Public consultation on the Privacy Act – Submission – Anonymous #3

11 February, 2021

The following are my proposals for the Privacy Act redesign:

  1. Canada should bring its digital privacy regulation standards to at least those of the European Union’s GDPR.
  2. The scope of the regulation should focus on safeguarding individual privacy from any entity collecting or using information, and not just the Canadian Government. Private organizations, Foreign governments, private-public organizations, etc.
  3. The new regulation should take an umbrella form to cover all aspects of individual’s data privacy, as the GDPR does. We must consolidate the Privacy Act and the PIPEDA.
  4. An governing organization that has enough bite to monitor, investigate, and enforce warnings and penalties must be created. In its current mandate, the OPC lacks enforcement power.
  5. A tier of Sovereign class data must be created, so that such sensitive information does not fall into Foreign hands and/or to those of parties that could use such information to the detriment of individuals or Canadian Sovereignity.
  6. Penalties for violations must be aligned to promote compliance, in a similar fashion as the GDPR does (severe violations can reach fines of up to 4% of the organization’s annual turnover)