OpenMedia’s survey report and 2026 review submission: A modernized Privacy Act for Canadians

Nearly 4,700 of Canadians told us what they wanted from a modernized Privacy Act. We turned that into policy recommendations for the 2026 Review of Canada’s decades-old Privacy Act.

Canada’s Privacy Act has not been meaningfully updated since 1983. At the time, the law was written for a world where most government records were stored on paper. More than four decades later, governmental institutions collect, share, and act on vastly more personal data about Canadians, and use tools the original Act had not anticipated.

The federal government’s 2026 review is one of the most significant opportunities in recent years to change that. At OpenMedia, we surveyed nearly 4,700 Canadians across the country, and turned those insights into policy recommendations in our formal submission to the 2026 review.

We started by asking what Canadians want in a modernized Privacy Act

Between April 28 and June 15, 2026, we surveyed 4,688 community members across Canada on the issues that matter most in this review: how much Canadians trust the government with their data, what should govern how it's shared, what rights Canadians should have when AI is used to make decisions about them, and what real accountability should look like when things go wrong.

The findings are consistent, striking, and not particularly subtle. Here are the numbers that that anchored everything we submitted to the 2026 review:

• 70% of respondents have little to no trust in the government to handle their personal data responsibly;
• 96.9% want the right to access their own data;
• 90.5% want full explainability when AI makes a decision about them;
• 83.4% want privacy oversight vested in a body genuinely independent of government;
• 92.4% want a mandatory, independently monitored correction plan when government breaks privacy law.

In open comments, four additional themes surfaced repeatedly: concerns about digital sovereignty, where Canadian data physically lives and who can access it under foreign laws; excessive government reliance on US digital services; concern about political party self-exemption from privacy rules; and deep discomfort with hasty adoption of AI by our government. All of these are reflected in our submission.

What we asked the government to do

We have grounded our submission in what our community members told us, and framed our policy recommendations into three areas:

1. Consent, transparency, and data control – Canadians want to know what data government holds about them, have a genuine say in how it's used, and be able to access and correct it. We are calling for plain-language disclosure as a default right, a personal data portal giving every Canadian real-time visibility into what government holds about them, and data minimization and privacy-by-design as legal defaults.
2. Meaningful limits on AI, and real accountability when things go wrong – Objection to AI in government decision-making was the single most common write-in theme in our entire survey. Canadians want full explainability of any AI decision, a guaranteed right to human review, and a clear path to judicial appeal when AI tools get it wrong. Our community also demanded greater accountability for human violations, including  criminal liability for willful violations, personal consequences for responsible officials, and compensation paid directly to the people harmed.

3. Sovereignty, oversight, and closing the gaps – Canadians want privacy oversight vested in a body genuinely independent of government, and their data kept on Canadian infrastructure, not subject to foreign laws or dependent on foreign services. We are also calling for extending the same privacy obligations, oversight, and accountability mechanisms that apply to commercial entities to political parties and nonprofits.

Our detailed recommendations, with selected community inputs and the complete picture of our survey finding can be found in this report. We encourage you to read it.

Read the full survey report →

What comes next

The 2026 Privacy Act review is still underway. The Treasury Board will be reviewing submissions and shaping proposed legislation in the months ahead. We'll be watching closely, and pressing for Canadians’ voices to be heard in the fight of privacy law reform in Canada. If you want to stay involved as this unfolds, sign up for updates.

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