Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ladies and gentlemen members of the committee, I am pleased to be back to assist the committee in its study of Bill C‑27, Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022, which would enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act, and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act.

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I am pleased to be here today to assist the committee in its study of Bill C‑27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act, which would enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act, and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act.

Information & Ethics committee  It will have a material impact in terms of proactivity, in terms of volume and in terms of time for complaints. We want our complaints responses to be faster. We want them to—

Information & Ethics committee  In terms of the timing, we asked for a temporary budget to help us with that. We've received that, so we're going to use it to improve the timing. However, it remains an issue that I want to address.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not aware.... I have not personally been contacted. My staff, my office, may have been contacted at the official level, but I don't know. Certainly our position would be that a privacy impact assessment should be done at the front end of impactful initiatives. I would welcome them to reach out in this respect.

Information & Ethics committee  I think that we should do more, whether in schools or universities. We should find tools to help young people. My office certainly has a role to play in that regard, as do my provincial counterparts. As I was saying earlier, children are more and more exposed to that world. In many ways they are very comfortable and adept, but I think that they need to be better equipped to handle it.

Information & Ethics committee  We have resources to promote the right to privacy, but this is a different kind of outreach that we would like to do more of. However, we do not have the resources to do as much as I would like.

Information & Ethics committee  Our funding needs would be to have increased budgets. I would say a 50% increase of our current budget would be required to address the chronic underfunding that we have.

Information & Ethics committee  Our current funding is $30 million, so it would be half of that. We have specific requests for potential Bill C-27 responsibilities in terms of additional guidance and additional investigation responsibilities.

Information & Ethics committee  I would say it certainly would be. We are conducting our joint investigations on the basis of the legislation in our jurisdiction and are working with colleagues internationally. This committee has done studies on privacy issues that have been hugely impactful and it has made recommendations on issues.

Information & Ethics committee  I think we're very focused on protecting children and how we use their personal information. Children are exposed more and more, obviously, to the digital world in everything they do, whether it's in school or socializing with their friends. We need to look at it. Our laws need to be updated to reflect this reality.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Green. I agree. I think that a mechanism that would provide more distance from the executive.... I think the challenge is not necessarily the actual decisions that are made but the fact that we are regulating activities of the executive and being mindful of that potential perception.

Information & Ethics committee  The one that you describe highlights ensuring appropriate resources. As I say, I'm not too concerned about parliamentary involvement in this, given our role as agents of Parliament, but I think a mechanism that would guarantee sufficient funding to at least fulfill the mandate that Parliament gives us would be essential.

Information & Ethics committee  No, we do not. We're very grateful for having received temporary funding in this respect in the last budget. That is a positive step, and we will certainly use that.

Information & Ethics committee  The impact really increases the risk on Canadians, if we're talking about breaches. We're seeing this as more and more of an issue for all us in terms of these massive situations when organizations that have lots of information are compromised because of an error or because of a cyber-attack.