Well—
Evidence of meeting #27 for Justice and Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was metadata.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #27 for Justice and Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was metadata.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Brampton West, ON
What you get from transmission data is the type, date, time, origin, destination, or termination of the communication. It does not include the content. What you get from a telephone is the time, the date, the origin, and where it went to.
I'm not seeing the gigantic difference that requires a higher level of proof, because you still have to get judicial authorization even on reasonable grounds to suspect. They have to go before a judge and convince a judge that they suspect a crime was committed before they get transmission data.
12:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of University Teachers
All of the legal experts I know feel that there's a significant difference between reasonable grounds to believe and reasonable grounds to suspect.
12:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of University Teachers
That's first. Second, I tried to give some examples of cases, using you as an illustration, as to the kinds of information that can be compiled under this provision that would reveal a good deal of personal information.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Brampton West, ON
Then, after I sent another email to another doctor, they figured out that I went to see a colon cancer specialist or whatever.
Can you not get that exact same information from the telephone calls that I would have made to those people, that I called two different doctors?
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of University Teachers
It's the combination of who you contacted, when you contacted, and what other Internet activity you had in relation to it, in that time period, that can be assembled; that is what's so revealing. You can't do that just from—
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of University Teachers
At a level of reasonable grounds to suspect....
I mean, look, if indeed the police have reasonable grounds to believe, that's not an impossible standard, so why lower it?
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Brampton West, ON
It's not lowered. Because if you're getting that information from a telephone call—
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of University Teachers
It is. If it's not lowered, then why aren't you prepared to have reasonable grounds to believe as the standard?
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Brampton West, ON
It should be reasonable grounds to believe; so you're saying change subsection 492.2(1).
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of University Teachers
If you're using that as the justification for this, then yes, change that.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Brampton West, ON
The argument I think I keep hearing from people like you is that you're suggesting that the police will go before a judge—because they have to go before a judge, right?—to obtain this court order and convince a judge, on reasonable grounds to suspect that a crime occurred, that somehow they will—
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of University Teachers
Or it will occur.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Brampton West, ON
—or will occur, and will somehow use that to get information on average Canadians. So the police just have the time to run around, go to a judge, having gone through the chain of command to be able to get the authority to go to a judge just to get information on random Canadians. That's the concern.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of University Teachers
I'm not making a comment nor attempting to impugn police. We set our law and we set standards based on what we think is appropriate. We're not attributing motivation. The judge has to live within those standards, and we're saying there should be a fairly high standard before this kind of information can be released.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Okay. Thank for you that. That's your time.
We have about two minutes left. It's the New Democratic Party's turn.
So, Madame Boivin, I'm going to cut you off within two minutes.
12:55 p.m.
NDP
Françoise Boivin NDP Gatineau, QC
Okay, I will try to be quick. That's too bad, since this group of witnesses is extremely interesting. I would have liked to ask each of them some questions.
We talked about notification. I think it's important to remove some of the innuendoes that I kind of heard from the government side. Nobody is asking to have the police or the provider notify the person who is under investigation at that moment.
Am I correct in thinking it's more in the sense of
wiretapping, for instance? Would those be the kinds of cases where a request would be made for reports, for people to be informed within a certain timeframe, following investigations, and so on? Is that what is meant mean by notification?