On 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.

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