Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
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60-SECOND SNAPSHOT provincial privacy commissioners. Canada's private-sector privacy leg- islation, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, has actually proven itself success- ful, he says, because it was designed in a technologically neutral manner to apply regardless of the precise nature of the technology in question — so Canada doesn't have to revisit the law every time technology evolves. "I think that's been a real success," he says. "In the U.S., they're massively over-regulated and that's led to a huge drag on economic opportunity and innovation in the e-commerce world. Because they don't have broad privacy legislation, they only have sector-spe- cific privacy legislation, that leads to all sorts of regulatory uncertainty." Glick studied political science, then THE LAWYER: Jacob Glick THE COMPANY: Google Canada Glick is passionate about digital lit- eracy and sits on the board of the Media Awareness Network, which is a digital literacy-focused not-for-profit in Ottawa. He has several mentors, including Lorne Sossin, who's now the dean at Osgoode Hall Law School. Sossin was his undergrad political science thesis supervisor, and has been a friend and mentor to Glick for more than a decade. Glick graduated from the University of Toronto in 2002 and was called to the Ontario bar in 2003. law, at the University of Toronto. At the time, the university had funding to bring in some of the world's leading professors as guests. As a result, Glick studied with Lawrence Lessig and Pamela Samuelson, two of the most well-known law and technology professors in the world. He articled at McCarthy Tétrault LLP and then worked there for a couple of years in the firm's litigation group. He hadn't been looking to make a move, but one day a friend called about a job he heard about through a headhunter at the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. "So I got in touch with the recruiter, and before I knew it I was selling my condo and moving to Ottawa," he says. CIRA is a not-for-profit corporation; its policies are in large part driven by and responsive to the Internet com- munity. Glick started out as legal and policy counsel, with a focus on domestic and international Internet governance issues, as well as advising the management team. He learned what it was like inside a technology company — even if it was a not-for-profit, quasi-regulatory technology company. Midway through his second summer there, his boss, who was general counsel, left. "So I became general counsel, which was an amazing opportunity for somebody who was still a pretty young lawyer," he says. (That summer, he turned 31.) That same summer, however, he also got a call from a recruiter at Google. "It was a long, tortuous application process, which eventually resulted in me moving to Google," he says. "I've been here three and a half years, which I think makes me an old-timer by Google standards." His biggest challenge at Google? He's a social person, but he works alone — though a non-lawyer has just been brought on board to help out on public-policy issues. "I love to be able to walk into the office of the person next to me and talk through an issue or think aloud about something I'm grap- ntitled-3 1 pling with," he says. "That's really hard when the only other thing in your office is a Wii." The best part, however, is that he works with people who are passionate, collaborative, and care about their job. "It's a company that believes deeply in doing the right thing, so it's easy to represent and advocate for a company like that," he says. But it's also about the substance of what he's working on. "My interest in technology has long roots," he adds. "I always tell people that my job is really easy because it's also my hobby." It doesn't get boring, and it won't slow down any time soon. In the next year, he believes Canadian copyright reform might finally pass, which has been per- colating on the government's agenda for the better part of a decade and a half. And even though the CRTC decided against it two years ago, there's a grow- ing clamour from Canadian cultural protectionists who want to see more regulation of the Internet. "I think you're going to see political pressure to revisit that," he says. You can be sure Glick will be there when it does. IH THE LAW OF SUBDIVISION CONTROL IN ONTARIO, THIRD EDITION SIDNEY H. TROISTER, LSM Written by leading expert Sidney Troister, this text has become known as "THE" Planning Act resource since its original publication in 1988. This indispensable and practical text helps you analyze and assess the validity of title and address any problems that may arise. 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