Thank you very much, Mr. Goguen. Thank you for your work and your interest in this.
I would suggest that given the insidious nature of some of the online activity that we're talking about here, as in all things in the criminal law it requires balance. Bill C-13, I would suggest, very much seeks to strike that balance, and you will have to a chance able to hear from others on this as well. It creates a new data preservation scheme. The tools are intended to allow police to safeguard and preserve necessary evidence. Mr. Wilks, as a police officer, can certainly speak to the importance of the police ability to do just that.
This is about the preservation of a virtual crime scene that we're talking about. It also seeks to prevent deliberate or accidental interference in the administration of justice by having that critical data, that critical evidence, disappear. While this bill doesn't create additional obligations for telecommunications companies, it does very much put in place a practice in which police can preserve that important information, that data and evidence. It does not require them to retain data or develop new infrastructure, but it requires that do-not-delete orders to be respected, which I would suggest is critical, to answer your question.
Another feature of this bill in seeking balance around privacy and investigation is that once the demand or order requiring the preservation of that evidence has expired, that is, the order not to delete certain computer evidence, the Internet service provider is free, of course, to act however they choose, whether they normally preserve all the data or choose to delete it, as you would expect in the physical world. Once an investigation has been completed or a warrant has expired, there is no further legal obligation.
So it is in keeping with existing police and court practices around warrants and around seizures, while at the same time responding to the very real technical aspect of how data is preserved, relayed, and treated in the Internet and the electronic world.