Our starting point as commissioners—me and my provincial and territorial colleagues—is that the law should ultimately define “allowable” and “prohibited” circumstances for the use of FRT, facial recognition. That's because we are of the view that there are compelling circumstances in which that technology should be usable by police forces. I would not be in favour of a complete ban of the technology, because it does allow use in compelling circumstances.
In my reference to the RCMP, I was suggesting that short of the legislation we truly hope will be adopted in the not too distant future, if the RCMP were to undertake to use that technology only according to a policy—and the RCMP representative last week identified certain characteristics of that policy as being “targeted, time-limited”, etc.—that would be a voluntary partial moratorium, if I may use that expression.
With regard to a complete ban on facial recognition until a new law is adopted, I would not be in favour of such a ban.