Public Safety committee  There are some absolutely very capable people in the public service of Canada. There's no—

Public Safety committee  —doubt in my mind. However, they come from a long experience with different masters in a number of different political environments. I think that maybe, in one way, they could be suffering—whether they're Agriculture, Fisheries, or Public Safety—from being perhaps a little too

Public Safety committee  Absolutely, and it just requires judicial authorization. That's what it takes. Before the Spencer decision, there was a patchwork system. A number of Internet service providers decided that if the police said it was an investigation into a child exploitation offence, then the Int

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much to this honourable committee for inviting me to provide my thoughts on this very broad consultation that the committee is undertaking, one that has obviously been influenced and affected by the green paper issued by the Dep

Information & Ethics committee  It's difficult to come up with a one-size-fits-all, but I do like the necessity approach. It has to be reasonably necessary for a legitimate operating program of the government institution to collect it in the first instance, and obviously that's the purpose that informs the use

Information & Ethics committee  There may be another way of thinking about it, because when you have one institution disclosing and you have another institution collecting, you might frame it so that for the institution that's obtaining it, it needs to be necessary for their legitimate operating program. There

Information & Ethics committee  I would, in terms of it. I think it's difficult. I don't envy the legislative drafters' task of trying to articulate that. Courts have consistently talked about proportionality, and it's far more nuanced than what lends itself to black-letter law, but I do think that is in fact w

Information & Ethics committee  Actually, if I can be very brief, I think one of the significant needs for Privacy Act reform is the change in the expectations of individuals with respect to what privacy is, what it's about. I think that change was informed significantly by the influence of PIPEDA. That is the

Information & Ethics committee  That is a very big question, and it raises a number of different aspects that I think are relevant for this study. One thing that I think is very important is the ability of a member of Parliament to help an individual constituent. That's already in the Privacy Act. Maybe it's wo

Information & Ethics committee  I think that's probably too blunt an instrument since every case stands on its own. The courts have developed a meaningful test for what is a vexatious litigant. I don't think you need to recreate anything out of whole cloth. There's something already there. It always does take i

Information & Ethics committee  I'm in general agreement. There is a recognition in most privacy statutes, and even in the public sector, that you collect information for a purpose. It has to be authorized by law or it has to be reasonably connected to an operating program of the public body. That information c

Information & Ethics committee  This is Right to Know week, and in fact there's been a lot of discussion about that particular topic in connection with transparency within government. Part of it is a notion of a duty to document, which I think touches on an important thing that Michael just raised, that governm

Information & Ethics committee  I think it should be possible. I think the commissioner should have the ability, because there are, no doubt, vexatious litigants out there and there are people who abuse the process. You would want to institute it with the appropriate checks and balances and possible judicial re

Information & Ethics committee  It's a very complicated issue. I'm not unsympathetic to people like yourself. I've represented and advised clients. A significant part of my practice is cyber-bullying, helping individuals who've had issues. You are not alone. I've certainly had people across the table from me c

Information & Ethics committee  Excellent. That's a practical strategy for dealing with that issue. The issue is how to fix that in a legal sort of way, consistent with our Charter of Rights and Freedoms that has section 2(b), and our privacy law that has a journalism exception. We don't think the same way as