Review of Federal and Provincial Statutes Governing Individual Identification Information and Interjurisdictional Exchange of Personal Information

Pierre TRUDEL, Katerine BRABANT and Ruth ARLESS-FRANDSEN, Review of Federal and Provincial Statutes Governing Individual Identification Information and Interjurisdictional Exchange of Personal Information, July 2007,  77 p.

Identification of an individual cannot be achieved by any and all means, as both federal and provincial laws protect individual privacy by placing restrictions with regards to the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by public bodies. These limits can be divided into three categories: limits imposed by the general protection of privacy statutes, limits inherent tothe identifier and finally J urisdictional restrictions. The first category of limitations is imposed by the general protection of privacy statutes. The fundamental purpose of an identifier is to identify an individual, thereby classifying the identifieras « personal information » pertaining to an individual. Hence, identifiers are subject to the limits imposed on the collection, use and disclosure of personal infonnation. The second category is the inherent limits of the identifiers themselves. For example, thecollection, use and disclosure of a provincial health card is usually limited to situations involvinghealth care. Finally, the third category involves jurisdictional restrictions, which may arise duringintergovernmental exchanges of information.
It is important to note that, despite the legislative limitations surrounding the identification of anindividual, the person concerned remains at liberty to consent to the collection, use or disclosure of his or her identifying information. Hence, while a statute may prevent a public body fromrequiring the presentation of a certain identifier, an individual remains free to provide the public body with the said identifier, thereby renouncing the protection offered by the s

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