Government says it accidentally deleted privacy provision in online streaming bill

Construction workers build scaffolding on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, March 20, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

OTTAWA — The federal government says it’s “looking into” what appears to be the accidental removal of a privacy provision in its Online Streaming Act.

Earlier this week, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist outlined in a blog post that a privacy provision in the legislation was removed only two months after the bill became law, through an amendment contained in another bill.

The heritage department said it is now aware of the issue.

“We have recently been made aware of what appears to be an inadvertent oversight in a co-ordinating amendment and are looking into it,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

Geist said that statement “appears to confirm that this was a mistake on the government’s part.”

“Given the importance of privacy, it is the type of mistake that just can’t happen and which needs to be fixed as soon as possible,” he said in an email.

The Online Streaming Act updated Canada’s Broadcasting Act to capture online streamers like Netflix.

While it was making its way through the legislative process, Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne introduced an amendment, based on the recommendation of the federal privacy commissioner, which then became part of the legislation.

It stated the Online Streaming Act would be construed and applied in a manner consistent with individuals’ right to privacy.

Miville-Dechêne said she was upset by the mistake.

“And I’m a bit surprised, because I thought there were many levels of verification...But, you know, mistakes happen. I think now the question is that it has to be corrected quickly.”

Two months after the Online Streaming Act became law in April 2023, 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 means the streaming bill now has two similarly-worded provisions around linguistic communities, and none dealing with privacy.

The Heritage spokesperson said public and private-sector privacy laws still apply to the CRTC and broadcasters.

“Those regimes apply regardless of the interpretive provisions in the Broadcasting Act,” the spokesperson said.

But Miville-Dechêne pushed back against that argument.

“If the privacy commissioner said in his testimony that the privacy question should be reinforced, it’s because he was not convinced that the general privacy law would be enough,” she said.

Geist said that although privacy laws still apply to the CRTC and broadcasters, “the point of the now deleted clause was to ensure that the Broadcasting Act was interpreted in a manner consistent with Canadian privacy law. That is not the same thing.”

Monica Auer, executive director of the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications, said that leaves the courts with two different provisions to interpret, and no ability to strike one of them out.

“The courts are bound to interpret what Parliament writes, and they have to presume that Parliament knows what it’s doing,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 29, 2025.

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press