Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses.
Building on what my colleague from the Bloc was asking, my understanding was that PIPEDA under section 7 already allowed or permitted organizations to use personal information without knowledge or consent.
The change made when the Public Safety Act amended PIPEDA was that they could not only use existing information that they held in order to share it, but they could collect further information at the behest of CSIS or the RCMP. They could seek out and gather it. They could be deputized, as it were, to go out to get more information, acting as agents for the RCMP.
This is what really concerns me. When you use the word “collect”, you have the right to collect further information. The private sector organizations that would be doing it are not subject to the charter rights, wherein everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure. It doesn't apply to a private organization acting on the request of the RCMP.
The chilling reality, as it strikes me, is that the information collection is without knowledge and consent. The individual might never know the fundamental rights to privacy the Supreme Court has established in its interpretation of the charter could be violated by a private sector organization. You would then have absolutely no right to redress, as you would if it were a public sector institution doing an end run on rights.
I think section 7 as amended by the Public Safety Act gives an end run to charter rights. It gives the RCMP and CSIS a mechanism to take an end run. Do you not agree that this invites a tremendous abuse of individual charter and privacy rights if it's a private sector organization at the request of an enforcement agency for sketchy reasons?
It's not only to stop a pedophile or some of the issues you cited. The reasons cited are for national security, the defence of Canada, which I think we can all agree would be laudable or worthwhile initiatives, or the conduct of international affairs. The conduct of international affairs is so wide and so abstract that it could mean almost anything.
Has this come up in the context of the RCMP? Have you contemplated the impact of the word “collect” rather than the word “use”?