October

"A B.C. bartender has lost his human rights complaint after he was dismissed for smoking marijuana on shift. The employer had a policy that prohibited consumption of drugs or alcohol while on shift.

The policy was meant to ensure that employees - including bartenders, who monitored customers ' consumption of alcohol - did not themselves become intoxicated. After being caught smoking marijuana, the employee claimed that he used it for a ""chronic pain condition"". He filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal against his employer, the executive chef and general manager, and the restaurant owners, claiming that his dismissal was discriminatory because of his ""disability"".

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal concluded that there was no evidence that the employer was aware that the bartender 's marijuana use was related to physical disability. Therefore, the employee had not proven that there was a connection between his disability and his termination. As such, his human rights complaint was dismissed."

Roskomnadzor has been conducting compliance inspections both according to the plan and in individual cases when it has reason to do so. The results of those inspections and recent comments by the Head of Roskomnadzor, Mr. Zharov, all yield insights into the regulatory expectations and the risk of noncompliance with the data localization law. In an interview, Mr. Zharov, announced that Roskomnadzor has found most of the companies that it has inspected this year to be compliant with the data localization requirement. In particular, he commented that out of 645 inspections, Roskomnadzor has found only four violations of the data localization requirement. While it is clear that the regulators still expect Russian personal data to be stored in Russia, companies may have more of a grace period to cure instances of noncompliance than originally expected, so long as they are making a good faith effort to comply.

"Chile's antiquated data protection law has drawn the ire of the European Union and is well behind that of other South American countries' standards. However, the Chilean legislature has heard the plea for increased data security and privacy standards and is looking to move towards a modern model.

President Michelle Bachelet announced that lawmakers will begin discussing improvements to the nations' data protection and privacy law. Regulating data use is necessary to develop Chile's digital economy and the proposed law will strike ""the right balance between privacy and transparency,"" she said.

Absent some fundamental change to the law, Chile will be unable to effectively compete for Spanish language services outsourced from the EU, such as customer call centers for Spanish banks. In short, the EU will continue to consider Chile as providing an inadequate level of protection for personal information unless the framework law changes. But whether those substantial changes will reach fruition remains unclear."