How to appoint a privacy officer and comply with Quebec’s law 25: a CEO’s urgent briefing

If you do business in Quebec, Law 25 is not another piece of legal jargon to forward to your counsel. It’s a fundamental shift in operational liability that lands directly on your desk. The legislation, officially known as an *Act to modernize legislative provisions as regards the protection of personal information*, redefines the rules of data governance in the province. It applies to any organisation, regardless of size or location, that collects, uses, or discloses the personal information of Quebec residents. While many discussions focus on the high fines, they miss the most critical starting point.

The most pressing issue for any leader is the default assignment of responsibility. Under Law 25, the person with the “highest authority” in the organisation—the CEO—is automatically designated the “Person in Charge of the Protection of Personal Information,” or Privacy Officer. This isn’t a theoretical risk. This means until you formally delegate this role in writing, you are personally accountable for every facet of the law’s implementation, from managing biometric data to justifying algorithmic decisions. A study confirms that under Law 25, the responsibility for privacy protection defaults to the CEO, a detail many leaders overlook.

Simply appointing a mid-level manager is not a solution. It’s a stop-gap. Complying with Law 25 requires more than a title; it demands weaving a new privacy–conscious fabric into your company’s operational DNA. It means that every department, from marketing to IT to HR, must understand and adapt its processes. This is no longer about having a privacy policy; it’s about demonstrating a living, breathing privacy management programme.

This guide moves beyond the generic advice. It provides a C-suite-level briefing on the specific, complex obligations your new Privacy Officer—and by extension, you—will be responsible for. We will dissect the most urgent operational challenges posed by Law 25 and provide an actionable framework for navigating them, ensuring your business is not just compliant, but also builds the trust that is now a key competitive advantage.

To navigate this complex landscape, this article breaks down the most critical and often misunderstood requirements of Law 25. Each section addresses a specific challenge your organisation must master to achieve compliance.

When is a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) Mandatory for New Projects?

Under Law 25, the era of “launch now, fix privacy later” is over. A Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) is now a mandatory tollgate, not an optional exercise. You are legally required to conduct a PIA before initiating any new project that involves the collection, use, or disclosure of personal information. This includes everything from implementing a new CRM system and launching a mobile app to transferring data to a new service provider. A PIA is a structured risk assessment designed to ensure that privacy is baked into the project from day one—a concept known as “privacy-by-design.”

The PIA process forces your team to proactively identify and mitigate potential privacy risks. It must be proportionate to the sensitivity of the information, the purpose of its use, and the quantity of data involved. To guide businesses, Quebec’s privacy regulator released its comprehensive PIA guide on September 22, 2023, providing templates and methodologies. The assessment must analyse how the project adheres to all Law 25 principles and must be overseen by your Privacy Officer.

This workflow highlights that a PIA is not a one-time check but a continuous process of evaluation. Failure to conduct a mandatory PIA is a serious compliance breach that can attract significant penalties. It signals to the regulator, the Commission d’accès à l’information (CAI), that your organisation is not taking its privacy obligations seriously. This requirement fundamentally changes your project management lifecycle, making the Privacy Officer a key stakeholder in innovation and development from the very beginning.

Biometric Data: What Are the Strict Rules for Using Fingerprints for Time Clocks?

Biometric data, such as fingerprints, facial scans, or voiceprints, is considered one of the most sensitive categories of personal information under Law 25. The rules for its use are exceptionally strict, reflecting the unique and unchangeable nature of this data. Before you can even consider implementing a biometric system—for instance, a fingerprint scanner for employee time clocks—you must fulfil two critical obligations: disclose the system to the CAI at least 60 days before implementation and conduct a rigorous PIA that justifies its necessity.

The bar for justification is extremely high. Convenience or marginal efficiency gains are not sufficient reasons. You must prove that the security or business objectives cannot be achieved through less intrusive means. The recent surge in filings with the regulator, which saw a 59% increase in biometric system declarations in 2023-2024, shows companies are grappling with this requirement. Even with employee consent, the CAI can—and does—reject systems it deems disproportionate.

This precedent sends a clear message to CEOs: implementing biometric technology is a high-stakes decision. Your Privacy Officer must lead a thorough analysis to prove not just that the technology works, but that it is absolutely essential and that no viable alternatives exist. Failure to meet this standard will likely result in a direct order from the CAI to cease operations, wasting significant investment and damaging employee trust.

