Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, witnesses.
Mr. Paulson, I find both the tone and the content of your report sobering and even worrisome. On page 4 you essentially serve notice to us. You say you are not an alarmist, but you are the officer responsible for the national security of the country.
You remind us that the terrorist threat to Canada is a real and present danger and that we have been named as a country al-Qaeda intends to attack. In fact, there could be Canadians training abroad at this moment in time, getting ready to follow through with that threat.
We are one of the only countries al-Qaeda has named that has yet to be attacked—it's a sobering reminder for all of us to meet you and to have you explain that to our committee. I don't think there's anybody on this committee who wants to tinker with the Privacy Act in such a way that it's going to actually put Canadians further at risk, or more so than we already are.
I should say that when we open up legislation for review, it's to add to or subtract from, and just because there are ten specific clauses recommended to us for change, we're not limited to that. You can change everything--from the name of it, to the summary, to every clause in it, or chuck the whole kit and caboodle.
I also note, and I think I can say for every member of this committee, when you talk about child sexual exploitation, that if it ever came down to choosing between the rights of privacy of a pedophile pervert or the right of a child to be protected and safe, every member on this committee is going to come down on the side of the child. We wouldn't want to do anything that has the inadvertent consequences of enabling bad people to continue doing what they're doing.
In the few minutes we have, given your cited objections to those clauses, is there anything you would add to or subtract from the rest of the Privacy Act in order to do your job better?