On the current privacy legislation, we've provided guidance in terms of how to obtain meaningful consent. In that, we talk about some things that should be looked at in the context of children.
My federal, provincial and territorial colleagues and I have recently issued a statement, a resolution, on protecting young persons' privacy. It gives examples of things that should be done and should not be done with the data of children, nudges them not to make a bad decision, and recognizes that they are more vulnerable.
We can interpret the law, to some extent, to protect children, but we need to do more, and this bill has started to do so. There is now a recognition in the initial version of the bill, and I give credit to Minister Champagne on that. This was in the original Bill C-27 as tabled—the recognition that the information of minors would be deemed to be sensitive information. That has impacts in a number of areas, in terms of disposal rights, and so on.
We took that, and in our recommendations, we recommended going even further than that to highlight the best interest of the child in the preamble of the bill, so that if there is doubt, in terms of interpretation, you can look at that. The minister has signalled his agreement with that and has suggested going further to include the special situation of children in proposed section 12 on interpreting appropriate purposes. That is a further improvement that I would certainly support. We see comments like that in the European context with recital 38 to the GDPR, highlighting that children deserve special protection. UNICEF has said that.
We know that our kids are digital citizens. They're spending time online for all aspects of their lives, including school. We certainly saw it more during the pandemic. It's important that the legislation protects them appropriately and protects them as children. We need to protect the best interests of the child. We need children to be able to be children in that world, to be protected, and not to suffer consequences later on, when they're adults, for things they have done online. There are improvements there, and I certainly support them.