I think there needs to be an assumption that amendments to the Privacy Act would be required to allow for this degree of information sharing. That's why, it being outside of government and independent, that link is very key. So unless that link were going to comply with measures to permit the exchange of that sort of data, you would instead say that if we couldn't enact them in the Privacy Act--we obviously wouldn't be in that realm--we would comply with it; we would do what was needed now under the current act. What degree of data will satisfy the act? You end up with more generalized, more redacted forms of information. A decision would need to be made.
We haven't done an analysis of the privacy legislation with respect to the national rapporteur to see if that would give you meaningful enough data to comply with it. That's an analysis that the committee would need to have its researchers or counsel take a look at. You are absolutely right; unless you get data that is going to give you the information you need, you're not going to be able to go anywhere.
You don't need the name of a victim, for example, or their age, to develop policy. Basic things like where they are from, how they were trafficked, how they were apprehended or brought to police or came to police or social service agencies--that's the sort of data that you generally need, and those data can likely be collected in a way that would comply with the law. That would need to be one of the things the committee would work at.
It is an additional complexity, though. If this were in an office within the RCMP, for example, or the Criminal Intelligence Service, then you would be able to do it, because you essentially would not be sharing information outside the department. It's the same department, and they are analyzing their own data, and that's where most of the data is. That's an argument, to actually do this through law enforcement, but obviously also to bring in staff members and researchers in a team that includes the other stakeholders and groups that would have something really valuable to add. We heard that from the rapporteur who was on the conference call today.