Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
There are two things here. The government always likes to ask why didn't we call the Privacy Commissioner as one of our witnesses. To that I respond, why didn't you call him as one of your witnesses?
The point of the amendment we introduced here was that he's an officer of Parliament, not a witness like anyone else who is called before the committee. We did present that amendment to this committee, and asked for him to be called. The government denied unanimous consent to have him here as a witness. Further, in his letter he says very clearly that “Bill C-51 sets the threshold for sharing Canadians’ personal information far too low, and broadens the scope of information sharing far too much.”
The second quote is: “Bill C-51 is far too permissive with respect to how shared information is handled. It sets no clear limits on how long information is to be kept.”
I could read the whole letter to you, but he does have serious concerns about the impact of Bill C-51, and he made some suggestions and recommendations about how we deal with those in this committee, but these are being systematically ignored by the government.