Thank you for the question.
The provision in the bill that the senator is likely referring to is clause 15, which deals with personal information. The fact is that we do collect some personal information. This provision allows us to share that personal information when we feel it is necessary to do so to deal with a health and safety issue. The amendments that were being proposed at the Senate would, in some cases if not all cases, potentially force us to collect even more personal information.
There was this notion that we should be providing notice and notification to anyone prior to disclosing the personal information. In some cases, we don't have enough information to re-identify that individual; in some cases, we would actually have to be collecting more information in order to contact them and say that we're disclosing information.
Perhaps of more importance is the fact that we don't see many situations in which sharing of personal information, such as the name of the victim in an incident or the details of the person's address, is required in order for us to carry out our actions to better protect health and safety.
Let me give you a concrete example. If we were to come across an incident relating to a particular children's product, what we would really want to be sharing with other jurisdictions is not details of personal information. Rather, we would say that we have evidence to suggest that there was an issue with product X involving a child of six months, and that we were concerned, and we would ask if they were hearing of anything else that would align or match with what we were hearing.
We really didn't feel that any changes or amendments were required. As I said, we in fact came to the conclusion that there is a possibility that we would actually have to start acquiring more personal information.
Perhaps I can just end with a note that the privacy commissioner's office did review the bill and did give it a pass, a clean bill of health, and there were no issues at all with respect to the collection or the management of personal information. As well, the assistant privacy commissioner did appear before the Senate committee to share her comments in those regards.
Thank you.