, as they often do, to ensure organizations are compliant with the laws of the land.
The third and final point is that any privacy assessment of the Sidewalk Toronto project would be premature. The fact is that we are only at the very beginning of the Sidewalk Toronto plan development process. This means we are still at the stage of identifying every privacy risk to which we will apply every privacy protection available to us. And those protections are very real.