Information & Ethics committee  It's not entirely fair to say, because many of the decisions that are taken by the agency in the realm of trade and in the realm of immigration are subject to external review by quasi-judicial and independent judicial bodies, for example.

Information & Ethics committee  It's the Privacy Commissioner's office, yes.

Information & Ethics committee  This is my third appearance before this committee. My name is Robert Mundie, as you probably know. I'm the director general of the corporate secretariat and I'm also the chief privacy officer for the Canada Border Services Agency. Today I'll briefly outline our operating context in general, and then in particular I'll focus on the manner in which information is shared with other government departments, including under the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, or SCISA.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. I'm somewhat familiar. I don't know all of the details of that particular case, but it's under the Customs Act that officers have the right to access the goods that someone possesses. It's the interpretation of what is a good. A cellphone is a good, and its contents were considered a good for review.

Information & Ethics committee  All right. Thank you.

Information & Ethics committee  I know that Dan Proulx can give the answer to that one much better than I can.

Information & Ethics committee  There's a range of reasons. Dan can elaborate.

Information & Ethics committee  It's hard to estimate what kind of volume you would get if you opened it up to people outside of Canada. Certainly anything that adds to our workload and causes us issues, such as Rennie was mentioning—when we want to validate who the person asking for the information is—makes our life more complicated.

Information & Ethics committee  I think it would probably be better for Dan to answer the question on frequency. I think in our last report we did seven or eight in the course of the year...?

Information & Ethics committee  I could respond. In the case of another government, foreign or domestic, there will always be a collaborative written arrangement in place, so it is in writing. I believe that with respect to information sharing between government departments, it depends on the circumstances as to whether we have something in writing that's specific.

Information & Ethics committee  There's nothing on the recommendations of the Privacy Commissioner that we had specific concerns with, but there is one issue we've been grappling with internally, and it may be applicable to the RCMP and Correctional Services. There are situations under section 8(2) of the Privacy Act in which we can release personal information in a circumstance, but there's also the situation of people having undergone serious injury or death, meaning you can't get their permission to release information to next of kin or family members.

Information & Ethics committee  I'll start and then ask Mr. Proulx to add his comments. The first thing, as you mentioned, is the training that's provided to our employees, so that there's an awareness of the act and how it applies to our operations. We have different types of training for different situations, from online to in-class to very specialized sessions for people who have particular functions within the organization.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Robert Mundie. I'm the director general of the corporate secretariat at the Canada Border Services Agency. I am also the chief privacy officer for CBSA. I have with me Mr. Dan Proulx, who is the director of our ATIP division. The ATIP division is responsible for oversight of the privacy function at the agency, which includes administering and fulfilling all legislative requirements of the Privacy Act related to the processing of requests; interacting with the public, CBSA employees, other government institutions, and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner regarding investigations and audits; and implementing measures to enhance our capacity to process privacy requests.

Information & Ethics committee  I think it would be very difficult for us to estimate the number of access requests that would come in as a result of broadening the eligibility. We do know that non-Canadians do use Canadian agents to access information. So for us, it's very hard to estimate what the impact would be.