Information & Ethics committee  We propose some specific tweaks that we think will help improve the overall ability of the act to address modern challenges, but we think enforceability and including the incentive to proactively comply constitute the biggest step that needs to be taken, in part because it has far-reaching implications.

Information & Ethics committee  We as an organization continue also to struggle. We have yet to come to a conclusion on what a properly formulated right to be forgotten could look like. What we've done is go through and identify some of the things it should address and some of the hazards it should avoid. Maybe I'll give you that and it will help a little.

Information & Ethics committee  Hopefully it won't muddy the water further. We actually view it less as a right to be forgotten, as others have said, and more as related to PIPEDA's data accuracy component. What we hear from people who have issues of a “right to be forgotten” type is that it creates a skewed perception of their reputation by highlighting specific things that are not necessarily the definition of their reputation.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for having me here again. My name is Tamir Israel, and I am a staff lawyer with CIPPIC, the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa's centre for law, technology, and society, which is at the faculty of law.

Information & Ethics committee  Very briefly about that, the independent arbitrator for Bill C-22 on disagreements, some, including us, have called for a mechanism to allow disagreements to be referred to the Federal Court. The Federal Court has expertise in making these decisions. Just very briefly, yes, absolutely, some agencies have retention limitations on an ad hoc basis that apply to certain subsets of information they collect, but an overarching retention limitation in the Privacy Act would provide for a more principled and across-the-board process.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. I agree that the restrictions on the information it can receive and the information it can impart are both too restrictive and too much at the discretion of government. I think at the very least having an objective decision-maker weigh in on those decisions would be a great start in encouraging its independence as an oversight entity.

Information & Ethics committee  There are ways to delete information securely. Even a preliminary deletion will eventually lead to the information being deleted, but you can more comprehensively take active steps to delete information, to wipe hard drives, and to insert random data over where the data used to be to make that more concrete.

Information & Ethics committee  In addition to everything Professor Wark just said, I would add that I think there are ways to improve the timing of assessments on necessity and proportionality, if those were adopted, and those would involve, I think, better training in government agencies that are going to be the recipients of these requests and that are not inherently national security agencies.

Information & Ethics committee  The explicit provisions in SCISA allow for sharing only of information already collected, but because it provides a number of agencies with the impetus to begin to look for threat information, primarily on the front line, it may affect the manner in which they approach the information that they collect and retain, because that is now a new consideration they will be using in assessing their own information-sharing practices.

Information & Ethics committee  Along those same lines, the Federal Court hinged its decision on the fact that CSIS is mandated to collect information lawfully only if it deems it necessary to address a threat to the security of Canada. As Professor Wark mentioned, if it received it through SCISA legitimately, then it now has legitimately received that information, and it doesn't need to rely on its authority within the CSIS Act, which already has a necessity limitation built into it.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will try to keep my comments brief so that we do have time for full questions. Thank you, as well, to the members of the committee and to you, Mr. Chair, for having me back here again. My name is Tamir Israel. I am the staff lawyer with CIPPIC, the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.

Information & Ethics committee  Briefly, I just want to say there may be some room for overlap because some of the information sometimes flows from government activity to the political parties. That could be covered by the Privacy Act and the rest by PIPEDA. That's worth considering as well.

Information & Ethics committee  There are a number of regional documents. The OECD has a set of privacy guidelines, which Canada actually took a very active role in updating a year or two back. The Council of Europe has a comparable overarching data protection framework that is inspired by the European framework but is actually a little more universal and less steeped in the 85 pages of details; it's a much shorter document.

Information & Ethics committee  Can you guys recommend amnesty, or is that outside the scope of this?

Information & Ethics committee  I would say that having worked in this space pre-Snowden, we anticipated a lot of the activities he exposed and many found to be a bit disproportionate. It at least kicked off a robust conversation around the appropriate parameters of these activities. There was no way of getting any sort of evidence, even though it was known what was happening by us, as well as by bad actors.