For small businesses across Canada, finding the right customers can make all the difference.

Imagine a specialty grocer in Montreal trying to reach customers searching for a hard-to-find ingredient, or a textile studio in Burnaby selling Japanese fabrics to a customer in Halifax. Neither business has a national advertising budget. What they do have is the ability to spend a few dollars putting the right message in front of the relevant people.

That's the everyday value of personalized advertising, and it's how small businesses get found.

As Parliament considers Bill C-36, Canada has an opportunity to modernize privacy law for the first time in more than 25 years. Canadians deserve strong protections for their personal information and clear rules they can trust. Done well, the legislation can deliver those protections while preserving the digital tools that help Canadian small businesses compete, grow, and reach new customers.

One important part of getting that balance right is ensuring that platforms can continue to rely on implied consent for routine, low-risk personalization. This includes everyday features like video recommendations and re-ordering favourites on delivery apps, but it also includes seeing relevant advertising.

For a small business, advertising is ultimately a problem of scale. A neighbourhood retailer, independent designer, or new startup can't afford to advertise to everyone in Canada and hope the right customer sees it. Every dollar has to be spent efficiently.

Personalized ads make that possible. A business selling specialty running gear can specifically reach runners, a local restaurant can reach people nearby, and a niche paint store can find customers in another province who are searching for exactly what it sells.

Without that efficiency, marketing costs rise and more advertising budgets are wasted. Established companies can afford that waste, but small businesses will struggle to absorb these costs.

The economic stakes extend well beyond advertising. New research estimates that personalized advertising supports up to $20 billion in additional annual revenue for Canadian small businesses, tens of thousands of jobs, and $14 billion in GDP. It's also estimated to be 2.5 times more efficient than generic advertising at putting the right product in front of the right customer.

When businesses find customers more efficiently, they have more room to hire, invest, launch products, and compete beyond their neighbourhood. For a country looking to improve productivity and help Canadian companies scale, that's worth protecting.

Bill C-36 can support Canadian small businesses without compromising its goal of protecting Canadians' data. The legislation puts consent at the centre of how personal information is used, but not every use of data carries the same risk. Clarifying when personalized advertising can rely on implied consent would better reflect consumer expectations of modern platforms and preserve tools small businesses depend on to reach customers.

Canadians already expect online services to be tailored to them. Maps surface nearby businesses, streaming services recommend shows, and delivery platforms help you re-order favourites. Advertising works on the same basic principle: a person is more likely to see something useful when a service can make educated guesses about their interests.

But Bill C-36 leaves it unclear whether routine personalization can rely on implied consent, potentially pushing platforms toward disruptive opt-in screens instead. This risks turning consent into a series of boxes people click past while making ordinary digital services harder to deliver. A better approach is to reserve the strongest consent requirements for the uses of data that genuinely warrant them.

For example, data about a person's physical or mental health, or information about children, deserves the strongest protections. But routine, low-risk uses of non-sensitive information, such as viewing history or past grocery orders, should be able to rely on implied consent when it fits a consumer's reasonable expectations.

That ambiguity leaves it unclear whether businesses can rely on implied consent for everyday personalization. A simple clarification to the bill could protect privacy while preserving the personalized services Canadians rely on.

Parliament does not have to make a choice between privacy and growth. Privacy law can distinguish between different levels of risk while still supporting an innovative economy.

There's also a question of certainty. Small businesses deserve to know whether the tools they rely on are still workable. Bill C-36 can provide that certainty now by confirming that implied consent still applies to standard, expected personalization like language preferences in an app, local recommendations, and seeing relevant advertising.

Bill C-36 can give Canadians stronger privacy rights while building confidence in the digital economy. With clarifying amendments, Parliament can ensure those protections work alongside the tools that help businesses like the specialty grocer in Montreal or textile studio in Burnaby reach the people looking for exactly what they have to offer.

Small businesses win when they can be found. Canada's new privacy law should help keep it that way.

Josh Tabish, Senior Director, Canada, Chamber of Progress

Sponsored by Chamber of Progress