Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member a bit about the overreaching to which he referred.
Prior to Bill C-13's coming into effect, the evidentiary standard for obtaining a warrant for electronic records in many cases was “reasonable and probable grounds to believe” the commission of an offence. That evidentiary standard is being lowered from “reasonable and probable grounds to believe” to “reasonable suspicion”. In order to be able to use the access to information laws to get records from a minister's office, the standard is “reasonable and probable grounds” to believe that the records are within the control of the office.
My question for the member is this: does he believe that ordinary Canadians who have electronic records in the possession of third parties should have those records more easily accessed than those that are in ministers' offices?