Privacy Assessment and Guidance

NRCan is responsible to deliver programs, tools and resources that increase the energy efficiency of commercial, institutional and other large buildings across Canada. These programs, tools and resources also support and assist governments, utility providers and regulators to adopt energy management regulations/policies to increase the energy efficiency of buildings within their jurisdictions. The goal of implementing energy regulations in the buildings sector is to reduce energy costs and emissions, improve building performance while standardizing/harmonizing approaches to reach these goals. As provincial, territorial, and municipal governments design energy management policies for implementation within their jurisdictions, NRCan has a role in identifying and removing barriers to support collaboration, knowledge sharing, and consistency. One of the initial and main barriers identified to date are the discrepancies and inconsistent privacy law interpretations across Canada pertaining to what building data/information (i.e., energy consumption data, etc.) is considered private. Building data can be defined as physical attributes of a building (e.g. address, owner, number of meters, building type, square meter/feet etc.) and a building’s energy use data. To support provincial, territorial, and municipal energy policy design and implementation, a detailed national and provincial privacy assessment of building information and energy data is needed to act as a roadmap to properly and legally navigate privacy legislation(s) that apply to buildings in the various jurisdictions across Canada.