I thank the member for the question.
There are already privacy protection measures in the Privacy Act, and other protections were adopted through amendments during the study of this bill. So there are already protections in place.
There are three drafting issues with this amendment.
First, I think there's some confusion between the words “person” and “individual”. In the legal framework, “person” has a broader meaning than “individual” because a person can be incorporated as a business.
Second, there's a discussion on the impacts of the Telecommunications Act. The scope of the act is broader than that of the Department of Industry or its minister. More specifically, there are implications for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC.
Third, we hold consultations where participants share information voluntarily and on a daily basis. In that context, it would cause a conflict. An individual could share some information during a public consultation where there are a certain number of participants, for example. However, based on the current wording, this information couldn't be communicated or published, even during a public consultation or in other situations where someone provides information.
If it's very important to find a solution, we can avoid the problem by replacing “person” by “individual”.
That's the person who provided information on their own initiative to the minister.
In the legal framework, the term “minister” refers to “the minister and the Department of Industry”.
At the end of the day, we should add a request for confidentiality and specify who requested confidentiality, because if the individual in question doesn't want confidentiality, because it's in the context of a public proceeding, there's no problem. In that case, the amendment would create a conflict within the act.