Governments, both at home and overseas, are formulating regulatory responses to the challenges thrown up by the new information technologies to privacy. On the federal scene, Canada has introduced the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the provinces are all moving towards the introduction of similar legislation. This brief guide serves as an introduction to the strategies and resources for researching information privacy policy. It does not purport to be comprehensive. The selected references provided are intended as a starting point that will lead the student and researcher to further materials.
Additional assistance is available from a librarian.
It is important to remember that, in most areas of legal research, there is little that is entirely new. Others will have gone before you and written books or articles on a topic that is at least related. Finding this material is the first step in the research task. Having done so you will find that others have identified the principal legislation, major treaties, decisions and other academic writings as well as travaux pr paratoire, government reports and the like. And increasingly, and particularly for subjects like informational privacy and related fields, major Web sites.