Privacy & Security Services in Canada
End-to-end privacy and security support for organizations in Canada.
Canada's privacy landscape is not a single law but a layered system — and organizations that treat it as one uniform rulebook end up with blind spots that regulators and breach-response situations quickly expose. At the federal level, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA, sets the baseline for private-sector commercial activity across the country. Oversight sits with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. But that is only part of the picture: Alberta, British Columbia, and Québec have each enacted their own general private-sector privacy laws that are recognized as substantially similar to PIPEDA, meaning those provincial regimes largely displace the federal law for intra-provincial activity — while PIPEDA still governs federally regulated businesses such as banks, airlines, and telecommunications wherever they operate, and any personal information that crosses provincial or national borders.
Beyond the general private-sector laws, health-sector custodians in most provinces face their own sector-specific obligations — PHIPA in Ontario, PHIA in Nova Scotia, PHIPAA in New Brunswick, and similar instruments elsewhere — each with its own consent rules, breach notification thresholds, and oversight bodies. The combined effect is that even a mid-sized organization doing business in two or three provinces may answer to multiple regulators, maintain different breach-reporting timelines, and operate under consent requirements that do not translate neatly from one jurisdiction to the next.
Privacy Horizon was built specifically for this complexity. We work with organizations at every stage — from a privacy impact assessment on a new data initiative to a comprehensive gap analysis against the applicable legal requirements, through to an ongoing compliance program and on-call senior advisory that keeps you current as the landscape shifts. Our team combines legal, technical, and operational depth so that the advice we give is actionable, not just accurate. Whether you are a startup mapping your data flows for the first time or an established enterprise preparing for a material change, our services scale to where you are and where you are going.
Privacy & security regulation in Canada
Regulator: Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC)
Across Canada, the federal PIPEDA sets the baseline for private-sector privacy, with several provinces layering their own substantially similar or sector-specific laws on top.
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.
What Privacy & Security includes
From assessments to compliance programs and ongoing advisory, we provide the full range of privacy and security support organizations need under Canadian law.
Assessments
Privacy impact assessments, threat & risk assessments, and gap analysis.
Compliance Programs
Guided programs to reach and maintain compliance.
Advisory
On-call senior privacy and security guidance.
Training
Practical training for staff and leadership.
One partner across all Canadian jurisdictions
Most organizations operating nationally do not need a different privacy consultant for every province — they need one team that holds the complete map. Privacy Horizon covers PIPEDA and all substantially similar provincial regimes, including Alberta's PIPA, BC's PIPA, and Québec's Law 25, as well as the sector-specific health laws that apply in provinces without a general private-sector law of their own. That means consistent advice, a coherent compliance program, and a single point of accountability no matter where your operations or data flows take you.
Privacy Impact Assessments that go beyond the checklist
A PIA conducted by someone who understands both the legal requirements and the operational reality of your sector surfaces issues that template-based approaches miss. Privacy Horizon's assessments are grounded in the specific statutory requirements that apply to your organization — identifying gaps, quantifying risk, and producing a remediation roadmap you can actually implement. We also conduct threat and risk assessments for organizations that need to address security obligations alongside their privacy requirements, and our gap analyses benchmark your current state against the full range of applicable obligations before enforcement reveals the gaps for you.
Other services in Canada
Privacy & Security elsewhere
What's Protecting Your Business from the Next Threat?
Don't wait for a breach to expose your vulnerabilities. Let Privacy Horizon secure your data, ensure compliance, and build lasting trust.