Industry committee  Retailers note with interest the section that grants the Office of the Privacy Commissioner seemingly unrestricted discretion in releasing any information under its control to the public when deemed to be in the public interest. Retailers would like to see some reasonable limitat

Industry committee  With regard to reporting, I think it's entirely appropriate. What I note from the language of the bill is that it states that there is a reasonable expectation for significant harm to the individual. There is some definition of that provided there, but I think it allows for the f

Industry committee  I'll commence by saying that it was a couple of generations before my time. But, yes, I think that retailers, while not necessarily a driving force behind amendments to PIPEDA, would be generally supportive of anything that would allow for the speedy resolution of anything that w

Industry committee  From the discussions we have had with our members, I think there is already, first, as I mentioned, a very high level of compliance with PIPEDA's requirements. It really comes down to a question of the size of the organization, as Mr. Littler suggested. We represent retailers fro

Industry committee  That's correct. I would not say that's our primary concern though. To sum it up in a word, our primary concern would be undue administrative burden. That's the common thread, so that there's clarity around consent.

Industry committee  Reporting, record keeping, and all the other requirements that are mentioned.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the committee members for inviting me to testify today. First, I will tell you a little about the Retail Council of Canada, the RCC. The Retail Council of Canada has been the voice of retail in Canada since 1963. Retail employs ov

International Trade committee  It's an excellent question. Maybe I could touch on the notion of jobs first and then talk about cross-border shopping.

International Trade committee  We have not done that kind of analysis because our industry is very unique. There are a lot of other industries that are interested in regulatory coherence and harmonization that have one or two major issues; whereas, by definition, our members sell hundreds of thousands of produ

International Trade committee  Yes. There is a whole range of products that are up for almost immediate tariff elimination. As everyone around this table knows, the original reason for tariffs was to promote domestic manufacturing. There are a lot of examples where there isn't a lot of domestic manufacturing.

International Trade committee  That's the de minimis rate above which you have to pay duties and taxes as you would have to here in Canada. It has been $20 for quite some time. If anything, I'd like to see it actually lowered. Of course, that's administratively quite challenging. When that de minimis level was

International Trade committee  That's a really interesting question. We focus so much on the import end of things. The other witnesses here are talking more about export. We focus mostly on bringing more types of products, more consumer choice at better prices, more competitive prices for consumers. In terms o

International Trade committee  I don't think so. The position of the Retail Council is that we're very supportive of tariff elimination generally. The way that the agreement has been written, there are a few exceptions for which tariffs would be eliminated over time and there are some areas in which they wou

International Trade committee  We don't anticipate that this agreement would have a big impact on cross-border shopping, given that there is already NAFTA as well as other agreements in place with the United States. Of course, the majority of cross-border shopping happens in the United States as opposed to oth

International Trade committee  Can I comment quickly on that?