OpenMedia Survey: Tell Ottawa How to Fix the Privacy Act

Canada's Privacy Act hasn't been updated in 40 years. As the government finally opens a review, OpenMedia is launching a survey to make sure ordinary Canadians have a say. Here's what's at stake — and why your voice matters.

A law from another era

What life looked like in 1983? It was a time where the Internet wasn’t popular yet. There were no smartphones, no social media, no AI hype. Many government records were still stored on paper. That's the world Canada's Privacy Act was written for.

Over the past four decades, federal departments collect more personal information about Canadians than ever before — and they do it in ways that couldn't have been imagined when the law came into force.

Your data is processed by algorithms, shared across departments, and increasingly used by AI systems to make decisions that affect your life. And the law that's supposed to protect you? It hasn't kept up. A reform of the Privacy Act is long overdue.

Back in 2021, our government first announced a consultation on how to reform the Privacy Act — and our community jumped in with both feet! More than 4,000 of us shared our views on what public sector privacy reform should look like. And then… nothing. Liberal governments changed, but no public sector privacy reform bill was ever introduced, despite our community’s clear demand for a comprehensive update.

The review is finally here

Take two! On April 2, 2026, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat announced a new formal review of the Privacy Act. Along with the announcement, the government released a policy paper outlining 23 policy proposals organized around six broad themes, aimed at:

• enabling better, more integrated services for Canadians
• strengthening privacy protections for the digital age
• updating the rules and oversight of the federal privacy system

There are ideas to formally recognize privacy as a fundamental right, embed Indigenous data sovereignty directly into the Act, and give the Privacy Commissioner real powers to hold departments accountable. There's also a proposal to establish a mandatory five-year review of the Privacy Act — so it can never fall this far behind again. The good news is that it incorporates many of our demands from last time; it seems our engagement made a lingering impact!

But here’s the catch

Some of the proposals are genuinely promising, but the review is complicated.

Unlike past consultations, which focused on privacy principles in plain terms, this one takes what experts are calling a "pragmatic" approach. It combines discussions of privacy law with discussions of data infrastructure — the technical systems that determine how government data is actually built, stored, and shared. The result is a policy paper that often requires the kind of specialist knowledge most Canadians simply don't have.

Take data sharing. The government is proposing to make it easier for federal departments to share your personal data with each other — and with provincial, territorial, and municipal partners — without your consent, as long as there are safeguards in place. Whether that's a good idea depends on what those safeguards actually look like, and the paper largely leaves those details to future regulations. To have a meaningful opinion on that, you'd need to understand how federal data systems work, what "safeguards" have meant in practice historically, and how similar approaches have played out in other countries.

The same challenge applies to proposals around AI accountability, privacy impact assessments, and the central registry the government wants to create for data-sharing notices. These are important issues with real consequences for ordinary Canadians, but the way they're presented makes it hard for anyone outside the policy world to engage with them meaningfully.

That's a problem. Because if only policy insiders and industry lobbyists show up to this review, the outcome will reflect their priorities — not yours.

That's where you come in

OpenMedia has been fighting for real oversight, accountability, and transparency in how government institutions handle your data for years. As we mentioned, back in 2021, we brought more than 4,000 community voices to the Department of Justice's Privacy Act consultation — and we're doing it again!

We've gone through all 23 proposals, cut through the policy language, and boiled everything down to 15 questions — most of them multiple choice — so you can tell us what the Privacy Act should look like.

Our survey covers the issues that matter most to ordinary Canadians like you:

• How much do you trust the government with your data?
• What should govern how your data is shared?
• What rights should you have when AI is used to make decisions about you?
• What real accountability should look like when things go wrong?

The decisions made in this review will shape how government institutions — from the RCMP to Service Canada — handle your personal information for generations. Ottawa needs to hear from ordinary Canadians before those decisions are made.

Take our survey before June 15, 2026, and we'll bring your answers directly to the government.

Click here to take the survey now