Ottawa to restore privacy provision mistakingly struck from streaming law

The Liberal government says it will restore a privacy provision to the Online Streaming Act, more than two years after it was accidentally deleted.

The federal budget released this week says the government will make a legislative amendment to “restore the right to privacy of individuals to the interpretation provisions and remove a duplicative provision relating to official languages.”

In 2023, the Online Streaming Act updated Canada’s Broadcasting Act to capture online streamers like Netflix.

The Senate included an amendment stating the bill would be construed and applied in a manner consistent with individuals’ right to privacy. Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne introduced the amendment based on a recommendation from the federal privacy commissioner.

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Two months later, the government passed an official languages bill. A section of that bill amended the streaming legislation to change language in a provision dealing with official language minority communities.

But instead of replacing a similar provision, the official languages bill replaced the privacy provision instead. That left the streaming bill with two similarly-worded provisions on linguistic communities and none dealing with privacy.

After University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist pointed out the mistake in a blog post this summer, the Heritage department said it had “recently been made aware of what appears to be an inadvertent oversight in a co-ordinating amendment.”