The implications of the new federal privacy legislation for public hospitals.

n April 4, 2000, Parliament passed Bill C-6, now known as the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. Bill C-6 subsequently received Royal Assent on April 13, 2000. Passage was preceded by almost two years of deliberation and sometimes acrimonious debate. Some of this debate, and related acrimony, centred on the concerns that key healthcare stakeholders expressed as to the possible implications of the Act on the health system. In this article, I outline the concerns of these stakeholders and focus on the possible implications of the Act on public hospitals in Canada. By way of caveat, given the scope of the Act and its interrelationship with the numerous statutes and regulations that apply provincially to public hospitals, it is beyond the mandate of this article to offer an in-depth analysis of the possible effects of the Act on hospitals in any particular province. This article provides a broad overview of the Act from the perspective of public hospitals and highlights some of the key areas of concern. It is important to make two points regarding the Act's mandate. First, the Act is an initiative of Industry Canada and is rooted in the federal government's constitutional power to regulate " trade and commerce. " Thus, while healthcare delivery (including the protection of personal health information) is a matter for provincial regulation, the federal government is attempting to rely on its constitutional authority over " trade and commerce " to regulate healthcare delivery in the private sector and in respect of interprovincial and national cross-border exchanges. Given Canada's constitutional framework, one might reasonably take the position that it is a stretch for the federal government to attempt to include personal health information under the Act. Certainly, many key healthcare stakeholders argued against its inclusion during the discussions held in respect of the Act. In fact, although the matter was later disputed by the Minister of Industry, it was alleged during the Senate Committee hearings on Bill C-6 that Industry Canada officials had stated on the record that health information would not be a part of the Act (see the testimony of the Ministry of Industry, Senate Standing Committee 1999, at 27 on-line). Whether or not this is true, it is important to recognize that the Act was never specifically designed as a health information protection act. As such, it is not surprising that the Act, in its present incarnation, fails …