More than ever, people are storing their important personal information and other digital property online within the servers of large American companies such as Google, Facebook, and Apple. These “digital assets” can be anything from precious family photos and records to sensitive financial and legal information.

What Canadians don’t realize is that outdated laws govern who can access those assets after the owner dies or loses capacity. Even with all the necessary documents proving a person’s legal right to another’s digital assets, accessing the information can still require a long and expensive court process.

In this report, the Alberta Law Reform Institute recommends enacting new legislation to confirm that the existing powers of fiduciaries in Alberta
extend to digital assets. Specifically, ALRI recommends that the Uniform Law Conference of Canada’s Uniform Access to Digital Assets by Fiduciaries
Act be implemented in Alberta, with some minor amendments to make the legislation more responsive to the provincial context.