Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm sorry. I had an urgent call. I had to leave, so like MP Masse, I apologize if somebody covered this.
My first questions will be for Dr. McPhail.
I want to start by saying that we've had some interesting testimony already, and some pulling of teeth out of the minister to get the amendments he said he would make and then refused to make and then did make as drafts—which I think, in some cases on privacy, are wholly inadequate.
You know, we had Bill C-11, which the Liberal government brought in and which was flawed. They didn't listen to the privacy commissioner of the day and got responses afterwards, when it was tabled, that it was a bad bill. Then the 2021 election came along, so it died. The minister didn't listen to the testimony and brought in a flawed bill again, and let it sit in the House for a year before we debated it. Then, at the last minute, after four years of battling back and forth, he decides that maybe individual privacy matters, so we'll recognize a fundamental right.
Here's my problem with where the government is, and I think Dr. McPhail and Dr. Scassa outlined some of the reasons. If you had watched my earlier questioning.... While the Liberals are going to put the fundamental right in the “Purpose” section, the most important section, they also say the ability of an organization to use that data is basically of parallel importance in the purpose of the bill.
Then, as you've pointed out, there are issues in proposed section 12 around consent and implied consent. Quite frankly, I thought implied consent was gone a long time ago, in the 1990s, like reverse consent. Apparently, implied consent still exists here, so I can just say, “No problem, Brad. I think you would have consented to this, so I'll use it anyway.”
Then, in proposed subsection 15(5), as pointed out in the testimony we had earlier, there's a huge problem.
Proposed section 18, which I've talked a lot about, basically says, “No problem. Big business can use your data, no matter what the consent is, if it's in their interest to use it, even if it causes harm.”
Then there's proposed section 35. I brought up proposed section 35 to the former privacy commissioner last time. It says that if an organization is using your data for research or statistics, it can use the data however it wants—unidentified, directly. It doesn't say, like PIPEDA used to say, that it is for scholarly work. Those words are no longer there. It says that an organization can use it, and “an organization”, as we know, in this bill is a business.
There's a lot to fix in this bill to put the balance back on the individual. The Liberals have put the balance on big, multinational data-mining companies—Facebook, Google and others—to have the rights to do whatever they want with an individual's data. I am wondering, is it simply removing proposed section 18, the legitimate interest, that puts the balance, or do you have to make another statement of a higher level in the “Purpose" section? Do you have to get rid of proposed section 35 and replace it with what already existed in PIPEDA that's being removed here?
Maybe I could ask Dr. McPhail and then Dr. Scassa to comment.