Days before Parliament rose for the summer, the Carney government tabled Bill C-36, legislation to overhaul Canada’s private-sector privacy regime — the third federal attempt to modernize consumer data law. Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Minister Evan Solomon framed the bill as updating rules that have remained largely unchanged for 25 years and predate smartphones, AI, and deepfakes. The bill would replace the private-sector privacy provisions of PIPEDA with a new framework, creating a “right to deletion,” treating children’s data as sensitive, and establishing new transparency measures to address “surveillance pricing” — the practice of using personal data such as browsing habits or location to tailor prices for individual customers.
The article notes that, while a crackdown on surveillance pricing is one of the government’s headline promises, the practice is neither explicitly defined nor prohibited in the legislation. Rather than an outright ban, the bill strengthens an “appropriate purposes” test for regulators. Vass Bednar of the Canadian Shield Institute told iPolitics the distinction leaves a grey area, given how loyalty programs already intertwine data collection and personalized pricing, but credited the government with advancing a national conversation that did not exist before.
NDP response
The NDP, which has spent months calling for a ban on surveillance pricing, argued the bill does not go far enough. NDP Leader Avi Lewis said in a statement to iPolitics:
The federal government has finally acknowledged the practice of surveillance pricing, months after the NDP raised the alarm and sparked a national conversation about it.
Lewis criticized the bill for declining to explicitly prohibit the practice, relying instead on future regulator action, and pointed to Manitoba — where Premier Wab Kinew made surveillance pricing illegal outright — as a model. He said the NDP would keep building public pressure for decisive action, arguing the bill “does nothing definitive to protect Canadians from this very real threat.” Solomon said additional guidance on surveillance pricing would be developed once the regulator is established.
Full article, including Bednar’s analysis and the bill’s broader provisions, at the source link above. Surveillance pricing has been a signature NDP policy plank under Avi Lewis since the leadership campaign.