Regina lawyer Tony Merchant has launched a class action lawsuit on behalf of some Home Depot customers who agreed to receive receipts electronically.

A report found that Home Depot had shared customer data with Meta, the parent company of Facebook. Now, the class action is seeking compensation on behalf of customers.

“Home Depot was gathering people’s information and then they were selling the information so if you bought something, the people to whom they sold the information through Facebook would then be able to focus their advertising on you and in Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador, our legislatures have said you just can’t do that,” Merchant said.

The class action lawsuit is based on the findings of Philippe Dufresne, Canada’s privacy commissioner who last week found that the retail giant had shared customer data with Meta.

“The practice is not consistent with privacy law. It has to stop,” he said.

The commissioner found that information was shared from 2018 to 2022. He believes other organizations may be following similar practises.

“These tool are widely used and this is why the message today is that all organizations should review their practices,” he said.

Home Depot fully cooperated with the privacy commissioner’s investigation, and agreed to implement the recommendations and stopped sharing customer information with Meta last October.