Commissioner’s Blog

We’re heading to Sudbury for the next Reaching Out to Ontario event I’m pleased to announce that the IPC executive team will visit Sudbury on Friday, October 11, to host our 11th Reaching Out to Ontario event, at Collège Boréal. I look forward to visiting “Nickel City” and to updating O...

With the new school year on the horizon, the IPC is educating the educators about their obligations when handling students’ confidential information. School boards, educators, and administrators in Ontario’s public and separate school system are responsible for making sure their students’ p...

Ontario’s freedom of information law is based on the principle that every individual has a right to access government information. This right exists to ensure the public has the information it needs to participate meaningfully in the democratic process, and that politicians and bureaucrats rema...

Will my youth criminal record show up on my police record check now that I’m an adult? Can a prospective employer request a police record check on me without my knowledge? How will I know if an institution has disclosed my personal information to a law enforcement agency?  These are some of th...

Almost everyone with an email or instant messaging account has become used to receiving a seemingly never-ending stream of unsolicited messages. Commonly known as spam, some of these messages are “phishing attempts” where the intended goal is to get the recipient to do something that compromi...

Today I released my 2018 annual report, Privacy and Accountability for a Digital Ontario, where I call for the modernization of Ontario’s privacy laws to address the risks posed by the increasing use of digital technologies. Since my appointment as commissioner in 2015, I have emphasized the ne...

May 14 is Youth in Care Day in Ontario. It is a day recognizing the bravery and resilience of current and former wards of the province or a children’s aid society. There are currently about 12,000 children and youth in the care in Ontario. Growing up in foster care or group homes, they must nav...

The death of a family member is a stressful and emotional time. Surviving family members typically find themselves needing their family member’s personal information from government organizations or health care providers, which often requires formal requests. Finding the right organization, fil...

Planning is an essential part of preparing for the inevitable changes in life. If you are a health care practitioner, a good succession plan can ensure that you protect the people you serve from an interruption to their health care or a breach of their privacy if you change your practice. Every y...

The Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) will host a special event in Waterloo on Friday, May 31, at Wilfrid Laurier University, Science Building, 75 University Avenue in Waterloo. This event is part of the IPC’s Reaching Out to Ontario program. Commissioner Brian Beamish, along with exec...