Information & Ethics committee  I think legislating a human in the decision-making loop is an important thing to include. I think it's also important to recognize that it doesn't solve all of the problems. It's often presented as the solution, but you're often going to have a lot of bias problems, even with a human involved in the investigation.

Information & Ethics committee  I would say the main findings were that facial recognition is being adopted at the border without due consideration for the harms it would cause, without much external oversight and often without regard to existing policies, such as the Treasury Board's policy on artificial intelligence, where you are supposed to bring in external guidance when adopting intrusive technologies like that.

Information & Ethics committee  I agree that it's an integral part, but it is important to also recognize that it is not enough. I think this committee heard, as well, from a witness on how humans interact with facial images that they are presented with, and how their own biases creep in. The example provided was of a photo lineup that is often used by police, and how it replicates the type of image output that you often get from a facial recognition system, where it gives you maybe the top 10 or 15 matches.

Information & Ethics committee  When you're talking about an intrusive technology like this, the onus is on the government to make its case for the use of the technology. One big problem—and I know the committee has heard this—is that currently adoption happens at the ground level, and any legislative response comes in response to that.

Information & Ethics committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Tamir Israel and I'm a lawyer with the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa, which sits on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

Industry committee  A single directed program could be much more efficient in identifying where to direct funds, rather than relying on funding applications across the number of funding envelopes. To give an example of something the current government has done with a directed funding initiative that's extremely helpful, the government has committed to connecting Iqaluit, which is in Nunavut, to a transatlantic cable that will give that city direct fibre access.

Industry committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and members of this committee. My name is Tamir Israel and I am staff lawyer with the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic. CIPPIC is a public interest technology law clinic based at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law.

Information & Ethics committee  Just to be clear, that was not under PIPEDA. Again, that covers a very different set of activities, not the regulatory framework that's in place.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, we would recommend one. We would recommend maybe not a blanket one per se, but a mechanism that would explicitly allow the Privacy Commissioner to impose sector-by-sector and scope obligations. It may be more appropriate for some.... Electronic communications is easy, I think.

Information & Ethics committee  The one thing I would add is just that in our comments we flagged the issues arising from algorithmic decision-making and automated decision-making. I think those are ones that PIPEDA has struggled with analogs of in the past. That's an area that's technologically becoming very central, so a lot of decisions are becoming automated in ways that are very opaque.

Information & Ethics committee  I think you can get to a more robust consent requirement with the principles that are there. We suggested incorporating privacy by default explicitly as a guiding principle. I glossed over it a bit because you were short on time, but I would emphasize the need—in those situations—to have a pop-up that says, “Oh, by the way, we're going to read through your emails, and if there's something that says 'suits', you're going to get suit ads.

Information & Ethics committee  I think currently that's implied, but if it becomes more rigorous, such as something that goes to every single device you have in your house and your TV is recording you by default, I think you can get.... There's a principled way of getting there as well as the legislative way.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. There was a recent provision that was added to PIPEDA that strengthened consent in situations where it's not clear that the people consenting have a full understanding of the impact of their decisions. I agree with, I won't say the commissioner, but the former commissioner, that it may be harder to draw clean, age-specific lines at the federal level than at the provincial level.

Information & Ethics committee  I think PIPEDA has the flexibility to address new technologies. The challenge is to do it quickly enough. Some of the things that have been discussed, and that the Privacy Commissioner's office has done in the past and is doing now, are to proactively address specific issues like the right to be forgotten and looking at consent to see whether it's keeping up.

Information & Ethics committee  I just want to say that it's hard to predict, as my colleagues have said, how those obligations will also translate through the adequacy. It's not likely to be a direct cut-and-paste, so it probably will be easier to make a case for adequacy if we have elements addressing key new developments there, but that are also aligned with Canadian laws.