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w w w . c a n a d i a n l a w y e r m a g . c o m J U N E / J U LY 2 0 1 9 37 The key guiding principles that require attention as these technologies are rolled out, she says, include: preserving consent; minimizing data collection and retention; ensuring there is no excessive collection of data and that it isn't used for surveillance and cybersecurity; and determining what happens to the information when several organizations are involved. Municipalities, strapped by limited budgets, have increasingly sought partnerships with private-sector players. But the private sector is governed by different privacy legislation than the public sector. From her perspective as an infrastructure lawyer who works with private-sector companies servicing a public-sector partner, Catherine Doyle, a partner with Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP in Toronto, sees smart city initiatives setting the foundation for how we will agree our data will be used in the future. More people have access to the technologies as they become less expensive, bringing those issues increasingly to the fore. "Technological innovation is accelerating both the potential for the cities to be smart and for the issues themselves," she says. So, in addition to the privacy issues, when it comes to smart cities, there are issues around enabling cities to capture the value of the data to which they have access and use it to build a smarter city. Doyle points to the widespread use of sensors in these programs that feed information back, that will also help to identify, in real time, information to municipalities such as what roads need to be repaired. In a smart city, there is potential in a private-public partnership for the use of information conflicting with public interest. Doyle says a necessary component is to get the mix right in the allocation of reward of data ownership and control to ensure a certain level of data protection. The considerations Doyle says are necessary to address include ensuring the rights to data, as well as the rights to use the data, aren't given away or forfeited and to ensure the agreement over data continues to allow the institution to comply with its own statutory obligations under PIPEDA, provincial legislation and the Privacy Act. "As lawyers, we're still grappling with all of the issues coming at us with smart cities and infrastructure, and one of the big questions there is data, who owns the data, who controls the data, where the privacy aspects with data being both generated by infrastructure and then the data going into how we decide whether to build infrastructure or not is sort of two different classes of things," says Doyle. But Scassa warns that we ought not be lulled into assurances that de-identification will address all of our concerns because there are further risks: use of data, function creep, change of governments. "I think you need very robust forms of accountability and transparency and decision-making. You need a strong ongoing commitment to implementing and maintaining privacy. . . . I think it's an ongoing, long-term project that has to be treated with some care." ATTENTION IN-HOUSE COUNSEL! Weigh in on relationships with external law firms. The annual Canadian Lawyer Corporate Counsel Survey Survey is open from August 8 – 26 canadianlawyermag.com/surveys Untitled-2 1 2019-06-11 10:31 AM

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