Privacy
Privacy impacts all of Health Canada's programs and operations. The Department's privacy responsibilities fall under laws and policies such as the  Privacy Act, the Treasury Board Data Protection and Privacy Policy and the Proposed Health Canada Corporate Privacy Policy.They govern the way the Department collects, uses, discloses and retains personal information.
Health Canada strengthens privacy management across the Department through the development of Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs), and through other initiatives internally and within the health sector.
Privacy Impact Assessments
A Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) is a risk management approach to determine whether privacy risks may be present in new or existing programs, initiatives or projects that handle personal information. Through the PIA process, we identify, document and address privacy risks.
The PIA Process
Institutions must develop and maintain PIAs to evaluate whether program and service delivery initiatives involving the collection, use, disclosure or retention of personal information comply with privacy requirements and to resolve privacy issues that may be of potential public concern.
Under Treasury Board Policy, all departments and agencies must conduct PIAs for proposals of all new programs and services that raise privacy issues. The PIA goes through an internal approval process before being signed-off on by the Deputy Minister and sent to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for review.
For more information, please refer to the following Treasury Board policies:
Privacy Impact Assessment Summaries
Privacy Initiatives
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