Okay.
Now, here's our problem. All along you have claimed that the Privacy Act is paramount to you. You're acting in that regard, ignoring our requests. I mean, you've decided that this supercedes anything we have to ask.
As soon as that happened, we did what anyone would do: we went and saw our lawyer, who happens to be the parliamentary law clerk, the top lawyer in the whole outfit.
His June 3 letter to us, which I think you may have in front of you, reads, in part, “In my view, the Department need not be concerned about proceedings against it under the Privacy Act.”
Number one, then, the legal advice is that since it's Parliament asking for it, any concerns that you might have about Privacy Act matters affecting this we take responsibility for by virtue of us asking for it.
So the first issue is taking it upon yourselves, as a department, to deny a standing committee of Parliament material that it's asked for.
Secondly, the response to that concern is very clear right here. I'd like to know how it is a departmental lawyer's advice supercedes the authority of this committee and the advice of the parliamentary law clerk.