Mr. Speaker, in response to the question from my hon. friend from Kootenay—Columbia, perhaps my hon. colleague from the official opposition would find it helpful to refer to the opinion of Michael Geist, who is an expert in this area of law, cited with approval by the minister in Debates just before we broke. He has said that the Supreme Court of Canada decision on Spencer is directly on point and that the Supreme Court rejected the view advanced by government ministers. The government argued in committee that:
In the instance of PIPEDA, because of the type of information provided in a pre-warrant phase, such as basic subscriber information, it would be consistent with privacy expectations and therefore it's not really putting telecoms, for example, in some unique position in terms of police investigations.
Professor Geist went on to say that the Supreme Court of Canada rejected this view in terms of Spencer, concluding that “there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in the subscriber information”. Therefore, there is a very clear link between the reasoning of the Spencer decision and the bill before us, Bill S-4.