Thank you, and I do agree that we need to get this to a vote.
I think this is a really good debate because it looks at the core of what we're trying to protect here. I believe that when we introduce language other than the simplest language, especially for “anonymize”, we are actually introducing ambiguity in the fact that it is going to be the Privacy Commissioner and the courts that set precedence. As my colleague, Mr. Masse, just mentioned, it's going to be the Privacy Commissioner who's going to give best practices and the courts through precedence that will look at cases and then set those best practices for business.
It's not up to the government to have an evolving list. The GDPR was mentioned. The GDPR, which we consider the gold standard for privacy, does not explicitly define “generally accepted best practices”. They say it aims to provide a broad framework that can adapt to evolving technologies and societal norms. They've removed it, not added it in. Parliament can in no way be as quick as business to protect it but also can in no way be as quick as business to ensure that it gets out of the way.
If we want businesses to protect privacy, it's going to the Privacy Commissioner who has to be the be-all and end-all of what privacy is and how it's debated and how it's adhered to, and again, the courts would have the final say. But adding language in, including there's “no reasonable foreseeability”, because again we're not adding context to that, and adding “accepted best practices” without concrete context to that would be adding ambiguity to anonymization, which we don't want in a bill that is supposed to protect privacy for Canadians.
So for both of those amendments we'll be voting no and hopefully we'll move on to the important parts of this bill.
Thank you.