Transport committee  I am of the view that they should be regulated in the same way, in a way that's proportional to the risk that they present.

Transport committee  Currently, yes, it's a problem. I think these constitute the majority of UAVs that are out there, and they are being operated by people who have limited knowledge of how to safely operate them.

Transport committee  The smart thing to do is just to ban recreational use of these vehicles, but the reality is that many of the people who are going to become competent commercial operators are going to start out doing it recreationally. I think it's a valued activity, but it needs to be coupled with the steps that could be taken to prudently mitigate reasonable risk, while recognizing that no activity is ever going to get down to zero risk.

Transport committee  I think we already have the model with the boating cards. It's a program that implements a curriculum approved by Transport Canada. It's in the hands of third parties, and as long as they deliver it up to the standard, then it can be done. I don't agree with the distinction between commercial and non-commercial; it should be entirely based on risk.

Transport committee  Thank you for the question. In my own experience, I generally do landscape photography, so I'm not looking in anybody's backyard. Certainly when it comes to these sorts of questions, I think we have to ask, do we need additional rules? Is it justified? You can currently get very high-resolution satellite images of every single square foot or square metre of Canada.

Transport committee  I think marking will help, but obviously it's going to depend largely on the size of the drone and the size of the marking on it. I don't know whether, for example, Transport Canada or others are working on technology to use triangulation to find the controller. That is, in fact, one of the challenges with UAVs generally.

Transport committee  I think that's an interesting perspective and an interesting question. I think it probably is completely outside the ambit of transportation regulation and moves into broadcast and telecommunications regulation. As far as I know, we currently don't have prohibitions in place that would deal with that, but we certainly do have foreign ownership rules that relate to certain portions of our telecommunications sector.

Transport committee  Certainly that information would be much more accessible in the event of an investigation. I don't think there's any doubt. I don't see significant defects in our existing laws. I also see a problem from a big-picture public policy perspective in regulating activities of one particular technology.

Transport committee  Good morning. Thank you very much for your very kind invitation to appear before this committee on what I think is a very important topic. For some background, I'm a lawyer, a partner with McInnes Cooper here in Halifax. My practice focuses entirely on privacy and technology law, with 15 years of experience in dealing with disruptive new technologies.

Public Safety committee  I think independence is absolutely key. If the chair is beholden to somebody for their position, then that ultimately does compromise the independence, and it may in fact also set up a situation where that posting, and it's just one of those structural concerns, may become a bit of a plum patronage thing.

Public Safety committee  There is a very interesting discussion to be had in terms of how that gets implemented in practice. Is it a mechanism by which a judge is going to decide, on a proportionality analysis, that this disruption activity is actually of sufficient benefit to society as a whole that it justifies overriding an otherwise constitutionally protected right or another kind of lawful right, an interest in property or otherwise?

Public Safety committee  It absolutely would. Certainly one can get a production order under a terrorism offence, and CSIS could also get a warrant under the CSIS act from a designated justice of the court. One final point is that they can require this information without a warrant if there are exigent circumstances or there's imminent risk to somebody's life or property.

Public Safety committee  I'm not sure that anybody is in a position to circumvent that. A Canadian court order is not effective against a U.S. company, and in the United States it simply can't be enforced. Canada has, among the community of nations, negotiated treaties for mutual legal assistance in criminal matters.

Public Safety committee  Certainly there are a number of mixed models and multiple accountability mechanisms in a number of different jurisdictions. Not having done a comprehensive survey across the OECD or across the United Nations, I think we are an outlier by currently having very weak parliamentary oversight.

Public Safety committee  I haven't had the opportunity to study that fully in depth. Certainly I think they've faced a number of the questions, a number of the concerns that we have. Although we come from a common constitutional lineage, I think we have a more robust and better-defined constitutional situation.