Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Shields, for the question.
There would be a few things I would underline with respect to the amendment that has been tabled.
The first thing is to highlight a point that came out in the committee's discussion with respect to the charter and freedom of expression, and to remind the committee that, of course, the CRTC is bound by the charter. Its decisions are already subject and will be subject in the future to review for charter consistency through things like judicial review of its decisions, etc.
Second, perhaps this may not be well known to the committee, but the CRTC is actually already served by independent legal counsel. In other words, its lawyers are not Department of Justice lawyers. In that respect, the CRTC already avails itself of independent legal advice.
The third thing I would note is that the amendment that is on the table would be quite exceptional in the sense that we're not aware of any other regulatory body that is in the practice of publishing its legal opinions. My understanding of the amendment is that the requirement would actually be quite significant in the sense that it would apply to each regulation or order or condition imposed on online undertakings. We expect that those would be quite numerous.
At the end of the day, Mr. Shields, the impact on this would be that any time the CRTC made a regulation or an order it would have to go and get a charter analysis done with respect to that, and then publish that and make it available. Again, from what we have seen, that would be fairly exceptional in the current regulatory landscape.