Data Portability: How to Format Data So Users Can Take It to a Competitor?

Law 25 introduces a powerful new consumer right: the right to data portability. Effective from September 2024, this means individuals can request a copy of the personal information they have provided to your company in a structured, commonly used technological format. More importantly, they can also ask you to transmit this data directly to a competitor. This right fundamentally changes the dynamic of data ownership; you are no longer the owner of the data, but its temporary custodian.

Operationally, this is a significant technical and procedural challenge. Your systems must be capable of extracting an individual’s data and packaging it in a machine-readable format like CSV, JSON, or XML. This doesn’t just include information they actively typed into a form, such as their name and address, but also data generated through their activity, if it’s linked to them. Your Privacy Officer must work with your IT department to develop a process that is secure, efficient, and compliant. This involves not only choosing the right format but also ensuring the data can be securely transmitted.

The choice of format depends on the complexity of the data you hold. While simple tabular data can be handled with CSV, more complex, nested information is better suited for JSON. The key is to provide the data in a way that is genuinely usable by the individual or another service, fulfilling the spirit of the law, which is to reduce friction for users switching providers and increase competition.

Automated Decisions: Why You Must Inform Users If an Algorithm Decides Their Loan?

The increasing use of artificial intelligence and algorithms for decision-making is now under strict regulation by Law 25. If your organisation uses an automated process to make a decision about an individual—for example, to approve a loan, set an insurance premium, or screen job applications—you have new transparency obligations. You must inform the person, at or before the time of the decision, that their information was processed automatically.

This is not a simple notification. Your disclosure must include several key elements. You must explain the principal factors and parameters that led to the decision, essentially opening up the “black box” of your algorithm. Furthermore, you must inform the individual of their right to have the decision reviewed by a human and to submit observations. This means you must have a formal process in place to handle these appeals, ensuring a person, not just another algorithm, re-evaluates the outcome. This requirement forces a level of algorithmic accountability that many organisations are unprepared for.

Your Privacy Officer must ensure compliance by taking several concrete steps:

• Inform individuals whenever an automated system is used to make a significant decision about them.
• Provide a clear, plain-language explanation of the decision’s rationale, avoiding overly technical jargon.
• Disclose the main factors the algorithm considered in reaching its conclusion.
• Offer a clear pathway for individuals to contest the automated outcome.
• Establish and document a process for a meaningful human review upon request.

This provision directly impacts any business leveraging AI for personalisation, risk assessment, or customer management. It requires you to not only understand how your own algorithms work but also to be able to justify their outputs to your customers and to the regulator. Failing to do so undermines trust and exposes your organisation to significant legal and reputational risk.

Re-Consent: Do You Need to Ask Current Users for Permission Again Under New Laws?

One of the most disruptive requirements of Law 25 is its higher standard for consent. The law mandates that consent must be explicit, informed, granular, and freely given for a specific purpose. It must also be presented separately from any other terms and conditions. This invalidates many older consent models that relied on pre-checked boxes, bundled permissions in lengthy legal documents, or implied consent (e.g., “by using this site, you agree…”).

For many businesses, this means the consent you collected from users years, or even months, ago is no longer compliant. If your existing consent records do not meet this new, stringent standard, you may be legally required to launch a “re-consent” campaign. This involves proactively reaching out to your current user base to obtain fresh, valid consent for each specific data processing activity. While this carries the business risk of list attrition, it is a necessary step to bring your data practices into compliance.

Your Privacy Officer’s first tasks should be to audit your existing consent mechanisms and records. They must assess whether past permissions meet the new standard. If they don’t, a carefully planned re-consent strategy is not just a best practice—it’s a legal imperative to avoid processing personal information unlawfully.

Cloud Storage: Can You Legally Host Canadian Customer Data on US Servers?

The question of data residency is a critical operational issue for any Canadian business using cloud services. Under Law 25, transferring personal information outside of Quebec is permitted, but only under strict conditions. Before you use a cloud provider that hosts data on US servers (or any server outside the province), you must conduct a PIA that specifically assesses the legal framework of the destination jurisdiction.

