Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, thank you for being here.
I want to point out a couple of things for the record before we get going.
A lot has been made about our ability to study the bill more thoroughly by doing this before second reading, but at the end of the day, we still only get you for one hour on a 138-page bill. Certainly, I want to express some disappointment about that. At the end of the day, beyond the question of scope of amendments, it doesn't necessarily allow us more space to study quite an extensive bill, as you can see from the size of our binders.
The other thing I want to mention in this notion of unscrambling eggs is that certainly I have no doubt of the ability of the justice department to do what my colleague Randall Garrison did in his Bill C-303, which is on the order paper right now and which repeals in its entirety all of the provisions that were brought in by former Bill C-51. I would argue the notion that it is unfeasible is incorrect, because we have been able to develop such a bill.
Those things being said, I do have questions.
The first one I want to get to is the changes to CSE in part 3 of the bill, in proposed subsection 24(1), in paragraphs (a) and (b) specifically, where we talk about “acquiring, using, analysing, retaining or disclosing publicly available information”. That section specifically mentions “Despite subsections 23(1) and (2)”, which are the subsections that are specifically protecting those actions from being done to Canadians and in Canada. Therefore, my understanding is that it obviously means that, for any of this data being acquired in this way, these actions can be done to Canadians and in Canada.
I just want to understand here, because certainly the argument can be made that it's publicly available information and that's too bad for people who maybe don't manage their social media very well. However, a few things are of concern, specifically language like “disclosing...information”, and who that—