Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for appearing here today. Actually you are the first—and I would say it's an important discussion point that has been missed—to bring up the issue over the Patriot Act. That is the act you're referring to.
PIPEDA does not cover Canadian companies or American companies once they leave this country. That's the problem we have. Once that data has actually moved over to the United States, and often it's for billing and other purposes, and it can be done through a third party—a number of different banks and organizations use this as a way of conducting business—what ends up happening is that these companies, even though they're located in Canada, are not even notified by those other companies when the Department of Homeland Security, or the FBI, or some other agency takes that information and provides it to the American government agencies. There's also no process for scrubbing that information post-evaluation of the material.
So you're raising something that is very important, because it does affect Canadians' personal privacy, and there have been several high-level cases about it. That's why some provinces have moved to provide some type of protection for their consumers, but it's actually a trade agreement that has to be done at the end of the day.
Maybe you could talk a little bit about privacy in business in general, about some of the concerns, because you are raising an issue involving the Patriot Act and our own country. Can you talk about some of the privacy issues that are faced by people in protecting our privacy?