It is certainly true that clarifications can always be made to a bill. I will leave it to parliamentarians to propose such amendments.
As we have said on several occasions in different forums—and I believe we have discussed this with you as well—we are really looking to extract and define the metadata that will be useful for investigations, as well as a retention period for that data. That could be up to a year or less, depending on the type of data. You are absolutely right.
If you'd like, we can discuss the need for certain types of metadata. My colleague from the RCMP can explain why retaining metadata for up to a year may be relevant in the context of an investigation. Often, investigations do not develop in such a way that, from day one, a decision is made to obtain all the metadata relating to a person suspected of having committed a crime. This retention period is therefore necessary.
We are really seeking to address the current gap, where some providers do not retain metadata for longer than a week, while other electronic or telecommunications service providers retain it for much longer than a week. There is already data in the system that is retained for longer periods.