Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This amendment is intended to change the current wording about sharing information. So our proposal is to replace “the disclosure will contribute to the exercise” with “the disclosure is necessary to the exercise”.
This is on the recommendation of several witnesses who appeared before us—the Privacy Commissioner, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, and Professor Roach, who, with the committee's indulgence, I will quote:
...the breadth of security information disclosure and sharing under Bill C-59 remains almost as large as it is in Bill C-51. This will provide challenges both for the Privacy Commissioner and the new review agency asked to keep an eye on this system.
As the Privacy Commissioner suggested, the use of the word “necessary” limits the sharing of information to the form that is the most essential for the exercise of the functions that the various organizations have.