Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to start by reassuring Ms. Ablonczy that our friendship is not endangered by this. I'm one of those people who believes our political differences need to be left at the table and that all of us here are trying to do the best we can for Canadians. I have pointed this out several times when we have strayed into more personal remarks about people's positions.
When the Privacy Commissioner was appointed, the NDP expressed some reservations about Mr. Therrien because of his close connections with the government. The irony here is that his recommendations are being so thoroughly ignored by the government.
One of the things he made very clear in his letter was that a change needs to be made in information sharing. It's again one of those one-word changes that is quite significant. The test for sharing information in Bill C-51 is whether information is relevant to the recipient institution's responsibilities. Mr. Therrien says very clearly that's too low a standard and that information exchanges should take place only if that information is necessary to carry out the recipient institution's responsibility. Again, he sees that as a significant lowering of the standard by which personal information on all Canadians might potentially be shared under Bill C-51.
The simple reason is to substitute the necessary standard for sharing for the relevant standard that's contained in the bill.