Generally speaking, when it comes to record retention, privacy laws provide that it's not appropriate to retain information because somewhere down the road you may come up with another purpose for the information. You collect information for a specified purpose. This is fundamental to all privacy law.
When the original purpose for retaining the information has been met, you destroy it.
In practical terms, that means that in virtually every province with a stand-alone health information law, there's a requirement that custodians or trustees must set a record retention schedule. It's usually influenced by legal advice about how long there's a potential legal liability and then the records are to be destroyed.
There's also a provision in every one of those stand-alone health information laws that provides that application can be made to a research ethics board or a research ethics committee for access to information for specific projects.
As the law currently stands, it is not appropriate and not lawful to retain information, because somewhere down the road my personal health information may be useful to my grandchildren or their children.
Part of what's happening is that, as genetic science increases, that information about my health or your health today becomes more valuable. That's going to be a challenge for you and legislators going forward. Currently, there's not the kind of provision that you might like to see.