As the number of high-profile online consumer security breaches continues to grow, the federal government is expected to introduce a bill soon to shake up Canada’s privacy laws — possibly as early as this week.
Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains signalled plans to introduce the legislation late last week on the House of Commons notice paper.
The bill — officially called “An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act and the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts” — would be the first major attempt to change Canada’s privacy law in decades.
Details of the bill won’t be available until the legislation is tabled, but a spokesperson for Bains pointed to the promises outlined in the minister’s mandate letter.
That letter — essentially the minister’s marching orders from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — tasked him with drafting a “digital charter” that would include legislation to give Canadians “appropriate compensation” when their personal data is breached.
It also promised to introduce new regulations for large digital companies to better protect Canadians’ personal data and encourage more competition in the digital marketplace, and to appoint a new data commissioner to oversee those regulations.
“It will be significant and meaningful to make it very clear that privacy is important. Compensation, of course, is one aspect of it,” Bains said back in January, adding that the government also wants “to demonstrate to businesses very clearly that there are going to be significant penalties for non-compliance with the law. That’s really my primary goal.”
The letter also calls for “enhanced powers for the Privacy Commissioner.” The office of Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien — who has been calling for more powers — said he will be briefed on the bill after it’s tabled.
“Our office has long been calling for federal privacy laws better suited to protecting Canadians in the digital age,” said Therrien’s spokesperson Vito Pilieci.
“We need a legal framework that allows for responsible innovation that serves the public interest and is likely to foster trust, but prohibits the use of technology in ways that are incompatible with our rights and values. The law should also provide for enforcement mechanisms that ensure individuals have access to quick and effective remedies for the protection of their privacy rights, and create incentives for broad compliance by organizations.”
The ‘right to be forgotten’
Earlier this month, a joint investigation by the federal, Alberta and B.C. privacy commissioners concluded that the real estate company behind some of Canada’s most popular shopping centres embedded cameras inside its digital information kiosks at 12 shopping malls in major Canadian cities to collect millions of images — and used facial recognition technology without customers’ knowledge or consent.
B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner Michael McEvoy said the commissioners likely would have pursued fines against the company, Cadallic Fairview, if they’d had the power.
“Fines in a case like this would have been a consideration. It is an incredible shortcoming of Canadian law,” he said.
“We as privacy regulators don’t have any authority to levy fines on companies that violate peoples’ personal information and that should really change.”
Statistics Canada says that about 57 per cent of Canadians online reported experiencing a cyber security incident in 2018.
Bains’s mandate letter also hints at the introduction of a so-called “right to be forgotten” or “right to erasure” law by calling for the “ability to withdraw, remove and erase basic personal data from a platform.”
The European Union passed a law back in 2014 allowing citizens to ask Google to remove problematic web hits that pop up when their name is searched, after a Spanish lawyer fought successfully to remove old material about his past debt problems.
Under the EU’s law, “inadequate, irrelevant or excessive” web hits aren’t deleted, but in most cases Google hides them from their search results — a process known as de-listing or de-indexing.
Conservative MP James Cumming, the party’s innovation, science and industry critic, said he’ll be reading it closely to make sure it protects Canadians’ privacy without being unreasonable for small businesses.
“Canada’s Conservatives will always stand up for the privacy of Canadians. When it comes to Liberal legislation, the devil is always in the details,” he said in a statement.
“Conservatives will review the legislation to ensure that it protects privacy without imposing burdensome regulations on small businesses who are struggling to keep their doors open during the second wave of the pandemic.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
