One of our concerns, beyond just intergovernmental, inter-Canadian departmental information-sharing, is how that feeds into the Five Eyes network and all the different agencies within it. I think the DEA providing information to the RCMP is a great example of that.
I think one of the big concerns we have is that we don't know, or have any information about, how many information-sharing agreements Canada has. We don't know whom they're with. We don't know what all of them are about. When we give our information to the Canadian government or it's being collected, we don't know where it could end up. Conversely, when we take part in agreements with other countries, we don't know how that information could end up back in Canada.
One of the concerns we have, and one that our community continues to express, is feeling that no matter what the information it is, eventually anyone can get it within the Five Eyes agencies or within any of the related countries' departments. Once it's in one dataset, it's in everyone's. There are a lot of concerns around that when it comes to accurate record-keeping and how that data can be misused. I think Maher Arar is a great example of how that data can be misused to demonstrate some of its more extreme consequences.
It also comes to simple things like no-fly lists. It comes to all kinds of things where simple mistaken identities from a different agency outside the Canadian government can give us a total spiral of how our information is handled domestically, and vice versa. I think that's where outlining who can share what information and with whom, and what those information-sharing agreements are, would go a long way.