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DAVE CHAN WEAK ENFORCEMENT M ichael McEvoy was in the picturesque English town of Wilmslow near Manchester when the news broke. An obscure data analytics firm called Cambridge Analytica had harvested the Facebook profiles of millions of people. It had worked with Donald Trump's cam- paign and the winning side of the historic Brexit referendum, using the data to profile, micro-tar- get and help influence voters. "You could feel a sea change almost immedi- ately when some of these stories started coming out," says McEvoy, who was working, at the time, with a fellow Canadian, U.K. Information Com- missioner Elizabeth Denham. McEvoy, who now serves as British Colum- bia's information and privacy commissioner, says Canadians haven't always paid much attention to the fact that their information was being shared or used. "I think with Cambridge Analytica, what they saw was a company, without their consent, psychologically profiling them, and if you hap- pen to be an American citizen, that profiling information was used as a tool to promote Don- ald Trump's presidency. People began to realize, 'Oh, I understand what could go very, very wrong with this' and at that point turned not only to Facebook but they turned to regulators to ask what are we doing to protect people." Chantal Bernier, former interim federal pri- vacy commissioner, who leads Dentons' privacy and cybersecurity practice, agrees the scandal was a game changer for privacy law. "I think it was a watershed for awareness. You just have to look at Facebook's numbers. I think that it has also been a watershed in relation to the awareness of the impact on democracy of access to personal information." The Cambridge Analytica scandal and the European Union's implementation of the new General Data Protection Regulation in May have thrust privacy law into the spotlight in recent months. It has also shone a light on the digital Wild West that has emerged where Big Data is big business and regulators say barely a day goes by without a data breach somewhere in Canada. Privacy lawyers say they have never been busier. Some firms are hiring more privacy law- w w w . c a n a d i a n l a w y e r m a g . c o m S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 8 27 By Elizabeth Thompson CANADA'S PRIVACY DEFICIT PRIVACY COMMISSIONER DANIEL THERRIEN IS HAMSTRUNG BY POWERS