Evidence of meeting #34 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was audit.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:25 p.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
Thank you, but your time is up.
Mr. Andrews now has the floor for seven minutes.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Thank you very much. Welcome back for hour two.
I have one question. I'd like a little conversation around your upcoming workload with regard to the implementation of the perimeter security act.
What's your feeling on how big a piece of work that is going to be for your office? How many resource hours will you have to give to that piece of work? Is that one of the major pieces that you have coming up?
12:25 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, I think it looms fairly large in our work expectations for this year, but because we don't know exactly what's coming out of this and exactly the timetable, because it's an ongoing process of exchanges between the Canadian government and the American government, it's a bit hard to predict exactly. But yes, national security issues are clearly, for all sorts of reasons, becoming even more important in our workload.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Has your office dedicated a lot of resource hours to it? Have you budgeted out what this piece of work is going to entail for the upcoming year?
12:25 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I don't believe we have, but perhaps the assistant commissioner would like to comment. It has taken a certain amount of time in the past.
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
As the commissioner says, obviously analysts have spent a lot of time looking at that. The commissioner was talking about how it's looming large. In particular, she was referring earlier on to privacy impact assessments. The government has committed, as it has to do by Treasury Board guidelines, to submit to us privacy impact assessments on any initiative under the plan of action on a border security perimeter that would have repercussions on privacy. Clearly, that could be a significant source of work for us, and yes, that is part of our analysis as to how we will absorb that. But we will indeed have to address that challenge.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Will that piece of work have any impact on any other government departments that deal with national security and border security? Will you be relying on some other departments to provide you with information? Is there going to be a financial impact on other agencies as you go through this process?
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
The way it works is that the department that is developing a measure has to develop a privacy impact assessment. They would have to do that; that is the workload for them. They submit the privacy impact assessment for our review and we make recommendations on integrating privacy protection to the measure; that is the workload for us. So, yes, clearly there will be workload on every side.
12:30 p.m.
Assistant Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
There are different points. As you know, we are coming to one of the first timelines, which is the production of joint privacy principles by the end of May. Then there are measures throughout the action plan on a longer timeline, and those will eventually have to produce privacy impact assessments.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Are you monitoring the privacy laws and applications on the other side of the border on this particular file as well? Are they doing the same thing? Could you elaborate on any concerns you might have on that aspect?
12:30 p.m.
Assistant Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
We are working with the Americans right now to develop...not we, not our office, but the Government of Canada is working on the development of these joint principles, and we are regularly kept informed by the public servants in the Government of Canada who are working on this. We're given very broad development reports, and we will eventually see the principles and we will comment.
In relation to what is going on south of the border, obviously we read, we follow, we analyze.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
12:30 p.m.
Assistant Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Well, they're a sovereign country, of course, and we keep informed about their work in the sense of a context for ours.
12:30 p.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
Thank you.
Mr. Calkins, you may go ahead. You have seven minutes.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Stoddart, for being here today. I appreciate the opportunity to ask you some questions. I have a number of questions that don't relate to what we're talking about this hour, but from the previous hour as well. I'll probably be jumping around a little.
I wanted to ask you about the cash on the domestic flights that CATSA was reporting to other law enforcement agencies or keeping information on. When I went through the report, I saw it was quite disturbing. It seemed as if over 50% of the information in the incident reports they were keeping was beyond their mandate.
I travel. I fly internationally several times a year and domestically every week, it seems. I have never been asked by any CATSA security screener if I have any cash, if I have anything at all. They sometimes look through the bags. Sometimes they just look through the scanner. Sometimes they'll ask me for permission to look inside the bag. I don't see anybody recording anything. So I'd like to know, when my bag goes through a screening device and it takes a picture or whatever, do they keep that? How is it that they find out that somebody is even carrying a large portion of cash? If my wallet goes through, all they see is my wallet. I can see the screen too.
12:30 p.m.
A voice
It's pretty skinny.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Yes, things are a little tight. But the reality is, I'm quite dumbfounded as to how they would even get that information in the first place, because the question is never asked. It would seem to me that even the collection of information...I don't know how they would possibly do it.
Could you enlighten this committee on how that happens?
12:30 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I think they can see quite a bit. My understanding is that they don't keep the images of the screening or the body scanners. If you look at their screens as your bags go through, that is perhaps how they look at it. You can then be subject to a secondary search if they see something suspicious. You will remember that when you enter and leave Canada, there's a declaration, “Are you carrying more than $10,000?”
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
That's international, and that's fine. I understand it, and there are laws. It's an appropriate question to ask and it's an appropriate thing to check for. But domestically there is no law, and I think this is why the concern came up. I was a little shocked, because I go through there twice a week, 30 weeks a year, flying back and forth to Ottawa, notwithstanding other trips I may take in Canada.
12:30 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
But you're not carrying enough cash.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Whether I'm carrying cash or not, I'm not even asked the question. I would guess if I'm not being asked the question...why would they even be looking for it in the first place?
12:30 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
My understanding is, and perhaps Commissioner Bernier, who worked more closely with the audit than I did.... They are looking at everything; they have to look at everything to understand that you are not carrying on yourself or in your baggage anything that could be a danger to Canadian aviation safety and so on.
In the course of doing that, they discover all kinds of things. It's amazing—some of these come up in the media—what people try to carry onto an airplane. One of the things that came up a lot was large amounts of cash, presumably under $10,000, because over $10,000 you have to declare it. Trying to be helpful, I think, the employees then would report this, but our job is to point out the potential problems with overreporting. If every agency goes a bit beyond its mandate to try to be helpful to something else, then they're not really following the law that Parliament has voted.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
The real issue is...I mean, I can see where a law enforcement agency—