Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Stoddart. It has been a while, but I find your sessions informative, and I, too, want to add my voice to the congratulations for the work you did on Google.
I want to turn to something that's of particular interest to me. I've written your office and I know you've done a lot of good work on this. It's with respect to finding the delicate balance between national security issues and even, say, a tough-on-crime agenda...balancing obvious security issues with the right to privacy.
I just wanted to ask you if you familiar with the U.S. practice that was implemented post-9/11, fairly shortly after that, whereby the U.S. federal government, in the name of national security, had the ability to intercept communications that might or might not have links to terrorist activity and to retain information on individuals as a result of those intercepts.
The practice has been called the “special access program”. Are you familiar with it? If so, do you know if that has any implications for Canadians?