Information & Ethics committee  Certainly. I would actually take you back first to a more general statement by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Beverley McLachlin, who herself has brought forward the idea that we have now such a context of dissemination of information that the open court princ

Information & Ethics committee  The Treasury Board Secretariat should ensure, absolutely, the highest level of training and cohesiveness among the public service.

Information & Ethics committee  The first step of the balance is to ensure that open government actually does not jeopardize the protection of personal information. That is done through policies that will direct staff on how to put information forward in an open government context and through making sure that t

Information & Ethics committee  That concern is more and more being voiced under the phrase “the ethics of analytics”. We realize that we have more possibilities for not only amassing personal information but for generating, through aggregation of the information received, an even more specific profile of a p

Information & Ethics committee  It is possible, but I would say that we welcome it, in the sense that, as our colleague Ann Cavoukian says, that review of privacy impact assessments really does allow us to instill privacy by design, because if all works well, the privacy impact assessment comes to us before the

Information & Ethics committee  Thinking of the wording of the Treasury Board directive that concerns privacy impact assessments, I would say that they would have to submit for our review any initiative or measure that could have an impact on the handling of personal information. That could mean, therefore, tha

Information & Ethics committee  Well, first of all, as my colleague said, we have technologists who are capable of looking at how different databases could possibly work together. They are capable of analyzing the technological impacts of various initiatives. In relation to training, of course it is the first

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely. We are in complete agreement with that. We work a lot with Ms. Cavoukian. This is the very approach we take when we review privacy impact assessments. Once the portal is created and submitted to us, we will obviously consider it based on very specific criteria. In the

Information & Ethics committee  Because of all the reviews of privacy impact assessments we conduct, we work very closely with the public federal sector. In addition...

Information & Ethics committee  You understand that we are agents of Parliament.

Information & Ethics committee  Therefore, we are independent. However, I will clarify how we collaborate. We regularly meet with people from the Treasury Board Secretariat to discuss various topics. We were consulted about and commented on the set of privacy policies that the Secretariat recently developed and

Information & Ethics committee  Unfortunately, I'm not privy to that information at all, or to that work. What I can say is that if there were a specific program set up, then we would definitely be involved to ensure that privacy is duly considered and integrated.

Information & Ethics committee  We are all very conscious of the risks to privacy; therefore, everyone is proceeding very cautiously. Our role as of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner is to ensure that the privacy considerations are duly addressed.

Information & Ethics committee  We work closely with the Treasury Board Secretariat and we follow developments in open government. We have still not received a privacy impact assessment. We expect that the full project will be submitted to us as a privacy impact assessment and that the Treasury Board will keep

Information & Ethics committee  No, not yet.