Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I thank Mr. Ramsay for the motion, although I think our motion is far superior.
Somebody is going to have to explain some logic to me here. Maybe I missed the boat. When I first raised the issue about officials, I did that in what I believe was good faith. It came about through a private conversation where I said that there are some issues here.
We heard from officials for one hour on this bill. When we heard from officials in the one hour, we had very few answers to the technical aspects of the bill. I will reiterate: What we have heard so far on this bill doesn't relate to the technical aspects. It relates to the philosophical aspects. Ninety per cent of what we've heard relates to the philosophical aspects. Even when we hear from police officials, they say that they really need this because it will help them track down people who do bad things. Well, okay, but we haven't really gotten into the mechanics of it, if we're being honest. We haven't gotten into the mechanics of it as far as how that happens.
I challenged Professor Geist on this. I don't know if anybody remembers. He was here and I asked him about metadata. I asked him what he thought. He said that a year is far too long. He said, “30 days”. I asked him what he'd say to the fact that there might not even be an investigator after 30 days. Mr. Van Laer talked about that. Sometimes you have to get a production order. Sometimes you don't know these things. He said that whatever you do, it has to be evidence-based. That was his response.
Can we say that so far we have figured out what that number should be? We've heard about stuff that's happening elsewhere in the world—in Sweden, it's apparently 10 months, and in Australia, it's apparently two years—and things like that. That is the very reason I think the officials are so vital. We have not gotten into the technical aspects of this, so when we are talking about this, I still think we need to hear from officials a whole lot more.
I'm just going to look at this motion here. The amendment deadline goes to 5:30 on Monday. Yes, we hear from witnesses on Thursday the 28th, but we run into the exact same problem: We have amendments due on Monday, we have officials on Tuesday and then we go to clause-by-clause on Thursday. Why are we hearing from officials after amendments are due?
I'm saying this rhetorically. I'm not expecting an answer. I think I would get no answer anyway.
Mr. Powlowski looks like he's chomping at the bit to give me an answer. He's just mastered this bill in the last 45 minutes or something like that.
I don't mean to make light of this. I take him at his word when he says, “We don't really get this.”
Okay, Ms. Acan really gets the bill.