Thank you for the opportunity to respond to that. Perhaps I'll try to provide some clarity of our view on that.
Our view is that whenever information is of the type that attracts section 8 of the charter protection, the right to privacy protection, or the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, the Supreme Court of Canada has clearly stated that the police require a warrant; they require prior judicial authorization. It gives guidance in Hunter v. Southam; it gives guidance on what type of information it is.
What we are talking about here is access to information that does not attract that threshold, so the threshold is built in. We don't require a warrant for information on customers' names and addresses. That threshold is not there. The courts have said we don't need a warrant to get that information.
This is not a case of people's bank records, how much money they earn, or what their sexual preferences are. We absolutely require warrants for those things and will continue to require them. Otherwise the information is not admissible in court, in any event. So we're under the supervision of the court, and those protections are built in. It's clearly not our position that in this bill or any other bill we should be given the authority to access information of that nature without a warrant. We don't believe that. It's just not the way the law is in Canada, and we accept that.
What we're talking about in this case, for example, is our ability to go to a bank or an ISP and ask whether so-and-so is a customer, and whether he has an account there, yes or no. Then we carry out the investigation. That's the type of information we're seeking to have released to us.
As to my friend's discussion about a positive obligation to disclose things with respect to child pornography, we haven't put our minds to that, but it's certainly an area that this committee may wish to consider--a positive obligation on ISPs--but that would be a private duty.
