Mr. Chair, I'm pretty impressed. As you can see, all parliamentarians across all parties want to understand the issue in order to adopt the best possible bill. The questions are coming from all parties, even the governing party. We want to adopt an important bill, which we know will bring about a cultural shift in Quebec and Canada. We want to make sure we improve it.
I find Mr. Housefather's questions relevant, because we're looking for the right words. We want to make sure we use the right word to reflect the government's intent or that of Public Safety Canada.
Mr. Bilodeau, I'd like to talk about metadata, because all of the witnesses have brought up the risks associated with such long retention periods. We've had discussions about this.
While studying the bill, I had an idea. In the regulatory section, we could say that the data will be kept for up to a year. That doesn't mean that all of the data for every Quebecker and every Canadian would be kept for a year. This may be something you wish to address in the regulatory section. However, not mentioning it and not putting it in writing creates confusion or insecurity and, I'd even say, a lack of trust.
I think that if you don't intend to keep 100% of Canadians' data, this should be stated explicitly in the bill in order to reassure people. As it stands, this is what it says. It doesn't say “up to”, “depending on the category” or “depending on the type of data”. Do you think there's room in the bill for us to clarify this?
Don't ask me to draft an amendment, because I wouldn't be able to do so. I'm asking whether there is somewhere this clarification could be added.