On the question of who will use this right, and what the European experience is—and I'll get to the question about whether it's appropriate to make people disappear, which I think is a bit of an exaggeration of the right—in the European experience, there is this perception that it will be used by people with a doubtful past who want to erase that doubtful past, whatever that past is.
From the European experience, the figures would show that criminality, or factors such as that, has represented approximately 5% of the requests made. Most requests are made by people for other reasons. The record also shows that search engines grant these requests at the rate of roughly 40%. If these are being granted 40% of the time, there must be some merit to them. They're seen as meritorious.
The figures that we have also show that in France—we are going to look at other countries—70% of the decisions made by the search engines that lead to complaints to my equivalent in France are upheld. I take that to mean that the search engines are doing an okay job.
On the question of whether people should be able to erase their past—particularly sexual misconduct that may or may not have led to a finding by a court—that's obviously a very relevant and timely consideration. It will not be a foregone conclusion what the outcome will be. In many cases I think, properly applied, the request should be denied. Let me explain briefly why. If an alleged aggressor were to make a request, of course the reputation of that person would be a factor to be determined, but there is a question of accuracy then. The person would have to demonstrate that the facts alleged are untrue, and if the evidence was not there, the information would stay.
However, more important is the public interest. What we advocate in the paper is that accuracy needs to be looked at in the context of the public interest. Some of the potential requesters of the right may be public figures. In that case, I think it's pretty clear that the request should be denied, because the public interest would be such that it be denied. Moreover, even for a person who is not a public figure, there is an important public and societal debate in Canada and other countries currently that makes this a question of public interest, and that public interest would have to be weighed against the reputation of the individual.
I'm not saying that this leads to easy solutions, but I think, properly applied, all of these considerations would be borne in mind, and in many cases the request would be denied.