Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Light, for coming here and for the information and the workup that has led to this investigation.
I would just note—I guess this is a request because it's tough sometimes to get to the meat of the matter within the time frame of questions—that you did mention that there are some recommendations on how a government can ensure that rights are respected while investigations take place. I would ask if you could, with your expertise, send to the committee specific recommendations—generally, a recommendation could be a couple of sentences—and if you could distill that to a point where the committee could say, “Okay, here's something that we could recommend to the government.”
I would also just note, for your information, Mr. Light, that I've filed what's called an Order Paper question asking for some more details on this over the extent of the entire government. I know that 13 departments were highlighted. Shared Services Canada indicated that there may be more than 13, so I have asked this question, and I am hopeful that the government will be forthcoming with that information. I think it has 45 days to reply to that, so that's probably in about a month and a half.
You talked about the right to privacy and that it's been acknowledged as a human right in Canada since the 1970s. One thing that I've found very interesting and that has led to a host of concerns is the differentiation that you have of these very powerful forensic tools for use for administrative purposes within the context of a department to look at an employee's device in administrative investigations or something to that effect versus a court order for investigative purposes for someone who is not an employee of the department and didn't sign a terms and conditions contract but rather is the subject of an investigation or a periphery witness to an investigation.
Could I ask you to expand a bit on what the difference is and how one reconciles the difference between the use of these very powerful tools for administrative purposes within, say, a department or agency versus for investigations where they would be used on Canadians, whether with judicial authorization or the various other forms for which we've been told they could be used?