I'll start, and then Kent can jump in.
The Wakeling case involved information shared by the RCMP to American authorities under what's known as part VI of the Criminal Code, which is the wiretapping provision. It was a lawfully gathered wiretap that complied with the charter, and that information was then transmitted to the United States. The Supreme Court concluded that even though the information was lawfully collected, it was still subject to charter privacy protections that had to govern the manner of information sharing.
In that case the RCMP, under part VI of the Criminal Code, was successful in defending the constitutionality of that information sharing, because there was enough architecture in part VI that defined who was going to receive the information and it imposed safeguards on how that information would be transmitted. The court along the way, incidentally, made a point of noting the Arar case as an example of where things can go awry in information sharing.
Now transpose the holding in that case to the context for CSIS under the CSIS Act and for the Communications Security Establishment under the National Defence Act. There is none of the architecture that rendered the Criminal Code constitutional. None of that architecture is found in the CSIS Act or the National Defence Act, and yet those two agencies, CSIS and CSE, are elemental bodies in information sharing for the purposes of supporting Five Eyes activities and others.
I think Professor Roach and I were surprised that the government didn't take the opportunity in either Bill C-51, or before that in Bill C-44, to introduce that architecture to put this vital information sharing on sounder constitutional footing.