Evidence of meeting #103 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to everybody for joining us today. My first question is for the Competition Bureau.
You indicated some of the duties that you perform. You talked about bid rigging, price-fixing and things like that. You investigate those things.
Would these tools be used in an investigation of that manner?
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
If you're trying to combat price-fixing, bid rigging or those kinds of things, as a law enforcement agency, you would target someone of interest and then you would still need to get the judicial consent to go after and investigate them and then use these tools to do your work.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
In Canada, I think we have a challenge with oligopolies. We have, for example, groceries and telecoms that we look at, and ultimately this small group of large companies pretty much controls the market. For example, with respect to grocers, we even heard in the House of Commons that if a certain person were in charge of grocery prices or something, those prices could come down.
Would that be something you could look at?
12:35 p.m.
Chief Digital Officer, Competition Bureau Canada
I'm going to turn to my colleague, Pierre-Yves.
12:35 p.m.
Pierre-Yves Guay Deputy Commissioner, Cartels Directorate , Competition Bureau Canada
It is certainly an allegation that we can look into. That's for sure.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
A complaint would come forward and so on. What would be the process that you would go through?
12:35 p.m.
Deputy Commissioner, Cartels Directorate , Competition Bureau Canada
Our processes are very similar to what the police could do in terms of an investigation. It could be that one of your constituents could complain to us, for example, and bring us some information. If we have enough information to pursue, we will start using our own tools in terms of investigations—searches, for example—if we have the grounds to do them. Let's say that we seize a cellphone from one of the targets. Then these tools would be used.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Then from the cellphone, what can you extract?
We saw some demonstrations in previous meetings here. You would need to obtain the phone, connect to it and extract everything they have. Is that right? Would you have access to all the apps and everything in there?
12:40 p.m.
Chief Digital Officer, Competition Bureau Canada
We would have access to everything that's in the phone. What we'd be interested in, in the case of bid rigging, is whether that individual has communicated with somebody from the other company to set prices—those types of communications.
As has been mentioned a lot in the study so far, we do have processes where only relevant information makes it to the case files. If you see me as the forensic person, I would only give information to my colleague Pierre-Yves, who is the investigator, that is relevant to his file. He would not get the whole address book unless he had reason to believe.... It would be really restricted to what was outlined in the search warrant.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
The search warrant would have to be very specific, pinpointed, and then only he would have access to it.
How many people in your department have access to all of this? How many investigative people are there?
12:40 p.m.
Chief Digital Officer, Competition Bureau Canada
Initially, when we come back from a search, the number of people who have access to the images of these telephones would be eight to 10, depending on our complement at the time. Right now, there are eight forensic practitioners.
Only the relevant data would then be made available to the case team, and only the case team. Similar to other law enforcement agencies who have testified, this is not made available to all of the cartels directorate. It's made available to the case team investigating that one matter.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Then you would be alerted if somebody else were to come in and look at that information. You have those mechanisms in place.
12:40 p.m.
Chief Digital Officer, Competition Bureau Canada
The computer forensics is what I've heard called an “air gap network”, so it does not connect to any other network, not to the Internet. It is within a secured room, inside a secured room, with restricted physical access.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Bains.
I want to thank our guests for being here today.
There have been some requests to undertake to send some information to the committee. The clerk is going to follow up with you, but I would like that information in the hands of the clerk by five o'clock next Tuesday, if possible. That is a week from today. As I said, the clerk is going to follow up.
I want to thank all of you for being here today. I am going to dismiss you. We have some committee business that we need to discuss.
Thank you so much.
On the committee business, members, I understand there is an interest in taking up an offer from the RCMP to have a technical briefing in their facilities.
Mr. Motz, is that something you would be interested in as a former RCMP officer?
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
There are two options that we have here. We can make a formal request, which means that we have a deadline of the 16th to make that request to the Liaison Committee for approval.
The other option we have is to make an informal visit to the RCMP, which I understand is the desire of the members. I want to make sure that the circumstances of that are clear. Any informal visit to the RCMP to discuss the issue of privacy collection, etc., cannot and will not make it into the report. There's nothing that can come from that and make it into the study. It's just as a matter of interest for the committee.
Ms. Damoff, I see your hand—and Mr. Brock.
Is there anyone else?
Go ahead, Ms. Damoff, on this issue.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I did have a conversation with Bryan Larkin after the last meeting and with Michael Barrett, who is not here right now. However, with the public safety committee—and Glen, I think went—we went to the gun vault in an unofficial capacity, just to learn more about the issue. I think Bryan has offered to educate us more on privacy and cellphones and what they're able and not able to do.
My concern is that, if we go with a formal process, Chair, it takes quite some time, assuming it even gets approved. It could be June before we get approval to go. At that point, we'll have already finished the study and moved on to other issues, so I'm happy to coordinate this with the other four parties.
It's here in Ottawa, so it doesn't require transportation. The RCMP is able to conduct these tours in the two official languages, so we don't get into issues of not having access in French.
That would be our recommendation, Chair. I'm happy to coordinate it with Michael and the others.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Ms. Damoff.
Just for the benefit of the committee, the headquarters is in Orleans, so it's not too far away.
Mr. Brock, your hand was up, and then we'll have Mr. Kurek.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
I wanted clarification of the site, and that's been answered.
I wholeheartedly agree with Ms. Damoff. That's the right approach to take.
