Thank you for the opportunity.
Well, I could touch on a couple of components that will talk about what Bill C-13 will do in modernizing investigative tools.
First of all, in my opening remarks I spoke about preservation. Today we are completely reliant upon the voluntary cooperation of entities when it comes to the preservation of data. To allow time for the police to actually develop the production order or a tracking order of some sort to acquire evidence and pursue an investigation further, as proposed in BillC-13, the police would be able to make a preservation demand of service providers, which would allow us time then to pursue an investigation. And particularly when one speaks of international partners as well.... If it's a domestic investigation, we would have 21 days to prepare a production order. Often we are cooperating in this borderless world of the Internet. It allows 90 days for us and the Department of Justice to work with the International Assistance Group and their international partners to obtain a production order in that process.
The preservation order is another tool that can be used to to preserve the data so that we could then turn to the other means that are available in this bill and in the Criminal Code to obtain more evidence.
With respect to some of the other provisions, they modernize the investigative tools available, and in certain cases they recognize the importance of privacy. Take, for instance, a tracking device. Today, police, under section 492.1, can secure a tracking device in order to monitor location and movements of a thing, which would assist in real-time surveillance, and corroborate other information that we may have during an investigation. It's recognizing the importance of privacy. In the current regime that would include installation of some sort of tool on a mobile device to track an individual, and the threshold there is “reasonable grounds to suspect”. Under the modernized bill that actually increases the threshold for police to “reasonable grounds to believe”. So when it comes to a device that is normally carried or worn by an individual, let's say a cellphone, the threshold for tracking under Bill C-13 has actually increased the threshold.