Thank you, Madam Chair.
I haven't got a copy of the Privacy Act in front of me, but I've dealt with the Privacy Act and the Access to Information Act for a number of years. The Privacy Act has certain provisions, of which section 8 concerns disclosure without the consent of the individual. The premise is that you have to have the consent of the individual, save and except certain examples that are set out in section 8 of the Privacy Act. One of them, and it's subject to a new act of Parliament, is that you have the authority. And what this bill is attempting to do is to provide the authority to provide without consent. However, that does not usurp the other provisions in the act that govern the protections afforded to the individual in the disclosure of personal information.
For example, there is still the provision that if there is to be disclosure subject to a subpoena, there is disclosure in the public interest. Those continue to apply. But as my colleague Diane Labelle has noted, the Supreme Court of Canada has noted that the Privacy Act has a quasi-constitutional status: the Supreme Court of Canada decision of Dagg.