There's probably nothing more important that could be done to protect the privacy of Canadians than to destroy more personal information. I mentioned to you earlier that I've worked for organizations that have been in existence for 25 or 30 years or even longer. They've never destroyed anything, partly sometimes because they don't have a records management schedule. They have 85,000 boxes in storage at the expense of the taxpayers. It's just crazy.
Hospitals do quite a good job. If you haven't been there for nine years, they destroy your health record. If you were born there and you keep going back every year, you'll have a cradle-to-grave health record. That's perfectly acceptable.
So you want an economic argument. Let's get rid of these huge warehouses of records that are of no possible use. No one could ever use them again. If they're of historical significance, the archivists know how to clean out the stuff that's of historical significance, like your memoirs or your letters, whatever it is. So data destruction is incredibly important.
The French in France have a wonderful concept in their privacy law called droit à l'oubli , the right to be forgotten. It's a very important concept. We need to import that into Canadian privacy practice, not so much into law. Get rid of records. If you don't need them, burn them.