CdnU/W.Crd

In May 2013, a British Columbia court ruled in favour of Economical Mutual Insurance Company. The court set aside orders from the province's Information and Privacy Commissioner that would have required the carrier and its brokers to review all credit score consent forms obtained from home policyholders since 2004. (Whew!)

Pop Quiz

• There is a British Columbia privacy law called PIPA. What does PIPA stand for?
• There is a Canadian federal privacy law called PIPEDA. What does PIPEDA stand for?

Keywords

credit score, privacy, consent

In Plain English!

• This reading is basically just 1 legal case and you can cover it in 10 minutes. It's a British Columbia PIPA case as opposed to an Ontario PIPEDA case, but the outcome is similar. Note that PIPA is a BC law whereas PIPEDA is a federal law.

• Key Issue: There was no deemed consent
  • The customers signed a standard consent form, but who reads those things anyway?!!
  • The privacy commissioner said that the insurer could use credit score, but that the standard consent did not satisfy deemed consent.
  • Note how similar this is to the Ontario PIPEDA case where the customers also had signed a standard form. In that case, it was ruled that there was no informed consent, which is the same thing as deemed consent.

• A Wrinkle: The commissioner ordered that all carriers & brokers had to review all consent forms issued since 2004, the effective date of PIPA.
  • Thankfully, a judge reversed this order.
  • The insurer had already updated their consent form to comply with PIPA, so going forward everything was copacetic!

BattleCodes

• Memorize:
  • facts / issues / rulings

• Conceptual:
  • How does this Economical v Hughes case compare to the Ontario case: PIPEDA Report of Findings?

• Calculational:
  • none

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POP QUIZ ANSWERS

• PIPA: Personal Information Protection Act (BC)
• PIPEDA: Personal Information Protection & Electronic Documents Act (Federal)