Privacy law, for people who fix pipes
PIPEDA governs the customer details sitting in your inbox, and most of what is written about it is written for lawyers. These are the answers a two-truck shop actually needs, sourced from the Privacy Commissioner.
- Does PIPEDA apply to my plumbing business? — If you take customer names, addresses or phone numbers while doing business in Canada, privacy law applies. Which law depends on your province.
- Do I need consent to store a customer's address? — Yes, but a homeowner filling in your quote form has usually already given it. What matters is whether they understood what they were agreeing to.
- How long should a plumbing company keep customer records? — PIPEDA sets no fixed period. Keep personal information only as long as the purpose requires, then destroy it — and write the schedule down.
- A customer asked what data you hold on them. Now what? — Under PIPEDA you have 30 days to respond to an access request. An extension is possible, but only if you tell the person inside the first 30.
- What to do if a customer's information is exposed — Report a breach to the Privacy Commissioner where there's a real risk of significant harm — and log every breach, harmful or not, for two years.
Plain-language summaries of published guidance, not legal advice. Each guide lists the Privacy Commissioner pages its claims came from.