Quebec privacy Bill 64: Summary of the public hearings

We have prepared a useful chart summarizing the special consultations and public hearings of the Committee on Institutions regarding Bill 64, An Act to modernize legislative provisions as regards the protection of personal information (“Bill 64”), which were held in September 2020. The schedule of these hearings are found on the National Assembly’s website.

In total, 18 individuals, organizations, associations, public bodies and regulators appeared before the Committee. Our summary aims to provide a high-level overview of key themes and topics discussed during the hearings as well as questions asked by members of the Committee. It also includes a link to the relevant video of each testimony.

It is interesting to see the type of issues and concerns discussed during the consultation. For example, the privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien addressed issues relating to the notion of consent and consent exceptions, enforcement mechanisms, privacy by design, interoperability, cross-border requirements and no-go zones. The CAI (Diane Poitras and Jean-Sébastien Desmeules) testified on issues relating to the notion of consent and consent exceptions, material scope, the definitions of “anonymization” and “de-identification”, enforcement mechanisms, cross-border requirements, biometrics and profiling and automated decision-making.

For a more detailed discussion of the issues raised by the various speakers, a copy of their briefs are also found on the National Assembly’s website.

You can access our documents:

1- Our chart summarizing the public hearings

2- Our brief proposing 16 recommendations (and an English summary of our brief).

3- Our summary of Bill 64

This content has been updated on October 14, 2020 at 13 h 12 min.