Information & Ethics committee  I'm in agreement with Professor Geist on that. There are opportunities, particularly if somebody is enrolling in a program, that they don't have to, where it is in fact much more of a voluntary relationship. Mostly your relationship with the government is involuntary, but when it's voluntary, we need to be absolutely clear and transparent.

Information & Ethics committee  I think that one of the themes of my writing and thinking on this topic is that the location of the data is one factor, but it's not the overwhelming sine qua non of what the issue is. There are other factors that go into it. The Treasury Board policy related to this topic is in fact a really good and really rational approach to it, which is, if any government department is going to make any decision about the location of data in connection with outsourcing, or anything else like that, location is going to be a factor, but there are other things as well.

Information & Ethics committee  I would echo that. If Parliament puts that in the Privacy Act, it says that this is, in fact, an absolute priority. If it's left in a Treasury Board policy somewhere, it's at the whim of the government and it could be reversed. If you do not do a privacy impact assessment, and you're legally required to under under the act, you've broken the law, which is more than slightly different from just avoiding a policy, skipping a policy, or a procedural step.

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 crying because their dating lives and other parts of their lives have been impacted by what shows up in search engines.

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 in Europe where, in fact, privacy takes precedence over freedom of expression.

Information & Ethics committee  You would not be able, in Canada, to get a court order requiring a newspaper to unpublish something that was true. Our body of case law related to freedom of expression, defamation, and other things like that support that entirely. If you can't tell the newspaper not to publish it, not to make it available anymore, should you be able to tell an uninterested third-party search engine to not tell people that it exists?

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not sure I have a solution. I have the advantage of getting to stand on the sidelines and point out problems. To the extent that I can contribute to solutions, I'm happy to. The problem is always going to be a threshold one, and I think the problem needs to be addressed by the people who are publishing it, rather than intermediaries who are pointing out that it exists.

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 government decisions need to be properly documented and they need to be documented in the proper way and in the proper place, which should be on government-managed information systems.

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 review, because cutting somebody off from redress under the Privacy Act is a pretty significant step given its quasi-constitutional status in Canada.

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 into account the nuances and the circumstances.

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 can be used for that purpose or for a use compatible with that purpose.

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 worth making that a little bit more robust.

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 standard by which people expect their interactions with business to operate.

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 what needs to be taken into account.

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 to which it can be put.