Commissioner’s Blog

Institutions under FIPPA and MFIPPA are permitted to charge fees for handling requests to access government records. Today, the IPC released an updated guidance document, Fees, Fee Estimates and Fee Waivers. A number of important orders and court decisions have been issued since the guide was fir...

Today, the Child, Youth and Family Services Act became law in Ontario. The proclamation of the act is another important step on the journey toward establishing an access and privacy framework for the child, youth and family services sector. Part X of the new law, which governs personal informatio...

There’s a new sensor on the block. Or at least there could be, if you’re living in the urban jungle of a smart city. For those not familiar with it, smart city is a term to describe a community that uses connected technologies to collect and analyze data to improve services for citizens. An e...

The Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) will host a special event in Hamilton on Friday, May 11, at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Centre, West 5th Campus. This event is part of the IPC’s Reaching Out to Ontario program. Commissioner Brian Beamish, along with executives from the IPC, will upd...

We’ve got stats on the brain here at the IPC. Institutions from across the province have submitted to us their annual reports summarizing stats on the freedom of information (FOI) requests they received last year. Thanks to everyone who got these to us on time. While it might be tempting to get...

Ontario’s public institutions and health information custodians are required to take reasonable steps to safeguard personal information from the time of collection to the point of destruction. This means that personal information that is stored on digital media or devices must be securely destr...

A particularly rough influenza season this year has contributed to a healthy interest in statistical information related to flu outbreaks. The public wants to know how serious the flu-threat is in their community, a risk often measured by the number of local flu-related deaths. Recently, our offi...

On February 7, 2018, Hamilton’s Council General Issues Committee passed a motion that staff work with Hamilton Police Services to review the current CCTV by-law as it applies to private homes and to assess the feasibility of amending it to permit the collection of personal information from publ...

The government is making significant changes to services for children and youth with the introduction of the new Child, Youth and Family Services Act (CYFSA). As I mentioned in my year-end blog, the CYFSA will enshrine in law the rights of children, youth, and their families to access and correct...

On January 28, officially recognized as Data Privacy Day, organizations around the world work to highlight the importance of protecting privacy and personal information. For me and everyone at the IPC, Privacy Day is a chance to remind the public of their rights, raise awareness among public inst...