Privacy Compliance Services in Ontario
Build privacy governance that supports risk management, partner trust, and repeatable oversight.
Ontario is home to the largest concentration of commercial activity in Canada, and that scale comes with proportionate privacy compliance obligations. Most private-sector organizations in the province operate under PIPEDA, the federal privacy law overseen by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. That framework sets out ten fair information principles governing how personal information is collected, used, and disclosed — and organizations that handle it without adequate controls are increasingly visible to regulators, procurement teams, and the public. The OPC can investigate complaints, publish findings, and refer persistent non-compliance to the Federal Court. PIPEDA's accountability principle makes your organization responsible for demonstrating that these principles are met — not just asserting it.
For organizations in the health sector, a second and distinct layer of accountability applies. PHIPA — the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 — governs how health information custodians in Ontario handle personal health information, with oversight by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. PHIPA imposes its own consent rules, individual access rights, and breach notification requirements that operate alongside, not instead of, PIPEDA obligations for broader commercial activity. For health-adjacent technology companies — vendors to the health system or SaaS providers handling patient-adjacent data — determining precisely where obligations under each regime sit requires careful analysis, not assumption.
Privacy Horizon helps Ontario organizations navigate both frameworks without treating them as separate compliance projects. Our approach begins with a Minimum Viable Privacy baseline — the governance, policies, and controls that give regulators and enterprise buyers genuine confidence — then deepens into the areas where your actual exposure is highest. Whether your gap is a missing incident response process, a weakness in vendor management, or a path toward ISO 27001 certification, we bring the expertise to close it efficiently and in a way that fits how your organization actually operates.
Privacy & security regulation in Ontario
Regulator: Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC)
Ontario organizations operate under federal PIPEDA for commercial activity, with health-sector custodians additionally governed by PHIPA and overseen by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario.
PIPEDAPersonal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act
PIPEDA is Canada's federal private-sector privacy law. It sets out ten fair information principles governing how organizations collect, use, and disclose personal information in the course of commercial activity. It applies wherever a province has not enacted substantially similar legislation — and, even in provinces that have (Alberta, British Columbia, Québec), it continues to apply to federally regulated businesses such as banks, airlines, and telecommunications, and to personal information that flows across provincial or national borders.
PHIPAPersonal Health Information Protection Act, 2004
PHIPA governs how health information custodians in Ontario — a defined, closed list of providers such as hospitals, physicians, and pharmacies — collect, use, and disclose personal health information. It establishes consent rules and individual access rights, and requires custodians to notify affected individuals at the first reasonable opportunity following a breach, and to report to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario in the circumstances the Act prescribes.
What Privacy Compliance includes
We help you establish a credible privacy baseline quickly, then deepen controls where risk is highest — built to satisfy regulators, partners, and enterprise buyers.
Minimum Viable Privacy (MVP)
A credible compliance baseline, fast — then deepen where risk is highest.
Policy & Governance
The policies, roles, and oversight that make compliance repeatable.
ISO 27001 & SOC 2 Preparation
Readiness for the certifications partners and customers expect.
Ongoing Compliance Monitoring
Keep pace with changing obligations and evidence requirements.
PIPEDA compliance for Ontario businesses
PIPEDA's accountability principle places the burden on organizations — not their customers — to demonstrate that personal information is handled responsibly. That means documented policies, trained staff, a named privacy officer, and processes for handling access requests and complaints. We help Ontario businesses put that infrastructure in place in a form that holds up under scrutiny, without creating bureaucratic overhead that slows you down.
Health sector organizations and PHIPA
Health information custodians in Ontario operate under some of the most specific privacy obligations in the country. PHIPA requires prompt breach notification to affected individuals and, in prescribed circumstances, to the IPC. We help health-sector organizations build the policies and incident response capabilities PHIPA demands — and align them with their broader PIPEDA obligations so nothing falls through the gap between the two regimes.
Other services in Ontario
Privacy Compliance elsewhere
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