Thank you.
I think the difficulty with the case-by-case approach proposed by the commissioner is that it really doesn't give any legislative policy direction, as determined by Parliament, to the commissioner to interpret any individual case. In that situation, policy would effectively be left up to the commissioner, as opposed to the commissioner being required to apply the policy that government and Parliament had determined. I think it's particularly important in this case, when we're talking about the definition of personal information versus work product, because of course that definition determines whether the information is subject to the rules of the act--whether you're in scope or without scope.
As for how that would impact our company particularly, the case-by-case approach doesn't provide any long-term certainty for anybody. As we've mentioned, a complaint tomorrow could be decided differently. The Federal Court could ultimately decide differently as well.
On our data that's used for long-term research projects, you want to look at trends over time precisely because they're long-term projects. Again those projects require certainty that you're going to be able to continue collecting data from your population at issue.
The commissioner appeared to indicate she has accepted that there's a qualitative distinction between personal information and work product, so it's kind of difficult to understand why that policy direction should not be clearly provided in the legislation itself, as it has in the B.C. legislation, for example.