Alberta announces new privacy legislation and adds heftier fines

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The Alberta government announced new legislation Wednesday that will protect the privacy of Albertans privacy and add heftier fines for breaking privacy laws.

Bill 33, the Protection of Privacy Act, was tabled Wednesday and is one of two new bills proposed to replace the existing Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIP Act).

The bill proposes splitting the FOIP Act into two separate pieces of legislation, one exclusively for privacy and the other for access to information.

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Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish said Alberta’s privacy legislation has not seen “meaningful” updates in more than 20 years, since the FOIP Act first came into being in 1995, long before the birth of social media and digital privacy. By splitting the FOIP Act into two acts, he said, the government will be able to make amendments as needed to strengthen privacy protections without having to look at both privacy and access to information.

“Alberta intends to implement the strongest privacy protections and the strictest penalties for privacy violations in all of Canada,” Glubish said.

Implementing programs to protect privacy

The Protection of Privacy Act would be one of three privacy acts in Alberta, including the Personal Information Protection Act, which primarily deals with private sector organizations, and the Health Information Act, which applies to health records.

Under the new bill, public bodies — government departments, educational bodies, or local government bodies — would have to establish and implement a privacy management program.

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The legislation would force public bodies to pay more attention to how they manage personal information and introduce requirements for handling the data in their possession. If an Albertan’s information is used in an automated system to generate content, decisions, recommendations, or predictions, public bodies must notify them.

Glubish said that while public bodies today do not sell personal information, it was important to put it into legislation to ensure the government and no public bodies will ever be able to.

“Let me be perfectly clear. The government does not today sell information. It was important to me to codify that into law so that Albertans knew for sure that no government ever could and no government ever will sell their information,” Glubish said.

Heftier penalties for those who knowingly violate the legislation

Bill 33 would prohibit individuals and organizations from knowingly violating rules, including collecting, using, or disclosing personal information without consent, attempting to re-identify a person based on non-personal data making false statements, or obstructing or failing to comply with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

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The act will increase fines for contravening data, with a maximum fine of $200,000 for an individual and $1 million for an organization.

Fines for contravening the personal information part of the act will increase with a maximum fine of $125,000 for an individual and $750,000 for an organization.

“In my mind, I think protecting Albertans is the most important thing,” Glubish said. “At the end of the day, if there is an intentional violation of privacy legislation, the people who violate it should pay a heavy price.”

In the coming months, Glubish said they plan to launch an online privacy portal that will allow Albertans to see how their records were assessed. The portal will include a feature where Albertans can file a privacy complaint if they believe their information was misused.

The portal will also include information like the province’s child care digital service, vehicle registrations, driver’s licence renewals, and more services that will be added over time.

Alberta NDP justice critic Irfan Sabir said they will need time to go through the legislation and assess what was previously there. When asked about the bill giving Alberta the strictest penalties in Canada, Sabir said the government makes those claims “all the time.”

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“They do make those kinds of claims and when they provide briefings or comments, they highlight what they want to highlight in the bill, and not how it will impact Albertans’ rights, their right to privacy, their right to information,” Sabir said.

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