That's interesting. In the time I've spent in Parliament, I have had opportunities—as I'm sure many of my fellow members have—where a constituent comes to us and it's evident that an inappropriate sharing of information between government departments has happened. The constituents in some cases feel as if the government is out to get them. A third party might look at it and say it was just a mistake, but we did talk a little bit earlier about having some teeth in legislation and some accountability.
I'm wondering if you could flesh out any of this, because I believe that there have been several instances where constituents have come through my door about this. There have been several others where I believe it was simply an honest mistake made by workers in the government. But I have reason to believe that there are constituents I represent that seem to have found themselves on...I don't know if there's a list, but let's just say that people from different departments talk to each other, meet over coffee, move around between various departments. If a particularly difficult citizen is causing them grief, I'm sure these things get discussed. I don't know if there are instances where it's provable, simply because one person standing up alone against the government is very difficult.
I think Brian Mulroney said that one of the biggest things we can do as members of Parliament is to make sure that the government hasn't the ability to crush a person if it wants to.
What kinds of safeguards should we be discussing when it comes to the Privacy Act, when it comes to access to information—which I know is beyond the scope of this study—to ensure that individual Canadians have the right to defend themselves against the information that the government can, if it chooses, maliciously use against them?