Mr. Chair, I think the government would agree with me that part of the goal in this legislation is to modernize police powers, to modernize their investigative tools, to catch up with where technology has brought us in this day and age. I know I've said a lot of things in this meeting and often do say things they disagree with, but I think we can agree on that.
I hope we can also agree it's a fast-moving train in terms of what is happening in the world around social media and IT generally. It's fast evolving, and legislators and people in the enforcement field are having a hard time keeping up with the advancement in technology.
If we can admit we're in a rapidly changing environment, I would suggest to you it just makes good sense that we come back and examine whether what we've been doing in the course of amending this legislation stands up, whether it still fits three years down the road.
The sole purpose of this amendment is to require us to come back and take a look at what we've done and see if it still works.
This isn't by any means a foreign concept. We did it when we radically changed how we treat veterans. We had a study here in this session about the changes that were made with respect to trials in both languages.
Just last week the Minister of Industry appeared before a Senate committee on the digital privacy bill, something I've argued is intertwined with what we're doing here. This won't be terribly long, but I want to share with you an exchange between Minister Moore and Senator Eggleton on May 28 at the Senate committee that is studying Bill S-4.
Senator Eggleton said to him:
I agree with you; it's an evolving universe. I think in that regard it's also important to have parliamentary oversight. When PIPEDA was first put in place, there was to be a review every five years, and I think there was a review in 2007, but there hasn't been one since then. This is perhaps something that needs to be corrected to make sure that we can keep up with the changes in the universe and that Parliament can keep on top of this issue.
The minister said:
Quite right, and here I am, doing my best. But you're quite right. When we did the Copyright Modernization Act, and I think I may have been before this or another committee with a similar mandate, we wrote into that legislation as well, the copyright legislation, which I know is always a fight because it's often a zero-sum game when dealing with IP law. There are often governments, ours included, who find it a struggle to find the right balance, certainly, in a minority Parliament and the pressures associated with that, to arrive at the right balance. So we put in place in the Copyright Modernization Act a mandatory five-year review of the legislation so that politicians, regardless of their political willingness, are forced to maintain the best possible IP regime.
What I am proposing is entirely consistent with Minister Moore's testimony in front of the Senate committee. It's entirely consistent with other practices when we're forging new ground, especially in an environment that's as rapidly changing as this one.
All the amendment does is it mandates us to come back and take another look at the changes we've made.