Information & Ethics committee  Because of the technical nature of spam and spyware and dictionary attacks and e-mail harvesting, which are the areas our office will have to have the mandate to oversee, there's a lot of work to get ready for that: educating our inquiry staff, who are at the front end, as they take the calls from the public; getting our investigative staff up to speed on this legislation.

Information & Ethics committee  We felt that the most important readiness activity was developing public education materials and internal fact sheets and training programs for our front-line staff, because they need to understand this area of the law and these kinds of risks and attacks on computer systems.

Information & Ethics committee  Under the legislation, under ECPA, our office doesn't get any new enforcement powers; it doesn't change the way we're structured or how we approach investigations, but individuals can file complaints with our office about unsolicited commercial e-mail, about the unauthorized use of personal information.

Information & Ethics committee  That's right. It's also relevant to other technology investigations that are under way at this time.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm the assistant privacy commissioner responsible for the private sector side of the office, so I can just answer very briefly that my colleague Chantal Bernier or the commissioner will follow up with a more complete answer. It is also my understanding that the cameras will be removed from the streets of Vancouver.

Information & Ethics committee  That is correct. I think it would have been irresponsible of us, given the complexity of this legislation, not to turn our minds and start preparing the public education materials and training our staff, because it wouldn't be something that we could just do instantly. As I said, it was an important initiative that we ready ourselves to speak to Canadians and to speak to businesses about this important legislation.

Information & Ethics committee  I could tell you that the $100,000 has mostly been spent in our communications branch and our research and education budget, which is where our technical analysts reside.

Information & Ethics committee  We've diverted some internal resources from other projects, some of our policy work, in order to prepare the materials and to prepare our inquiry staff for the kinds of questions that we expect to receive from the public.

Information & Ethics committee  We feel that we've already spent $100,000 in this fiscal year in preparing for the Electronic Commerce Protection Act. It's been spent in diverting some internal resources away from other projects to prepare public education materials to turn our minds to the kinds of technical investigations that we might be doing, etc.

Information & Ethics committee  We think that spam is a very serious issue. It's much more than a nuisance. Many of you are probably familiar with the kind of spam that lands in your inbox. What spam does is it actually undermines confidence in electronic commerce. On the really insidious side of spam, it's a method of delivery of spyware, which can actually compromise computer systems and of course personal information.

Information & Ethics committee  I know this government has been looking at spam since as long ago I believe as three or four years, when the anti-spam task force worked on some pretty significant reports. As I say, I think there's some concern about Canada's becoming a haven for spam. We are behind, and our commissioner is very supportive of this legislation.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't have that information. I can certainly go back and provide it to the committee.

Information & Ethics committee  I can tell you that a target for spam and malware are the log-in details for someone's financial account.

Information & Ethics committee  Merci. Good morning, Chair, and members of the committee. Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's very nice to be here again and see some familiar faces. As you've just said, I am accompanied by Tom Pulcine, our director general, corporate services, as well as Steven Johnston, our senior security and technology advisor.

Information & Ethics committee  We do have jurisdiction. Whether we can enforce Canadian law at the end of the day is a different question. We haven't gone there because Facebook complied with our recommendations. This is a global problem that everybody is working with. So on your comment about working together with other data protection commissioners, there's a global dialogue going on right now, because the reality is that personal data is stored all over the world.