Public Safety committee  It's not inconceivable. However, all things considered, I don't think it's generally necessary to know the identity of sources, except in rare cases, such as for an organization like mine or for the committee of parliamentarians.

Public Safety committee  Exactly.

Public Safety committee  All other things being equal, in my opinion it would be good if all the branches of government, the executive, the judicial and the parliamentary, played a role and were treated relatively independently. Clearly the executive and the judicial branch must demonstrate complete institutional independence one from the other.

Public Safety committee  You are touching on the issue raised by Mr. Leman-Langlois, that is to say the role the parliamentary committee should play. If the mandate of the committee were to report breaches to the law, this would be closer to operations. The point would be to determine if the operations broke the law.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  I'll be brief. In addition to what I said before, I would make the following analogy. If you look at the rules around access to information and reporting by courts, that would be a good indication of what the committee of parliamentarians should look at. Courts that review the legality of activities of national security agencies have access to almost everything, with extremely limited exceptions, but when they report on the legality of certain activities, there can be redactions, and we've seen that in a recent judgment of the Federal Court.

Public Safety committee  Having some rules for in camera hearings makes sense, given the nature of the information at play. I said in my remarks that the proposed standard for deciding on in camera hearings, i.e., whether the government is “taking measures to protect information” is a bit of an unknown, and it would be preferable to use the test that is known elsewhere in law, which is “injurious to national security”.

Public Safety committee  With regard to the existing text, it would be preferable in my opinion that the executive demonstrate that the fact of disclosing some detail would cause harm, injury, a prejudice. Clearly, that should be proven. It should not be left strictly to the discretion of the Prime Minister.

Public Safety committee  The bill lists three review bodies with which the proposed parliamentary committee would be able to share information. I'm suggesting that my office should be added to that list of review bodies, because we do have a role in these matters and I think it would be a good idea that all relevant players be able to share information in order to have efficient review, but complete review as well.

Public Safety committee  I will take that question as referring to the limits to the contents of reports, which are found in the bill, and expand it a little to the issue of limitations, either to the mandate or to access by the committee or to what would be reported, which I think has been the subject of considerable discussion before this committee.

Public Safety committee  When I said something along the lines of what you suggest, it was not to say that the members of the committee or their staff would have insufficient expertise to review the issues that are the subject matter of the mandate of the committee. If I said something like that, it would be akin to what Mr.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee, for inviting me here to discuss this important piece of legislation. I'm joined today by Leslie Fournier-Dupelle, a policy and research analyst in my office. Our interest in commenting stems from the intersections between the work of this proposed committee and the work of my office.

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely. I think we should intervene as early as possible, specifically to reduce risks to privacy. Such a system must not, however, create the impression that the OPC is advising the party in power in one way and advising the other political parties differently. In exercising this responsibility, it is extremely important for us to be seen as acting impartially.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not sure I have a specific answer to your question as to what the criteria should be. Let will begin with the following. Apart from the story that was reported in the media this week, another case was heard in an Ontario court a few months ago. The telecommunications companies complained that the police had access to metadata of a very large number of people who went by a specific location.

Information & Ethics committee  This case is indeed worrisome. I will not get into the issue of freedom of the press, but rather, as you requested, will talk about the protection of privacy, of a journalist or of any other person. First of all, it was metadata from this journalist that was obtained under a court order.