Information & Ethics committee  That's correct.

Information & Ethics committee  It clarifies the “may”. What it does is clarify for the companies that they're authorized to allow it, because that's the confusion that exists for them. Even for the companies that do cooperate with us—and many of them do—they're still not very comfortable about the ability to do so.

Information & Ethics committee  We do.

Information & Ethics committee  That section is not problematic. What we're talking about is information that is pre-warrant. We don't have enough to get a warrant, and that's why we use this section. But the “may” is problematic.

Information & Ethics committee  I would just add that certainly our authority's under the Criminal Code. We gather information about individuals under the provincial statutes, under municipal bylaws. It's the nature of the work we do. We gather information about people and determine whether or not an investigation is warranted.

Information & Ethics committee  That has been a great obstacle for us in investigating Internet-facilitated child exploitation. This is the number one issue for us, that interpretation of “lawful authority” and the interpretation of “may”. It is being interpreted by service providers as permissive rather than optional.

Information & Ethics committee  If I may speak to our purpose in appearing before this committee today, PIPEDA has had an impact on our ability to do what we normally do on a daily basis, which is to go out to talk to people and ask them for basic information. The type of information we're talking about obtaining is less than what we get from running a driver's licence.