Information & Ethics Committee on June 5th, 2008

[Ian McCowan]

What I was going to say was for the policy that's our responsibility, we look at other jurisdictions all the time. If somebody's got a good idea somewhere else in the world, we want to take that idea as quickly as we possibly can. I would imagine in a similar vein, the policy owners of this statute are also looking at other jurisdictions, as indeed I'm sure the Privacy Commissioner is.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

But you as correctional officer--

[Ian McCowan]

I personally have not looked into what's available--

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Chair, I think that's something we need to look at too. We should look at the French laws and see....

The reason I say this is I flew with a criminologist, and I'm not.... I think we have more concerns. I think we've opened the can up a little bit. Is this something we're seeing in the courts with organized crime? Are they using this legislation? I guess that's my line of questioning. Is this legislation, this beautiful thing that we have, these rights that we've bestowed on all our citizens...? Are we being played a sucker by criminals, by inmates, by people who are in the courts who need to be charged with crimes?

[Ian McCowan]

What I'd say in response is that the legislation gives certain exemptions that allow, for example, for safety and security considerations to be taken into account. Our job, when we get requests, is to make sure we give those exemptions the proper definition. We work in an organization where public safety is job number one, and it's our responsibility to make sure we properly apply exemptions to the requests, wherever they come from.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I have some material downloaded from correctional services. I'm sure this is part of the problem. It talks about male front-line workers paired with female front-line workers. Regarding privacy, are there privacy requests as a result of searches and strip-downs and that sort of thing? If that were the case, don't we have simple solutions, such as in a female institution to stick female guards in there, and in the male institutions stick in male guards? Are there some corrections we could be making that are as simple as that?

[Ian McCowan]

I'm not aware of any quick fixes.

Ms. Rooke, certainly feel free to add on in terms of adjustments we could make to our operations that would significantly impact on privacy.

As I say, I think the gist of the majority of the ones we get are from offenders who want to know what's on their file because it's relevant to a variety of decisions that are being taken around them. That's the underlying reality.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

You say the majority. Your same web page talks about privileged correspondence and reading correspondence. Are you getting complaints to the Privacy Commissioner about opening mail, for instance?

[Anne Rooke]

I'm not aware of any complaints in that regard.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

What about telephone calls? There's another issue here that talks about telephone calls between inmates and members of the public, saying they may be intercepted.

My first question is whether that is illegal. Can't you do that as correctional officers? Wouldn't it be a matter, as you were saying, Ian, of public safety, to listen in to make sure they're not asking relatives to...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Do the witnesses have any final comments on that last point?

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I'm sorry, may I just ask the question so that he knows what my question is?

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

You're already a minute over, but okay.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Can we do just simple things such as that?

[Ian McCowan]

Ms. Rooke, feel free to join in.

I'm not aware of any quick fixes from a correctional perspective that would significantly reduce the number of privacy requests.

With respect to interception of various types of communication, we have a statutory and regulatory frame that governs what we can and can't do in that regard. But if you're looking for the bulk of the requests, it's about inmates and their trying to get access to their files because they want to be informed with respect to the decisions that are going to be taken about them in a variety of ways. That's the bulk.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Ms. Rooke?

[Anne Rooke]

No, that's fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Mr. Hiebert, please.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Just hold my time for a second.

Before we get started, it's pretty warm in here. Could you ask the clerks or somebody to open the windows? I think we're all getting a little hot under the collar.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Unfortunately, they've already looked into that, and we can't.

Let us move on to Mr. Hiebert, please. We only have another thirteen minutes left in the entire meeting. We're adjourning at 5:30, as was put on our notice of meeting.

[An hon member]

Point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

No.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

You can't refuse a point of order.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Order.

At this point, we're getting around—