Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, honourable member. I'm a bit amazed at that statement. It sounds like if we got more power, we would be slinging mud balls at each other. I don't know what hell would break loose if we had enforcement powers. I had the honour to be the president of a tribunal, one of the ones I mentioned in my speech, that enforced privacy legislation in Quebec, both in the private sector and the public sector.

Information & Ethics committee  That's another comment that just dumbfounded me. The reality of what we call multifunctional administrative organizations is a concept that is very well known in Canadian law—and, I believe, in British law and arguably in Australian law, to take laws that resemble our public law the most.

Information & Ethics committee  I think it would be preferable for the committee to look at different models. There are various options available, and we have to take into account administrative penalties, fines and the possibility of asking the Federal Court for statutory damages. In the interest of administrative stability, the least cumbersome model—and therefore the preferable one—is the status quo.

Information & Ethics committee  I will have to ask Ms. Bucknell to answer.

Information & Ethics committee  She has spent days, even months, working on this issue. I think that depends on the kinds of matters or contexts where consent is required. This applies in some cases, but not in others. Ms. Bucknell surely has something to say about that.

Information & Ethics committee  I think that companies should let their members, or their clientele, know that the conditions have changed, since the consent the consumer gave when subscribing did not apply to the new conditions. The company should at least indicate that the rules of the game have changed, so that the consumer can have the option to keep or cancel their subscription.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for the question. I officially met with the Deputy Minister of Industry Canada this past spring. I told him that things had changed a great deal since Bill C-12 was introduced in the House—over two years ago, I think. We discussed that, at the time. I said that other countries had implemented legislation and that, in its current form, Bill C-12 was not an adequate solution to the constant and growing threat of data leakage and data-related breaches of confidence.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, thank you very much for your invitation to appear again at the very end of your study, which we have been following with interest. I'm joined today by Chantal Bernier, assistant commissioner, who directs our day-to-day operations, and Barb Bucknell, strategic policy analyst, who is a specialist in social media.

Finance committee  They do not specifically violate the law because the Privacy Act protects public sector employees. The bill would apply to organizations. No specific law applies to unionized workers at the federal level. There are provincial laws. However, it is clear to me that if there is no privacy amendment, substantive issues could be raised.

Finance committee  I think it's clear that Canadians value privacy very much. Our own polling tells us this. Our jurisprudence tells us this. In Canada, we balance privacy against other values. In the United States, the dominant value is liberty, liberty in one of its variations, such as freedom of expression.

Finance committee  I'm speaking to the honourable member about a culture that is very different along this path—

Finance committee  I think I'd have to think about it. The salary disclosure levels are based on context, from what I can see.

Finance committee  Well, I look at how proportional it is, and $5,000 seems to me, although I'm not an expert in the world of—

Finance committee  Honourable member, I can't speak about alleged wrongdoings. I can only speak about privacy. If you look at a comparative scale, apart from the United States—and even in the United States the threshold is $10,000—in terms of personal information, it might make sense to break out salary, disbursements, and different kinds of benefits, but if everybody whose salary is over $5,000 gets it published—and that means everybody—that seems to me excessive, with great respect, to attain the objective of transparency.

Finance committee  Both have advantages, I would say. Certainly aggregate reporting focuses in less on the individual, but as I've said and as another honourable member has mentioned, for certain people in positions of leadership who are recipients of more money or have expense accounts and so on, it has been thought that there could be a threshold that would cover just the high earners.