The core of this assessment is to determine whether the data will receive a level of protection equivalent to that offered in Quebec. This is a major challenge when transferring data to the United States, given the existence of laws like the CLOUD Act and the Patriot Act, which grant US authorities broad access to data held by American companies, regardless of its physical location. Your PIA must explicitly weigh this risk. If the legal protections are not deemed equivalent, you can only proceed if you implement additional contractual or technical safeguards to mitigate the risk. This might include robust, end-to-end encryption where the cloud provider does not hold the decryption keys.

The financial stakes for getting this wrong are immense. Organisations face severe penalties under Law 25 with fines reaching up to $25 million CAD or 4% of global revenue, whichever is greater. To legally use US-based cloud services, your Privacy Officer must ensure:

• A mandatory PIA is conducted, focusing on the legal landscape of the US.
• The assessment evaluates whether US surveillance laws undermine Quebec’s privacy protections.
• A formal contract is established with the cloud provider, outlining specific privacy and security safeguards.
• Enhanced security measures, such as client-side encryption, are implemented if necessary.
• Individuals are clearly informed that their information may be transferred outside Quebec and is subject to the laws of another jurisdiction.

Simply choosing a major US cloud provider is no longer sufficient due diligence. You must actively assess and document that your data remains protected to Quebec’s standards, no matter where it resides physically.

Federal Act vs Provincial Statute: Which Rules When They contradict on Data Privacy?

For many Canadian businesses, the privacy landscape has long been governed by the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). However, with the introduction of Law 25, companies operating in Quebec are now subject to a dual-compliance reality. The critical question is: which law takes precedence? The answer is clear: where a provincial law is “substantially similar” to PIPEDA, the provincial law applies to intra-provincial matters. Furthermore, for any organisation doing business in Quebec, Law 25’s stricter provisions effectively set the new, higher bar for compliance.

It is a dangerous assumption to believe that PIPEDA compliance is sufficient. Law 25 is significantly more stringent and comprehensive in several key areas. For example, it mandates the appointment of a Privacy Officer, introduces the right to data portability, and requires explicit consent, all of which go beyond PIPEDA’s requirements. The enforcement powers are also vastly different, with Law 25 carrying massive fines that have no equivalent under the federal act.

This table highlights some of the most critical differences your organisation must address. Relying on a PIPEDA-based compliance framework will leave you dangerously exposed in Quebec.

Your compliance strategy must be built on the principle that the strictest applicable rule prevails. For any data processing involving Quebec residents, Law 25 is that rule. Your Privacy Officer must conduct a gap analysis comparing your current PIPEDA-aligned practices against Law 25’s requirements and implement the necessary upgrades to meet the higher standard.

How to Navigate the Unique “Hypothec” System to Secure Loans in Quebec?

Even the most established and seemingly secure business processes in Quebec are not immune to the reach of Law 25. A prime example is securing a business loan through Quebec’s civil law concept of a hypothec (similar to a mortgage or lien). This process requires you to share a vast amount of sensitive personal and financial information with lenders. Under Law 25, both your organisation and the financial institution have heightened obligations to protect this data.

When your company applies for financing, the lender will collect sensitive information about its directors and officers. Your Privacy Officer must ensure you understand the lender’s privacy practices. Conversely, if your business is in the lending space, your entire application and underwriting process must be Law 25 compliant. This includes providing clear notice about data collection, managing data retention schedules, and conducting PIAs if you transfer that data to third-party credit assessors, especially those outside of Quebec.

The “hypothec” example serves as a powerful illustration of the law’s pervasive impact. It demonstrates that compliance is not confined to your website’s privacy policy or your marketing database. It extends to core financial and legal operations. The role of the Privacy Officer is to have a holistic view of all data flows within the organisation—from a customer’s click on your website to the financial disclosures made in a loan application—and ensure every single one adheres to the law’s principles. This reinforces the need for a senior, empowered individual in the role, one who can interact with legal, finance, and operations with authority.

The message is clear: compliance is not a siloed IT or legal task. It is a strategic imperative that cuts across every department. Your first step as CEO is to officially delegate the Privacy Officer role. Your second is to empower that individual with the resources and authority to conduct a full-scale audit of your data practices. The time for passive awareness is over; the time for decisive action is now.