Google Street View in Canada

On this day, Street View was made available for several large Canadian cities, as well as Banff National Park and Whistler, British Columbia (one of the sites from the 2010 Winter Olympics).

[2] On December 2, 2009, nine more Canadian cities were added, from east to west St. John's, Sherbrooke, Sudbury, London, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, and Victoria.

One of the people involved, Chris Kalluk, was responsible for Google mapping Cambridge Bay, his home town.

[11] Canada was one of the first countries following the introduction in the United States where the prospect of introducing Street View was known to the public.

[12] Canada's Federal Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, warned Google and Immersive Media that Street View violated the country's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which prohibits commercial use of personal data without the individual's consent.

Les MacPherson, a columnist with The StarPhoenix in Saskatoon, complained in a March 28, 2009, column that the timing of the imaging, at the end of a protracted winter season and before the true onset of spring would cast an unfavourable image of Saskatoon and other cities.

"What worries me more than any loss of privacy is the prospect of presenting to the world a highly unflattering impression of Canadian cities.

For Google to record its images of the city at this most visually unappealing time of year is like photographing a beautiful woman who has just awakened from a six-month coma," he wrote.

In October 2010, Stoddart said that Google violated the privacy of thousands of Canadians when the cars inadvertently collected personal data about them while filming Street View in the country.