Information & Ethics committee  Thank you.

Information & Ethics committee  I'll start, and maybe Doug wants to come in.

Information & Ethics committee  No, for many years I think we often used other terms, particularly “archival value”. I think what we've done is, in collaboration with Library and Archives Canada and their need to have documents for long-term retention, and that archival retention for future generations, we real

Information & Ethics committee  Did you want to add something? Doug was there at the inception of “business value”.

Information & Ethics committee  There are those contexts of whether it has business value that they would apply. If the records have a business value to government, they should be captured as part of the process. Usually in those contractual arrangements there is a duty to provide some documentation as part of

Information & Ethics committee  My sense is that if the information is being collected on behalf of government to implement a government program, then that should probably be an explicit part of the contract.

Information & Ethics committee  Are you talking about the legal context—

Information & Ethics committee  —or the regulatory context—

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I'll give you a specific example.

Information & Ethics committee  Let's consider the need for good documentation so that Health Canada can make a decision on the tobacco issue. There is a risk because there is already litigation over this issue. These risk elements have to be understood because these decisions will affect the health of Canadian

Information & Ethics committee  No.

Information & Ethics committee  A good example is in section 8.2. It states that the Department of Public Works and Government Services will provide all departments, based on needs defined by them, with the information tools necessary to manage information and respond to needs in that context.

Information & Ethics committee  Precisely. Every department must decide whether or not it wants to take advantage of the services offered by Public Works and Government Services Canada. They are not currently required to avail themselves of those services.

Information & Ethics committee  The information management senior official in the department would have a process in place that would allow for those decisions to be made. We would expect that this decision would either be made there, or depending on the governance structure described for our management account

Information & Ethics committee  No, I'm not saying that everything is going well. That's why we have taken measures to improve training, to establish recruitment processes, to better define the competencies required for these functions and to be able to recruit and train qualified people. I share the Commissio