The federal government has now solved a major problem for Canada’s banks by entering into an intergovernmental agreement concerning FATCA with the United States. The details about the privacy implications of FATCA can be found in previous posts here, here and here. With this agreement, the “end game” of FATCA compliance for Canada appears close at hand and there’s an important […]

I’ve written about FATCA before, here and here, with respect to the privacy law implications of this American tax compliance initiative. However, I was recently presented with a letter on the subject that made me pause.  A noted Canadian constitutional law expert has raised a rather interesting aspect and it seems what may get Canadian […]

It is somewhat fitting that Halloween and the anniversary of the enactment of the PATRIOT Act are close together. In Canada, the latter, which turned 10 last week, has come to embody fear about government access to personal information.  The troubling part is that this fear may needlessly complicate life for everyone in this country.

A “tipping point” is the culmination of small events that cause a significant change. Malcolm Gladwell tells us it comes from the world of epidemiology: that point in time in an epidemic where a virus reaches critical mass. Have we now seen the tipping point where business takes cybersecurity far more seriously than ever before?

There’s a reason why they are called “data protection” as opposed to “privacy” laws. In Canada, the privacy rights you have come from the Charter of Rights – our data protection laws provide rules principally as to the collection, use and disclosure of personal information with more than a passing nod to other topics such […]

I was pleasantly surprised to receive my copy of Information Security and Privacy: A Practical Guide for Global Executives, Lawyers and Technologists — I contributed the section on Canada. It is a new book from the Science and Technology Law Section of the American Bar Association. Thomas Shaw did a very good job piecing together a […]

As noted in the previous post, we now have a new American law – the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA”) — that essentially requires organizations in Canada to identify clients who are American; obtain their consent to the disclosure of sensitive personal information to the IRS or withhold the provision of a service for […]

Somewhere along the line Canadians developed an almost pathological paranoia about the U.S. PATRIOT Act but this post isn’t about that legislation. No, it’s about the new American kid on the block: the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act* (“FATCA”). It actually makes one feel sorry for financial institutions and other organizations affected by this legislation.