There’s a lot wrong with this Bill, is it even worth fighting for? 

Yes. The opportunity for new legislation does not come along very often and if we miss it, it could be years or decades before it happens again.

On the positive side, Bill C-11 introduces a host of new enforcement powers for the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and these are badly needed. But we still need to fight to make these new powers effective.

It’s a push and pull operation, and right now the proposed legislation has been pulled by business interests through a very concerted, focused, and well-financed lobbying effort.

By sending a message to your Member of Parliament now, you can help push Bill C-11 in the right direction, putting the protection of personal privacy over the interests of private companies that seek to use your personal information for financial gain.

It seems like a long list of things that need to be done. Does it all need to happen to make this Bill work?

The more of these changes we get made, the more powerful a tool this bill will be for defending our rights. 

The federal government seems unwilling to recognize that privacy is a fundamental human right. But doing that one thing would do the absolute most in terms of pushing the balance of power towards privacy and away from business interests. 

Failing that, expanding the consent provisions to include the most basic consent violations would go a long way to help reduce the ambiguity around who this proposed legislation should work for: people or businesses.

And the removal of the new exception to consent, and the addition of political parties to the scope, are two things that simply must be done, or else huge abuses of our sensitive data will certainly continue. 

This is our chance to make the voices of Canadians heard loud and clear in asking for greater, not lesser, privacy protections!