Prime Minister prorogues parliament, privacy legislation in limbo

It's official, the Prime Minister is proroguing parliament until the beginning of March: CBC News - Politics - PM seeks Parliament shutdown until March. (Never mind that they've been on vacation since November.)

This means that a number of privacy-affecting bills are being forced into a coma. The list includes:

• Bill C-27 - Electronic Commerce Protection Act (Second Reading in the Senate and Referred to Committee on December 15, 2009) (aka Anti-spam Act);
  
• Bill C-46 - Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act (Referred to Committee on October 27, 2009);
  
• Bill C-47 - Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act (Referred to Committee on October 29, 2009);

The media is also reporting that, in the meantime, Harper plans to fill five vacant senate seats, which will give the Conservatives the majority they need to ensure safe passage of their legislation.

Privacy-related bills to die on the order paper if Canadian election called

With talk of an election heating up in Canada, I thought I'd provide a list of the government bills that will likely die on the order paper if the government is brought down or if the PM wanders over to speak with the Governor General about dissolving parliament:

C-29	An Act to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (Safeguarding Canadians’ Personal Information Act)	First Reading in the House of Commons (May 25, 2010)
C-50	An Act to amend the Criminal Code (interception of private communications and related warrants and orders) (Improving Access to Investigative Tools for Serious Crimes Act)	First Reading in the House of Commons (October 29, 2010)
C-51	An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Competition Act and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act (Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act)	First Reading in the House of Commons (November 1st, 2010)
C-52	An Act regulating telecommunications facilities to support investigations (Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act)	First Reading in the House of Commons (November 1st, 2010)

Bills C-50, C-51 and C-52 need some major work so I'm fine to see them go back into parliamentary purgatory, but the PIPEDA amendments (C-29) were pretty good and I'd hate to think we're back to the drawing board.

The Canadian Privacy Law Blog is Five!

Five years ago, on January 2, 2004, a new age of privacy was creeping across Canada and this blog was born. The day before, at the stroke of midnight, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (Canada) had come fully into force. The Alberta and British Columbia Personal Information Protection Acts also became effective on the first day of 2004.

Since then, we have seen dramatic changes in privacy throughout the world: Identity theft is on the rise; there have been literally thousands of data breaches exposing the personal information of millions of people; governments are looking for easier access to personal information; video surveillance is more widespread; more personal information is generated digitally and aggregated in private hands.

And in the past year specifically, things have remained interesting on the privacy front. We've seen debate over changes to PIPEDA without anything definitive coming from the mandatory five year review. We've also seen arguments put forward to reform the public sector Privacy Act. Focus has also been drawn to the increasing practice of examining laptops at US border crossings. Litigation between Viacom and Google has raised awareness of log information that's often retained by internet companies. And Google has also been sued by a couple claiming their privacy has been violated by presenting pictures of their house in Google Street View. But in the last year, the one big privacy story that was supposed to have the largest impact on Canadians was the implementation of the National Do Not Call List. Whether it has, in fact, had an impact is the subject of debate.

I'd like to thank the many thousands of readers of the blog for visiting this site and thanks to those who have contacted me with comments, compliments, suggestions and links to interesting news. It's been a pleasure to write and I plan to keep it going as long as there's interesting privacy news to report.

Birthday cake graphic used under a creative commons license from K. Pierce.