The premise of this paper is not new. Over two decades ago, John D R Craig argued the Charter value of privacy “should now be given effect in the Canadian common law, through a principled development of the tort category that affords relief for intentional interferences with the person.” This paper, however, builds on newer case law, including Jones, to explore and reinvigorate the promise of horizontality — that is, the application of constitutional values to private law. In so doing, I argue that Charter values of privacy must naturally fuse with common law to constrain private corporations’ data practices, facilitated through a combination of horizontality and existing legal principles. I proceed by exploring how privacy has been interpreted in the context of section 8 of the Charter, as well as the impact of surveillance capitalism on prevailing understandings of privacy. I then turn to what I view as the horizontal promise of section 8, its potential to bind private actors through its influence on private law, and the implications of such developments. I also briefly discuss the quasi-public function that some corporate surveillers have adopted.
Miles Schaffrick (Fri,) studied this question.