Information & Ethics committee  I haven't read CETA. I understand it's somewhat of a brick, but we will certainly do that soon.

Information & Ethics committee  We have not quantified those costs specifically. If we obtain these powers, we would have to change our structure. We cannot ask the same public servants to conduct investigations, to serve in a promotion role, and in an adjudicative role. As a result, some employees would have o

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  By any and all of the above would be the answer. We have experience with this under PIPEDA, the private sector legislation, where even though our investigations under PIPEDA are confidential, as they are under the Privacy Act, I have discretion to make public findings and recomme

Information & Ethics committee  That's a good question. At the end of the day, we act independently but we act responsibly. We would certainly have regard, from the timing perspective, for the impact of our release of findings so as not to advantage any one party or the other, but on the contrary, to ensure tha

Information & Ethics committee  I think it applies to most sectors, actually. Under European law, part of the privacy protection given to EU nationals by European law is that the substantive protection standards provided under EU law essentially are transferred when information goes outside Europe. Europe only

Information & Ethics committee  It's a complicated issue. One of our recommendations is to create a legal obligation for departments to safeguard information technologically, and there would be a breach notification provision. One would think—and there are policies in the Treasury Board and other departments t

Information & Ethics committee  This is something that we see in the discretionary regime currently. I think I'll ask my colleague Sue to expand on this, but this is something we see both under the privacy regime and the discretionary regime that we have currently and under PIPEDA. Sue, do you want to expand o

Information & Ethics committee  That being said, you're right in that creating this obligation, whether by policy or by law, may create the risk for further increases in damages. We were consulted by the innovation department on the same policy in the private sector, and we actually made certain comments there

Information & Ethics committee  I don't have concerns in terms of our independence. We investigate independently. We audit independently. We have strong policy and legal units that allow us to fully look at issues with which we're confronted without having to call on government. I think we have the structure to

Information & Ethics committee  For companies, we have seen that a number of them do publish transparency reports when they are the subject of lawful access or warrantless access requests by the police, so there is improvement. I think all companies involved in that area should publish transparency reports. My

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. The chiefs of police, including the RCMP commissioner, make the point that the Supreme Court's decision in Spencer, which reinforced the need for warrants for access to the sensitive personal information of Canadians, is essentially creating important impediments that make

Information & Ethics committee  On the order making, there are many recommendations that we make. With respect to the change to an order-making model, for that particular recommendation, I think it is quite possible that the system would become more efficient, including for departments. There are other recomm

Information & Ethics committee  I don't see that our recommendations would increase judicial remedies, but if your question is what is the net effect of all our recommendations on government resources, with the chair's indulgence, I could spend a minute or two on that, or we could come back.

Information & Ethics committee  That's an excellent question. We think order making may actually lead to efficiencies because in the process that I've described currently with recommendation making, there is quite a bit of back and forth between us and departments during the investigative process and there's