Wiertz Sebastien - Privacy by Sebastien Wiertz (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/ahk6nh
Privacy
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 275: David Loukidelis on Why Stripping Privacy Enforcement from Canada’s Privacy Commissioner in Bill C-36 is Unnecessarily Risky Policy
he government’s privacy reform bill was supposed to earn applause for its effort to modernize outdated rules and provide Canadians with stronger privacy protections. Yet the decision to strip the Privacy Commissioner of Canada of responsibility for private-sector privacy law and shift that responsibility to the Digital Safety Commission has sparked widespread concern among Canadian privacy experts.
This week’s Law Bytes podcast features David Loukidelis, one of Canada’s best-regarded former privacy commissioners. Loukidelis served as BC’s Information and Privacy Commissioner from 1999 to 2010, where he was responsible for the enforcement of BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and Personal Information Protection Act, which came into force in 2004. He joins me on the podcast to share his thoughts on the enforcement changes in the bill and what it may mean for privacy in Canada.
The Data on Australia’s Social Media Ban: The Better the Privacy Protection, The Less Effective the Ban
As regular readers know, the Canadian plan to establish a social media ban for under 16s in Bill C-34 is based largely on the Australian model that took effect last December. With more data on the ban’s effectiveness continuing to roll in, multiple studies now confirm that it simply hasn’t worked as the majority of under-age users still have access to social media accounts. Yet rather than treating that as a reason to reconsider the model, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Parliament in late June that his government is working “as a priority” to strengthen the law. The failure highlights a troubling correlation: the better the privacy protection, the less effective the ban. In other words, since users will find ways to circumvent the ban, “strengthening” the law likely means less privacy and more surveillance.
Shaky Ground Gets Shakier: What the U.S. Supreme Court’s Location Data Decision Means for Bill C-22
When the government rushed Bill C-22 through the House of Commons last month, it defended the lawful access mandatory metadata retention requirement as consistent with similar rules established by Canada’s Five Eyes allies. Yet the U.S. has never imposed a comparable obligation to retain every subscriber’s transmission data, and this week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision that further solidifies the view that Bill C-22 is disproportionate and inconsistent with widely held understandings of privacy.
The Two Weeks That Reshaped Canada’s Digital Policy
It started with an unexpected early-morning announcement on June 3, 2026, from Marc Miller, the Minister of Identity and Culture. Mr. Miller said that the government planned to direct the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada’s broadcast regulator, to review its two-week-old decision that imposed hundreds of millions in new investment requirements on internet streaming services. My Globe and Mail essay that appeared over the weekend notes that the move came as a surprise, not only because he had chastised the commission a month earlier for moving too slowly, but also because it marked a major reversal of a core Canadian digital policy that had been years in the making. The decision sent shock waves through the cultural sector, but it was only the start.
New Rights, New Powers, Long Delays: Bill C-36’s Seven-Step Process for Privacy Reform to Take Effect
The government’s recently tabled privacy reform bill would modernize many aspects of Canadian privacy law, including establishing privacy as a fundamental right in the purpose clause of the new law, creating a data mobility right for individuals that would enable them to move their data from one company to another, and giving businesses the potential to use approved codes of practice. These and many other changes will be subject to intense debate at committee, but the biggest challenge facing the bill is the long sequence of steps required for it to take effect. The government may claim that privacy is an urgent priority, and its recent national AI strategy, overseen by AI Minister Evan Solomon, declares trust to be its “north star”, yet a careful review of Bill C-36 confirms that the law will take years to take effect. This post and the accompanying infographic unpack the many steps built into the bill that, cumulatively, are likely to result in no substantive privacy reforms for Canadians until 2030 or later.
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The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 275: David Loukidelis on Why Stripping Privacy Enforcement from Canada’s Privacy Commissioner in Bill C-36 is Unnecessarily Risky Policy 
The Data on Australia’s Social Media Ban: The Better the Privacy Protection, The Less Effective the Ban 
Shaky Ground Gets Shakier: What the U.S. Supreme Court’s Location Data Decision Means for Bill C-22
