What Laws Are There?

In British Columbia, different privacy laws affect different parts of society.  There are several laws which deal almost exclusively with privacy and apply generally to almost everyone, and there are laws in other areas (like health or criminal law) which address privacy only in specific situations.

In this section we focus on the laws that deal almost exclusively with privacy and apply generally to everyone:

  1. There are two privacy laws affecting the private sector. One is a provincial law and the other is a federal law. These laws deal with different types of organizations in the private sector, but because they are so similar, they will be discussed together later in this section:
  1. There is one privacy law that gives individuals a right to sue for damages for privacy invasion:
  1. There are two privacy laws affecting the public sector. One applies to the government of BC and the other applies to the government of Canada. These laws are quite different from each other, so they will be discussed separately:

Privacy Rights Balance Rights and Interests

Most of the privacy laws we will look at in this chapter are based on the concept of Fair Information Practices – widely recognized core privacy principles forming the basis of privacy laws in many countries. Fair Information Practices identify the broad rights individuals should have, and the broad responsibilities organizations take on when they collect, use and disclose personal information.

Privacy laws give individuals many rights in relation to their personal information, but they do not give a total right to privacy in all circumstances. They do not give individuals total control over their personal information. Instead, these laws seek a balance: your right to protect the privacy of your personal information is balanced with organizations’ need to collect, use and disclose personal information to provide services.