Thank you.
As I mentioned, the foundation has personal information on between 500,000 and 600,000 students. That information can, depending on the program in which we're supporting the students, contain information about their financial need, their family income, their marks, the programs they're studying—it's almost a complete file on each student.
Some of the data we receive is transferred to us from the provinces. It is collected by the provinces for use in the administration of their own student financial aid programs and the Canada student loans program. There is, on the application form for Canada student loans and provincial student aid, a line that authorizes the province to transfer that data to us. The data belongs to the province, and we must use it in compliance with provincial privacy legislation. So we become subject to the 13 different laws of the provinces and territories.
We also collect information directly in a much smaller program—the merit program—directly from students. In that case, the information is governed by the privacy legislation of the province of Quebec, because that's where we're located.
In all cases, great care is taken to protect this information, given its sensitivity. That is one of the reasons why the foundation has never thought it correct to reveal the names of the people who win its bursaries, because revealing the names of the people who receive foundation bursaries would be the equivalent of publishing the list of the people who had the highest need in Canada, something we did not consider appropriate. It has been a matter of discussion between foundation officials and members of the House of Commons at different points.