QuestionQ11

Canadian Privacy Laws and Practices in the Private Sector

A federally regulated company headquartered in Ontario has customers in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Alberta, and British Columbia. Unfortunately, a third-party vendor that supplies marketing support to the company suffers a privacy breach affecting the personal information of all of the company’s customers across the provinces in which it operates.

The Privacy Officer concludes that the breach creates a real risk of significant harm to customers and must report the breach to the applicable regulators.

With which provincial privacy regulators must the company file a report?

  • A It is unnecessary to file a report with any provinces because the company is federally regulated
  • B All of the provinces where its customers are located
  • C New Brunswick and British Columbia only
  • D Québec and Alberta only
Explanation

A federal work, undertaking, or business is governed exclusively by PIPEDA and reports breaches of security safeguards only to the federal Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada; provincial privacy statutes (Quebec's private sector law, Alberta's PIPA, British Columbia's PIPA) do not apply to organizations whose core activities are federally regulated, so no provincial regulator filing is required.

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