Transport committee  For the record, PIAC opposed both the Sunwing and the Air Transat-Air Canada mergers. My understanding is that the European Union blocked the Air Canada-Air Transat merger, and probably COVID didn't help the business environment. It is discouraging to hear the Competition Bureau say that this is anti-competitive and then hear the minister say that there are other considerations, which are never really specified in enough detail, to have a merger go through.

Transport committee  Considering such radical thinking will hopefully help fix the sector and help us avoid seeing you again in 35 years to say the same things once again. Thank you very much. We look forward to your questions.

Transport committee  Thank you, Chair. Chair and honourable members, my name is John Lawford. I'm the executive director and general counsel at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. With me today is PIAC's articling student Myka Kollmann. I will start by quoting a PIAC report on airline competition in Canada: “Today, in Canada, it is difficult to choose what is likely to be less inefficient: a regulated duopoly or an unregulated one.”

Industry committee  All right, thank you.

Industry committee  I have a problem with the fact that the bill distinguishes between large companies and small and medium-sized companies, because, in the case of the most intrusive systems, I doubt that the size of the company matters. Let's say someone opens a new gym equipped with several tracking capabilities, for example.

Industry committee  I will answer first and Ms. Sai can round out my answer. Under the current regime, a decision is made directly by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The process takes about a year, in the case of major investigations. Based solely on the experience of the Competition Tribunal, I estimate that this added step will extend the process by a year to a year and a half.

Industry committee  Section 18 is gone, yes.

Industry committee  Yes. This is where you get into disputes with businesses about whether what they are collecting is necessary for the purchase. If you go into Tim Hortons and you want to order your coffee when you're waiting in line, so when you get to the window it's ready, do they need to track me all across town afterwards because that's the default in the software?

Industry committee  Right. I think the business answer would be that we're not going to use that personal information to disadvantage you. We're going to offer you benefits. There's a new pumpkin spice latte. We're going to give you a coupon while you're waiting in line. Some people might accept that.

Industry committee  I don't buy that, because businesses are functioning very well right now. I don't know of any innovation that's being stifled by the present law. Perhaps the Business Council said something different the other day. If you take proposed section 18 out.... Now consider that proposed section 18 wasn't in Bill C-11.

Industry committee  In the United States, of course, they don't have a comprehensive privacy law. We're lucky to have PIPEDA here, so a lot of our issues don't have to go to court. However, for those very difficult situations or widespread privacy violations, at least the threat of a class action can focus the minds of the larger corporations.

Industry committee  I think together we each give it a one—so two.

Industry committee  We base our opposition to this on the fact that the Privacy Commissioner presently does investigations and, although they are sometimes slow, the results are, in our opinion, fair. We looked at the Competition Tribunal debacle this year with Rogers and Shaw, and the use of that extra step, if you will, by a company that felt like dragging out a process or winning....

Industry committee  We have a lot of concerns about that, especially since the initial draft of what the privacy tribunal would be like would be that there would be only one privacy expert on that. The Privacy Commissioner presently has enough expertise to make a proper administrative decision, and then we have courts, if you want to go and say there's a problem above that.

Industry committee  Yes, I mean the whole thing.