The first comment I would make with respect to the decision of Justice Noël is that the underlying problem—which we see across the board in our national security agencies—is a lack of transparency. What would be very helpful to a discussion about national security issues is transparency of the law as it is being applied within the agencies.
What we have right now is a body of what we would refer to as “secret law” that is being applied within the agencies in terms of how the law is being operationalized. What we have in Justice Noël's decision is an interpretation of metadata and associated data that was being applied by CSIS for many years but that nobody knew was happening. Nobody knew that's how they were interpreting the law. Justice Noël took the view that this was not an accurate or an appropriate way to interpret the law. These mechanisms and the way that the law is being applied ought to be made transparent so that these discussions can happen in a more open way.
With respect to the issue of metadata specifically, again we're in a bit of a difficult situation, because we have a limited understanding of exactly what is being done, how that metadata is being used, and why. That's understandable to a certain extent, but there is also very good reason for us to have a better understanding of the overall legal infrastructure as it is perceived and being applied by these agencies and how these things play out.
Our position would be along the lines of the Supreme Court decision in Spencer, that there is a privacy interest in metadata or a reasonable expectation of privacy in metadata, and those interests ought to be protected and ought to be given significant weight in decisions on balancing how that metadata is used and collected.