Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Bonjour. Good morning, honourable members.
Je vais parler en anglais ce matin.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today about a very serious problem that is directly affecting an increasing number of Canadians and indirectly affecting all of us.
My name is Philippa Lawson. I'm director of CIPPIC, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa. It was my pleasure to testify before you back in December on PIPEDA, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
With me today is Mark Hecht, who is a professor of law and CIPPIC's lead researcher on this identity theft project.
We've submitted a written brief to the clerk, which I understand will be translated and distributed to you.
CIPPIC is part of a multi-institution research project on identity theft that's funded by ORNEC, the Ontario Research Network for Electronic Commerce, a public-private partnership, including four major Canadian banks and four Ontario universities. A number of researchers at these universities have been looking into various issues involving the definition and measurement of ID theft, management approaches, and technical solutions to the problem.
We at CIPPIC and at the University of Ottawa are looking at legal and policy approaches to identity theft, and we've been engaged in a big comparative review of what other jurisdictions are doing in this area and where the Canadian law is at.
We've published a series of working papers on identity theft, on various aspects of the problem, most of which are posted on our website—www.cippic.ca—and a couple more will be published shortly.
As you know, we've published a white paper on security breach notification, and we were very gratified to see your recommendations on that in your recent report on PIPEDA.
We've also posted a web page on identity theft, with frequently asked questions and resources for the public.
Our intention, after further research and analysis this summer and fall, is to issue a white paper, with a broad set of recommendations for law and policy reform. And we intend to do that by the end of the year.
You've pre-empted us with these hearings, so we're making some recommendations now, but we will be making more detailed ones later, including in the criminal law area, which I understand you're not looking into in these hearings.
I understand I have about 10 minutes. Do I have less? Okay, great.