Information & Ethics committee  In your view, it's—

Information & Ethics committee  No, everybody has the right to give us the information, but it's not mandatory.

Information & Ethics committee  Every person has the right to phone the police station and check.

Information & Ethics committee  The courts have ruled that it's not protected information under the charter. What you're arguing against is the idea that they're saying it's normal data available to other people through other venues and everything else. It's up to somebody else as to how you address PIPEDA in terms of how they disseminate the dates of birth.

Information & Ethics committee  Just to extend on your point, we've noticed under the firearms registry that even by giving three letters of a postal code, people can zero in on where firearms are, and then we see heightened activity around break-and-enters into various homes. So we're not the only analysts in the world.

Information & Ethics committee  Relations between police officers and the institution are often good.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  By telephone?

Information & Ethics committee  I don't think so.

Information & Ethics committee  Given your scenario, I would need, as a previous investigator in my young life, a little more information to appropriately—

Information & Ethics committee  When you said you went through the white pages, obviously that's the reason to go PIPEDA; you're looking for a needle in a haystack. You don't know where the information is. In that instance, you are saying, they may have discredited the individual's name inappropriately, yet at the end of the day the change, as I said before, is that we are willing to accept that risk, and if we do cause undue harm to an individual, obviously we are held accountable for it.

Information & Ethics committee  If what you're saying is true and the person was not acting within lawful authority and put the case or the investigation at risk, along with the livelihoods of innocent individuals, then they would go through our internal complaints unit, which functions fairly well and in some cases extremely well.