Ottawa - Federal Liberals plan to introduce privacy legislation today to give Canadians more control over their personal data and introduce new rules for the use of artificial intelligence.

The bill, which will be presented by Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne, aims to fulfill his mandate to strengthen the federal digital charter, enhance consumer privacy protection, and provide clear rules for fair competition in the online marketplace.

The digital charter sets out 10 principles ranging from ensuring control over information to meaningful penalties for data misuse.

The legislation is expected to revive some threads of a previous bill introduced by the Liberals in late 2020, which did not become law.

That bill would have required companies to obtain customer consent in plain language, not a long legal document, before using their personal data.

It also aims to ensure that Canadians can demand the permanent deletion of their information on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.

The bill would have given the federal privacy commissioner the authority to issue orders, including the ability to require the company to stop collecting data or using personal information, and to recommend that the court impose fines.

However, stakeholders have not responded to long-standing calls from privacy and accountability advocates to apply the federal law explicitly governing personal information to political parties.

It is worth noting that Daniel Therrien, who long pushed for reforms as federal privacy commissioner, criticized the previous law as a "step backward overall" from the current law.

Therrien said in May of last year that the previous law gave consumers less control and allowed organizations more flexibility to pass on personal data without accountability.

Therrien, whose term as commissioner recently ended, said the legislation places business interests ahead of people's privacy rights and called for the adoption of a framework that would establish privacy as a human right.

For his part, Philippe Dufresne, the government nominee who will replace Therrien, told a Commons committee this week that the upcoming bill must recognize privacy as a "fundamental right."

Editing: Dima Abu Khair