Thank you for that question.
As a Manitoban who had the unlucky fate of turning 18 and then immediately moving to the province of Ontario for university, where there was a different understanding of what competency was as it related to the consumption of libations, I feel this point quite deeply.
On a serious note, for the purposes of the act, as we are heightening the treatment of information as it relates to minors to that of “sensitive”—meaning that it requires a duty of care and a much higher standard for its protection and consideration—it is useful to have a clear obligation as it relates to that. There were initial concerns and conceptions about whether or not federal and provincial competence was potentially at issue here. The view is that this is in a zone in which this can be established in a federal statute regarding its application. I think the definition of “minor” will be very helpful in the interpretation and implementation of the law.
There will be considerations as we go through the statute of whether or not, with that capacity threshold, there are some individuals who might fall within the definition of under 18 but are still allowed to exercise their own rights under the law. As we defined earlier in some of the previous amendments under the definitions, that becomes important, because there are some, not all, 16- and 17-year-olds who have the capacities, but 18 is a threshold that's common across a whole host of societal norms.
That would be our response.