What we lack is both tough penalties, as we've talked about, and order-making power for the commissioner to order someone to comply with rules, as is found even at the provincial level. The prospect of negotiating compliance agreements is certainly better than what we have now. I don't think anybody disputes that. Nonetheless, it's essential that we do better and provide the commissioner with real powers to be in a position to ensure that organizations are more likely to comply. I think it's striking that people often reference the United States and will argue that in the U.S. they have no broad-based privacy law as we do in Canada, and for a long time Canadians have said that we are much further ahead than the U.S., that we at least have this broad-based privacy law. However, the reality is that the Federal Trade Commission, through its order-making power and its power to truly enforce, has been able to exact far tougher penalties and far stronger levels of compliance than the comparable here in Canada because our commissioner simply hasn't been granted those kinds of powers.
On March 10th, 2015. See this statement in context.