Mr. Speaker, we do not want a company, for example, Bell, a service provider, to have to keep a high volume of documents or information on its hard drives or elsewhere. According to clause 4:
If a person who provides an Internet service...has reasonable grounds to believe...the person must notify an officer...as soon as feasible—
Clause 5 states:
A person who makes a notification under section 4 must preserve all computer data...for 21 days—
It goes without saying that if the government is talking about a 21 day period, it must be expecting an increase in demands for investigation and analysis. That is why I am repeating that before we implement this bill, we must do everything we can to ensure we are able to meet that 21 day deadline.
I can assure my colleague that that is one of the questions I will ask when the minister appears before us. I would like to know where the 21 days came from, and what it actually means. If it is in the bill, that means that it becomes a prerogative. It cannot be ignored. It will allow companies to destroy these documents, as described in subclause 5(2).
After reading the bill, we feel that the reason for the famous 21 day period is to avoid overtaxing computer networks.