The Federal Court recently issued a decision further to a reference triggered by the Privacy Commissioner and involving Google, and in particular the extent to which search engine may be considered businesses that are governed by rules pertaining to the protection of personal information. In short: yes, Google should be considered a normal business and, yes, search engines may be considered as holding and using personal information.

In practice, one consequence of the recent ruling at issue is that individuals the personal data of whom is held and displayed by the likes of Google, when third parties make searches on the Web, would seem to be covered by normal rules requiring that the information be up-to-date, exact and still relevant. In short, in certain cases, it could be that individuals may require search engines to stop their algorithms from referencing inaccurate or obsolete information.

Though the Federal Court decision at issue was technically NOT about the right to be forgotten, this judgment does open the way for Canadians to claim a right to deindexation of erroneous or obsolete Web search results, akin to the right to be forgotten that European law now grants citizens. This could happen with or without legislative changes to provide for it expressly.

Though people are already invoking the right to have stuff about them deindexed (by search engines), for now, providers like Google aren’t too keen to start recognizing that such a right does indeed exist in the U.S. or Canada. Now, as the Privacy Commissioner starts investigating and processing complaints about search engine results, to be seen whether a right to deindexation will indeed materialize in Canada, and how fast.