Lyndsay A. Wasser

First Year of Call
2004 Ontario

Areas of Practice
Employment Law

Description
Lyndsay leads McMillan’s Privacy & Data Protection Group nationally. She is a strategic advisor to organizations in a wide variety of industries, which collect, use, store and otherwise process personal information. She provides practical advice and solutions that allow clients to leverage data while meeting their regulatory obligations and maintaining consumer trust, based on her in-depth knowledge of privacy, data protection and cybersecurity laws across Canada.

Lyndsay helps clients conduct privacy impact assessments and develop comprehensive privacy compliance and vendor management programs, including designing appropriate policies and procedures, training, and template documents. With almost two decades of experience in privacy and data protection law, Lyndsay advises on a broad range of matters, including requirements and restrictions related to obtaining valid consent to process personal information, data security, employee privacy, handling sensitive personal information (including personal health information, financial information, biometrics, and demographic data), data analytics, web scraping, electronic monitoring, background checks, social media, smart homes, smart cars, IoT, AI, and transferring personal information across borders. She is adept at coordinating legal strategy with counsel in other jurisdictions, as well as assisting organizations to understand and reconcile differences between Canadian laws and legal requirements in other countries.

Lyndsay is an experienced data breach coach who assists clients with navigating risk assessments, executing response and mitigation strategies, meeting reporting obligations, and communicating with regulators. She also regularly drafts and negotiates data processing agreements, as well as privacy and data protection terms in a wide variety of commercial and consumer contracts. In addition, she provides advice and assistance on the privacy and data protection aspects of corporate transactions.

Lyndsay is a co-author of Privacy in the Workplace (3rd and 4th editions), and the Canadian chapters in the International Comparative Legal Guides on Cybersecurity (2020/2021) & Data Protection (2021/2022). She has been recognized as a Mondaq Thought Leader for Data Protection, Canada (2021) and is repeatedly recognized by Best Lawyers in Canada in Privacy and Data Security Law, by Thomson Reuters Stand-Out Lawyers, in the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory for Data Privacy and Lexpert Special Edition on Canada’s Leading Technology & Health Sciences Lawyers. She is Chair of the Data Breach committee of PrivacyRules, a global alliance of privacy professionals, as well as Co-Director of the Osgoode Certificate in Privacy and Cybersecurity Law. She has been a Certified Information Privacy Professional/Canada through the International Association of Privacy Professionals since 2013.

In addition to her Privacy & Data Protection practice, Lyndsay counsels employers in all areas of employment law, including hiring, employment agreements, incentive compensation plans, performance management, terminations, employment standards and human rights laws.