Finance committee  I would say it is the second of the two. The privacy protections that exist and that we administer have developed over the years as the department has gone through various manifestations and as our programs have been developed and come online. In 2012, it makes sense to harmonize

Finance committee  No.

Finance committee  It will make some of our work easier. My colleague and I may spend an hour on something rather than two hours, so we save a little bit.

Finance committee  That's correct.

Finance committee  Well, in a general way, it has been administratively interesting to deal with programs for which the personal information is protected under a bunch of different pieces of legislation and the same standards have not applied across the different programs. To facilitate administr

Finance committee  You're referring to clause 292, I believe?

Finance committee  This just reflects the consequential nature of these amendments. Since it is taking the protections that were contained in the CPP Act and moving them into the departmental act, the protections are retained, but what is left over in the other act no longer deals with protection.

Finance committee  I want to clarify that we have consulted the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, not the commissioner herself. We did not consult the Office of the Information Commissioner.

Finance committee  These amendments deal with protecting information, and the Information Commissioner deals with ensuring that Canadians have access to information about their government and their programs. So we didn't have a reason to consult the Information Commissioner.

Finance committee  The provinces and territories won't be so much impacted, because what this does is it simply makes clear an authority for us to share information as needed to support programs that we're working with in the provinces and the territories. Work that has been going on should continu

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, my colleague and I are very happy to be able to appear before the committee this morning to talk about projections regarding privacy. The Budget Implementation Act will result in the merging and harmonization of the five privacy codes our department currently has. The

Finance committee  I believe the question has two parts. I'll deal with the second one first. We did consult the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The code, which is contained in the departmental act, actually dates from several years, and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner was consulted at