Philippe Dufresne, the privacy commissioner of Canada, sat down with MLex to discuss the progress of the investigations of OpenAI and TikTok, his plans for hosting the G7 meeting of privacy regulators in Ottawa in June*, and the path forward for privacy regulation in Canada following the Federal Election coming next week.
Canadian privacy regulators’ probes of TikTok and OpenAI are making substantial progress and approaching completion within months, the nation’s top privacy enforcer told MLex today on the sidelines of the world’s largest annual gathering of privacy professionals.“I’m expecting them to be completed soon, certainly in the next few months. Certainly by the time we see each other again next year, they should be complete. But I hope it will be closer to this part than to the end part of the year,” said Philippe Dufresne, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
The TikTok and OpenAi probes are each about two years old and touch on two key areas of focus for Dufresne during his seven-year term as Privacy Commissioner: artificial intelligence and kids’ privacy (see here).
The TikTok probe is a joint effort between the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Alberta and British Columbia, and the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec. The OpenAI probe is also a joint investigation with the same three provincial privacy regulators.
“We're moving along. They're big investigations, or complex investigations with joint [regulators], so we're taking it very seriously,” Dufresne said today during an interview at a conference in Washington, DC.* He declined to discuss his view of the ultimate outcome of the probes.
Canada is only days away from a significant political milestone. The Federal Election of 2025 is April 28, when either the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party is expected to win control of Parliament and seek to form a national government. Dufresne said, however, that he doesn’t see a fork for privacy enforcement in Canada, whomever wins.
“I think privacy in Canada, it's a shared value amongst all of the political parties, and so I'm looking forward to continuing to promote and protect privacy with whichever party will be forming government in the next Parliament,” said Dufresne, who is two years into a seven-year term.
Once the new government is formed, however, Dufresne said he intends to resume a push to update Canada’s two national privacy laws for both the commercial and public sectors of the Canadian economy. During the past government, the privacy commissioner advocated for stronger enforcement powers, including the ability to bring monetary fines, and adding the provision in law that privacy is a fundamental right for Canadians.
“I'm going to continue to promote [those goals], and I hope that there will be general support for that,” he said. “And I think AI, of course, continues to be an important game-changer. And so I look forward to that also being addressed, either in the privacy legislation—with things like algorithmic transparency, greater explainability — or perhaps with the standalone AI bill.”
Dufresne announced in February that Canada would host the annual G7 Data Protection and Privacy Authorities Roundtable, in Ottawa in June (see here). The meeting will focus on the “Three Pillars” of Dufresne’s seven-year term: The free flow of data across national borders; the balancing privacy and innovation in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, and cooperation between national and provincial regulators.
“I think G7 is an important milestone for Canada, but we're going to continue to build on things that were done before, when G7 issued important statements on AI, important statements and work on cross-border data privacy rules,” he said. “We're going to do some more work this year in Ottawa, and we’re going to be looking forward to continuing this work with my colleagues in years to come.”
Dufresne said the current trade tension between the US and Canada will not affect that meeting or his priorities.
“I think the current situation highlights the importance of collaboration between countries, but also between regulators,” he said. “I'm a regulator, and the relationships that I have with my counterparts, including here the US, with the [Federal Trade Commission] and internationally — Europe, Asia — is essential.”
“It's going to be more and more essential,” he added. “We live in a global world. We live in a global data world; data crosses borders all the time. And so we need to have these discussions and this coordinated approach, both to protect privacy but also to support innovation. It's good for industry to have clarity and to have cohesion in this space.”
*IAPP Global Privacy Summit 2025, Washington, DC, April 22-24, 2025.
*Story corrected to indicate correct date for G7 meeting in Canada. Story corrects on April 24, 2025 at 17:00 GMT.
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