There are many components of fair information, which is part of our privacy. Our privacy can have many dimensions, but in terms of information about us, you go through the sequence of how the information circulates about us. One of the fundamental principles is that an organization collects only the information it needs, not just any information it can hoover up, any information it might find about you that it would keep just in case it could be useful some day. The principle is to collect only the information that is actually needed, because it is actually your private information.
Then we go on to other principles, such as the requirement for the information to be accurate and up to date. You only share it for purposes that are, as our own Privacy Act says, consistent; that is, they're roughly equivalent, or they're compatible with, the reason for which it was initially collected.
All this is to prevent government agencies or the government itself from turning us into a surveillance state that has all kinds of information on individual Canadians that it can't justify.