Information & Ethics committee  Yes, sir, we do have a communications and public education plan in place. One of our branches is dedicated entirely to this effort. To further our understanding of this subject, we commissioned several public opinion polls, one of which will be made public shortly. The findings

Information & Ethics committee  To be honest, it's very difficult for us to come up with an assessment of that, because when we talk to our colleagues at Treasury Board, they're quite open to making any policy change that will reinforce the privacy management framework, but when we talk about Privacy Act reform

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. In fact, I believe there are some 40 agreements of the nature that Madame Stoddart just described, whereby the director general of elections actually gets information from federal agencies or organizations. Canada Revenue Agency is one of them, but I believe they have

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Indeed, on June 5, we tabled with the Standing Committee a document outlining our proposals for reforming the Privacy Act. Generally speaking, what we are saying is that this Act, which was passed in 1983, is inadequate in the context of today's technological reality, of the Gov

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't know about Statistics Canada, but certainly, as I said earlier, the Chief Electoral Officer has a number of those agreements already in place. Whether or not he has one with Stats Canada remains to be determined. I can't ascertain that.

Information & Ethics committee  It's page 2.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Ms. Stoddart. First of all, the eight changes and our two suggestions would certainly help us optimize our resources and our impact. We would have greater discretion to investigate systemic complaints, as opposed to individual complaints, which have very little societ

Information & Ethics committee  The Act provides that any citizen has a right to request access to information contained in a personal file held by the Canada Border Services Agency, for example. So, under the Act, there is a guaranteed right of access. For example, if you believe you have been injured in that

Information & Ethics committee  We believe these changes would mean that the public sector legislation would provide for the same level of protection as what exists in the private sector. That is a very strong argument in their favour. Essentially, why should our rights, in terms of the relationship between cit

Information & Ethics committee  If you don't mind, I would like to tell you about the work carried out by the Treasury Board in that regard. It has established guidelines on information sharing in the context of agreements federal government departments have signed with public partners. We would like there to

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, or with other levels of government, private partners, and so on. We are wondering who is in charge and who has an oversight role in terms of all these information-sharing agreements. This is not a new issue. I just want to point out that in 1987, a standing committee looked

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I think so. We need a framework for managing these agreements. At the present time, the Act is silent on this.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  For example, there need to be very specific standards with respect to information security, as well as restrictions on secondary uses of that information—in other words, so that it cannot be put together with information from other data banks for verification purposes. They have

Information & Ethics committee  Let me explain, Ms. Lavallée. In 2002, the Canadian government, through the Treasury Board, introduced a policy on privacy impact assessments. In English, it is called privacy impact assessment. All deputy heads…