Right now, that work of the lengthy California description is being done by the word “about” in the current PIPEDA, and “about” has been sufficient, from a court perspective, to get at a wide range of inferred and direct information about individuals. It's how the court ruled on information related to inferred data. It's how the court ruled on things like IP addresses. Therefore, “about” has been sufficient, jurisprudentially and from a guidance perspective, to get to all of the things that California has tried to do with a much longer list.
Of course, the problem of going to a much longer list is twofold. First, you're shifting from “about” to something else. The courts have tended to have a rational kind of approach to say, “You did that on purpose,” so clearly.... What is it that's different between “about” and this new list that suggests you weren't happy about “about”? Second, the worry then, of course, is whether—because it's now a much longer list—it is exhaustive. Is it now seen as potentially overly narrowing, whereas that was all being done by “about” and got to good places, both through the OPC and the courts?
This is always the concern with potentially inserting something that adds more words: it potentially doesn't actually do more work than “about” already does in the current definition.