Teresa Scassa - Blog

Tuesday, 06 January 2015 15:29

Quebec’s Privacy Commission Extends the Reach of Provincial Law to Federally Regulated Companies

Written by  Teresa Scassa
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In the fall of 2014, Quebec’s Commission d’accès à l’information, which is responsible for overseeing Quebec’s private sector data protection legislation, ruled that the province’s law applied to Rogers Communications Inc., a federally regulated company. The company had been the subject of a complaint that it had violated Quebec’s data protection law when it required new cellular phone subscribers to provide two pieces of identification, and then recorded the identification numbers on the furnished ID documents. Administrative Judge Lina Desbiens ruled that the complaint was well-founded. In her view, while it was legitimate to ask to see identification for the purposes of establishing the identity of the client, it was not necessary to record the identification numbers. Further, she found that the document ID numbers were not necessary for the purposes of carrying out a credit check – other information would suffice for this purpose.

The issue of the application of the Quebec data protection statute is the more interesting part of this decision. Because Rogers is part of the federally-regulated telecommunications industry, the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) applies to its activities. Certainly there have been plenty of cases in which PIPEDA has been applied to Rogers or to its sister telecommunications companies.[1] From Rogers’ point of view, if the federal Act applied, then the provincial statute did not. Judge Desbiens disagreed. She noted that

s. 81 of the Act Respecting the Protection of Personal Information in the Private Sector gave the Commission jurisdiction over “any matter relating to the protection of personal information as well as into the practices of a person who carries on an enterprise and who collects, holds, uses or communicates such information to third persons.” She read this to mean that the Commission’s jurisdiction extended to the collection, use or disclosure of personal information by any business operating in Quebec. Since Rogers operated its business in Quebec, it was thus subject to the provincial law. Although the federal law might also apply to Rogers, Judge Desbiens found that it would only apply to the exclusion of the provincial law where the application of the provincial law would affect, in some significant way, the exercise of federal jurisdiction. In this case, she observed, Rogers was a telecommunications company, but the decision as to what pieces of identification it could require from new customers and what information it could record was not something that would affect in any way federal jurisdiction over telecommunications.

Judge Desbiens cited in support of her position several other decisions of the Commission d’accès à l’information in which the Quebec legislation was applied to companies in federally regulated industries. Notably, however, the facts addressed in these decisions predated the coming into effect of PIPEDA. Judge Desbiens also cited the more recent case of Nadler c. Rogers Communications Inc.. This case involved a civil suit for breach of privacy, and while the court considers the Quebec private sector data protection statute in its reasons, no argument appears to have been made regarding jurisdictional issues.

Judge Desbiens’ ultimate conclusion was that it was possible for a company to comply with both federal and provincial statutes by satisfying the stricter of the two sets of norms. In any event, she expressed the view her decision on the merits and the position of the federal Privacy Commissioner on similar issues did not diverge.[2]

The decision that both federal and provincial data protection statutes apply to federally regulated companies doing business in Quebec seems problematic. On the one hand, federally regulated companies are frequently subject to provincial laws in some of their day-to-day business activities. This is why, for example, some banking products or services are not available in all provinces. Arguably, therefore, it should not matter that a federally-regulated company be required to comply with provincial data protection norms. However, the situations are not equivalent. In the case of personal information, the federal government has provided a national scheme that specifically applies to federally regulated businesses. While Judge Desbiens is most likely correct that there would be little difference in the outcome of this case under PIPEDA, it should not necessarily be assumed that this would be the so on a different set of facts. And, while it is true that the data protection decision in this case does not interfere with federal jurisdiction over telecommunications, it does seem clearly to trench upon federal jurisdiction over data protection in the federally regulated private sector.

 



[1] For just a few examples, see: Kollar v. Rogers Communications Inc., 2011 FC 452, http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fct/doc/2011/2011fc452/2011fc452.pdf; Buschau v. Rogers Communications Inc., 2011 FC 911, http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fct/doc/2011/2011fc911/2011fc911.pdf; Johnson v. Bell Canada, [2009] 3 FCR 67, 2008 FC 1086; Henry v. Bell Mobility, 2014 FC 555.

[2] The Commission cited several documents published on the website of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. These include: Collection of Drivers’ Licence Numbers Under Private Sector Privacy Legislation, https://www.priv.gc.ca/information/pub/guide_edl_e.asp; Best Practices for the Use of Social Insurance Numbers in the Private Sector, https://www.priv.gc.ca/resource/fs-fi/02_05_d_21_e.asp; and Photo Identification Guidance, https://www.priv.gc.ca/resource/fs-fi/02_05_d_34_tips_e.asp.

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