We base our opposition to this on the fact that the Privacy Commissioner presently does investigations and, although they are sometimes slow, the results are, in our opinion, fair.
We looked at the Competition Tribunal debacle this year with Rogers and Shaw, and the use of that extra step, if you will, by a company that felt like dragging out a process or winning.... We can't see any likelihood that companies using personal information won't take that extra step and go to the tribunal to challenge every commissioner decision. That very likely adds two years to all negative decisions on companies' parts. You could say that presently you can go from the Privacy Commissioner's decision to the Federal Court, but you have to re-prove the case in front of the Federal Court.
It seems like an unnecessary step. When you add that along with our concerns that you can't bring a class action until after all the proceedings are done, including in front of the tribunal, that will discourage class actions. We believe that some private enforcement does change the behaviour of companies when there are egregious privacy violations.
Our concern is that this is just setting up a structure that is an extra step and may well be less favourable to complainants like the Competition Tribunal is to the competition commissioner.