Besides the fundamental shift from the state disclosing information to the defence providing this information, I think there might be some room to clarify in this bill what exactly is meant through that disclosure. What does it mean when we talk about “detailed particulars”? Does that mean, if we're relying on text message communications, just the date and the time and the general subject matter? Does it mean that the specific details of those text messages need to be communicated?
Above and beyond that, I think there needs to be some definition about what we mean when we say a “record” that there's some privacy interest in. Unless you want to leave it to the Supreme Court or to judges to make that law for you, I think it might be good to demarcate exactly what we're talking about. If there are joint insurance documents, if there are joint bills, if there is information that is lawfully held but someone still might have a residual privacy interest in, what exactly is included and what's not included? There's a lack of specificity there that makes it, I think, very dangerous. It's going to lead to litigation. It's going to lead to disparate results from various courts, and it's going to lead to a lot of appeal lawyers making a lot of arguments about what exactly is meant here.