Information & Ethics committee  It's expensive, and people can't afford to do it.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, that is the one recommendation from the Privacy Commissioner that I'm not quite ready to endorse. I would like to see more evidence that it's really not possible to handle or deal with all the complaints that come before her in an effective and efficient manner. It would see

Information & Ethics committee  CIPPIC has not looked at that information, but it has come to me. I can think of a couple of cases in which people have complained about exactly that issue, about providing detailed, sensitive, personal information to Statistics Canada, people who didn't want to. I believe there

Information & Ethics committee  There are a few things in there. First of all, on the issue of the police versus the Privacy Commissioner, those are completely different kinds of powers we're talking about. When we're talking about the police, we're talking about investigatory powers. The Privacy Commissioner,

Information & Ethics committee  I'm saying that it would be in addition to going to them, so you could go to the courts after. You go to the Privacy Commissioner first, and instead of just getting a recommendation--

Information & Ethics committee  Of course, my small clinic has not done, and doesn't have the resources to do, any kind of audit of government agencies. That's a job for the Auditor General and the Privacy Commissioner. We have reviewed the news reports and Privacy Commissioner reports to try to get a sense of

Information & Ethics committee  --of that, but I think it is an example of why it's so important that we limit data matching among government institutions and that we don't allow for these monster databases that combine all of this information so that a civil servant in one department is able to access informat

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, absolutely. And I note that the Privacy Commissioner did an audit, or reviewed the RCMP's exempt databases, and I think she found that more than half of the information in those so-called exempt databases should not have been in there, should not have been exempt from access

Information & Ethics committee  I have not done that, and I'm not aware of anyone in CIPPIC having made an access to information request for personal information about me or them as individuals. We have made other requests, but not for that kind of information.

Information & Ethics committee  No, I'm not aware of the extent--

Information & Ethics committee  As I said, I'm not convinced. This is a live issue that we've looked at a bit at the clinic. I'm not convinced that the police need greater powers to do that job, if that's what you're suggesting. The current legislation allows Internet service providers to hand over information

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not proposing that we get rid of all of these information-sharing arrangements. I believe this is an issue that Mr. Justice O'Connor really thoroughly reviewed in the Arar inquiry. I would just refer you to that report. I'm not suggesting that we don't share information. Fir

Information & Ethics committee  We need to be very careful before expanding police powers. We have over the years, and child pornography is just the latest thing the police are going after. But the police have the same kind of technology available to them as the criminals do, and they are using it and successfu

Information & Ethics committee  Right. This is not a Privacy Act issue. As I say, I think that's about as far as we should go in assisting the police in their investigations in this area.

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely, which is why my first point is that we need transparency here. We need to know what's going on. We have seen examples of where states have gone too far. You don't need to go too far back in history to see pretty extreme examples. I don't think we should be complacen