Public Accounts committee  If it's somebody who is first of all charged with being a terrorist abroad that we become aware of because they come to us as a consular client.... It's not the foreign government that comes to us. It's the client who says, “I'm a Canadian. I want to talk to my government. I've j

Public Accounts committee  Right. The new act permits that person's name to be put on the registry. That's a new fact for us. It gives us direction from Parliament, that Parliament wants us to help the RCMP identify those individuals so that they can make a determination about whether they get put on the

Public Accounts committee  Yes, that's right. A foreign government is not under any obligation to inform us if a Canadian has been arrested, in the same way that we don't automatically inform other countries if one of their citizens is arrested here. It's the citizen himself who controls that, who decides

Public Accounts committee  Well, I wouldn't say it's a tension within our department. I think it's a question of a mandate that we have, which is different from a law enforcement agency's. For example, the statistics we gather or the information we gather is just that someone has been arrested and/or detai

Public Accounts committee  There are two ways in which we share information, consistent with the Privacy Act. One is through a request from the RCMP coming to us—it's an investigating agency—seeking specific information from us. That's under paragraph 8(2)(e) of the act. Under paragraph 8(2)(m), we can

Public Accounts committee  There is an interdepartmental working group on child sex offenders, which includes all of those agencies and Foreign Affairs. I can't say it meets on a regular basis. It meets every so often to review collectively what we can do to try to prevent these crimes from occurring, and

Public Accounts committee  For us, there are a couple of key elements that would improve the process. I mentioned partly the completeness of the request. Another element of that is training our consular officials to red flag cases, for example, involving child sex offenders so that they come to the headqua

Public Accounts committee  I think between Foreign Affairs and the RCMP and other agencies that have an investigative authority, we have the mechanisms in place. We can share the information.

Public Accounts committee  The Privacy Act still has to be respected. Remember: the Privacy Act does not mean that you can't share information.

Public Accounts committee  It does mean that you have to go through a very deliberate test to weigh privacy concerns versus public interests. The RCMP, of course, also has the ability to come to us with a request for information. I think we have the mechanisms, but we need to make sure we're using them and

Public Accounts committee  Was that the mutual legal assistance, the delays...? I don't think it was with respect to the consular cases.

Public Accounts committee  I don't think it is miscommunication. We have very different mandates. The mandate of Foreign Affairs with respect to consular services is to assist Canadians when they're in distress abroad, including people who are arrested and detained. That mandate means that we have to pre

Public Accounts committee  Well, you'll be familiar with the O'Connor report from a few years ago that looked at the situation of Maher Arar. That report made a number of recommendations about how consular information should be safeguarded. It also helped us to determine how we could, on an individual basi

Public Accounts committee  If I could just add...because I believe you're also addressing a category of cases of child abduction. This is where a child is abducted by one parent going across the border—Canadian children and Canadian parents. In those situations, there are about 90-odd countries that are me

Public Accounts committee  There are countries that are members of the Hague Convention and ones that are not. If it's not a member of the Hague Convention, then parents do not have an automatic process that they can use and they seek the assistance of Foreign Affairs.