Modernizing Privacy in Canada

IAB Canada TCF to be released for Public Commentary

September has been a busy month for IAB Canada, as we have multiple privacy-related initiatives on the go. An initial draft response to the Government of Ontario’s request for submissions regarding its own privacy legislation is currently under review by our Privacy Committee.

This paper centres around the following key principles:

  1. Avoidance of patchwork privacy legislation, as it is best for individuals and businesses on several fronts i.e. confidence, clarity, compliance
  2. Provincial legislation should focus on addressing gaps in federal privacy protections– many issues will be addressed federally which will allow industry to build compliance mechanisms around great common denominators.
  3. Legislation should be flexible and adaptable to avoid burdening SMEs – IAB Canada has often raised the issue of cost of compliance. This is particularly important for the backbone of our economy, the SME sector.

IAB Canada would prefer that Ontario hold off on developing provincial legislation until it has reviewed the federally amended PIPEDA which is expected early 2021.

Meanwhile, we are continuing our work to modernize compliance for the existing PIPEDA legislation. IAB Canada has completed its policy draft for the TCF framework and will be releasing the document for public commentary as early as next week. Concurrently, the policy is being reviewed by IAB Tech Lab and the global privacy taskforce in order to hit the ground running on the development front. Our commitment to this initiative is largely driven by our interactions with ISED and OPC and their requests for existing best-in-class frameworks for privacy compliance as it pertains to online advertising.

While we continue to work on the cookie-less future of our industry and the areas of addressability and accountability post 2022, we must be unwavering in our commitment to demonstrate self-regulatory actions that promote transparency and choice for today’s reality in order to ensure we will be trusted for tomorrow’s.