Thanks for the question. I think it's a great question.
The one thing that strikes me in examples like this, and the one you're giving too, is that as I said before, there is much broader popular support for information sharing within agencies that have a national security mandate. Where I think the trust issue becomes much more problematic is when you say, “Oh, this isn't about an intelligence-gathering agency or an enforcement agency possessing information and then sharing it with some agency that they think is more appropriate. This is about any government department sharing with these recipient institutions.”
The sheer breadth of the information sharing contemplated here is part of the problem with the basic justification for this. The specific targeted improvements on how information is shared come out of the Arar commission and the Air India inquiry, and there's, I think, great support. It's always a case of the devil's in the details, right? I think specific information sharing within agencies with national security mandates, with appropriate protections and accountability, sounds all right. Broad information sharing that also contemplates bulk access in ways that haven't been disclosed publicly, with potential additional concerns around equality and profiling and association and expression, is part of the problem here.
Justifying this act based on examples around narrow information sharing is part of the issue. I think people accept the narrow information sharing. It's the breadth of what's contemplated here that's the problem.