Information & Ethics committee  It's expensive, and people can't afford to do it.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, that is the one recommendation from the Privacy Commissioner that I'm not quite ready to endorse. I would like to see more evidence that it's really not possible to handle or deal with all the complaints that come before her in an effective and efficient manner. It would seem to me that a requirement to investigate still leaves a lot of leeway, a lot of discretion, to the commissioner in how she goes about that investigation, and you could do some fairly brief investigations in those cases that don't warrant full-scale investigations.

Information & Ethics committee  CIPPIC has not looked at that information, but it has come to me. I can think of a couple of cases in which people have complained about exactly that issue, about providing detailed, sensitive, personal information to Statistics Canada, people who didn't want to. I believe there are a number of people who have filed formal complaints with the Privacy Commissioner about that, but as you say, there is a law requiring them to provide the information.

Information & Ethics committee  There are a few things in there. First of all, on the issue of the police versus the Privacy Commissioner, those are completely different kinds of powers we're talking about. When we're talking about the police, we're talking about investigatory powers. The Privacy Commissioner, under the Privacy Act, already has pretty extensive investigatory powers, and I don't think those are at issue in this context.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm saying that it would be in addition to going to them, so you could go to the courts after. You go to the Privacy Commissioner first, and instead of just getting a recommendation--

Information & Ethics committee  I have not done that, and I'm not aware of anyone in CIPPIC having made an access to information request for personal information about me or them as individuals. We have made other requests, but not for that kind of information.

Information & Ethics committee  Of course, my small clinic has not done, and doesn't have the resources to do, any kind of audit of government agencies. That's a job for the Auditor General and the Privacy Commissioner. We have reviewed the news reports and Privacy Commissioner reports to try to get a sense of how many breaches there have been.

Information & Ethics committee  No, I'm not aware of the extent--

Information & Ethics committee  --of that, but I think it is an example of why it's so important that we limit data matching among government institutions and that we don't allow for these monster databases that combine all of this information so that a civil servant in one department is able to access information he or she doesn't need.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, absolutely. And I note that the Privacy Commissioner did an audit, or reviewed the RCMP's exempt databases, and I think she found that more than half of the information in those so-called exempt databases should not have been in there, should not have been exempt from access to information requests.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not proposing that we get rid of all of these information-sharing arrangements. I believe this is an issue that Mr. Justice O'Connor really thoroughly reviewed in the Arar inquiry. I would just refer you to that report. I'm not suggesting that we don't share information. First and foremost, I'm suggesting that the Privacy Act right now is inadequate in terms of holding the government to an appropriate level of transparency regarding such agreements.

Information & Ethics committee  We need to be very careful before expanding police powers. We have over the years, and child pornography is just the latest thing the police are going after. But the police have the same kind of technology available to them as the criminals do, and they are using it and successfully prosecuting right now.

Information & Ethics committee  As I said, I'm not convinced. This is a live issue that we've looked at a bit at the clinic. I'm not convinced that the police need greater powers to do that job, if that's what you're suggesting. The current legislation allows Internet service providers to hand over information about you, me, and anyone to the police upon request without a warrant.

Information & Ethics committee  Right. This is not a Privacy Act issue. As I say, I think that's about as far as we should go in assisting the police in their investigations in this area.

Information & Ethics committee  A number of Canadians, innocent, ordinary Canadians, have come to me and told me--I've read about many more in the news--that they have been denied the ability to board a plane, that they have encountered pretty extreme harassment and inconvenience in their efforts to move across the border in particular.