Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This amendment seeks to put into law the best practices that exist within the intellectual property companies or the IT companies. We have heard from the Internet Association and from Facebook that transparency reports are part of what they do. We also heard from the minister that as far as he's concerned, this is a contractual matter between the customer and the holder of their records.
This amendment proposes to impose an obligation on the parties that have been afforded an immunity to have some transparency with respect to the extent and frequency with which they take advantage of that immunity and disclose their customers' private information. This is something that is prevalent on a voluntary basis in the industry outside of telecommunications companies that we haven't heard from.
I would urge this upon the government. I would say it would be a step in favour of consumers, in favour of those who are now in a position where they have no idea—because they're not entitled to know—how often their private information is being accessed and produced.
I'll leave it at that. We've heard from plenty of witnesses.
The one final comment I'll make is with respect to the testimony of Parry Aftab, and there may have been other witnesses that talked about it as well. Given that this already exists within companies other than telecommunication companies that are in the social media sphere, there's undoubtedly a real marketing opportunity for telecommunications companies to come out and say, “You should become our customer because we will show your private information more respect than our competitors do.” I would suggest to you that this is very much something that the government should have an interest in, given its prevalence in this space anyway. If they do actually have respect for the private information of customers of telecommunications companies, this is a pretty darned fair quid pro quo for the immunity that they're giving to the telecom industry.
Thank you.