Information & Ethics committee  I'd say, with respect, that the Privacy Commissioner has managed since PIPEDA came into force to be able to address that part of the mandate and deal with concerns with respect to private businesses and private sector organizations, and at the same time to meet the responsibiliti

Information & Ethics committee  From a CBA perspective, those are the two key areas where there are differences for legitimate reasons. I think most of the other elements of PIPEDA work equally well in the Privacy Act. I haven't gone through and itemized each one, but those are the two big differences, which I

Information & Ethics committee  I'd just make this observation. Of course citizen complaints are important, and you have an obligation to do those in a timely way as an oversight office, but if you also have the opportunity to provide input on a new piece of legislation or a new program that may impact hundreds

Information & Ethics committee  There are some interesting things. If you don't have order-making power, you spend a lot of time thinking about how you can persuade government institutions to do a better job in terms of protecting privacy. I think it puts a premium on creativity, imagination, and some relations

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  I'd like to think I was fair, measured, and moderate in all of my recommendations.

Information & Ethics committee  I guess the one observation I can share is that there's always a difficulty with access and privacy oversight becoming too complex, too technical, and too formal a process. When the first parliamentary ombudsman was created in Alberta back in 1967, it was all about providing ci

Information & Ethics committee  The first one is our proposal to take the enhanced ombudsman model and run with that. I think there are certainly strengths with the order-making model and I've worked in those jurisdictions that have it, but in terms of providing the highest measure of service to Canadians and t

Information & Ethics committee  I might just add that if you refer to recommendation 12 of the Privacy Commissioner, you see that he talks about the need to enable him to have discussions with data protection authorities in other jurisdictions. That's frankly all about trying to coordinate enforcement to addres

Information & Ethics committee  You could do what British Columbia and Nova Scotia have done, which is enact legislation that in fact prohibits certain information sharing outside Canada. They've actually attempted to put restrictions at the front end. It's not always tremendously effective. What you may have i

Information & Ethics committee  If you look at the Canadian experience, the fact is that this committee is meeting to discuss legislation that was developed in 1983 and has not been substantially changed in over 30 years. I hear Mr. Drapeau's question about whether five years is too short a time. If you look

Information & Ethics committee  My observation would first be that Colin Bennett is very persuasive. I'd say as a result of some of the work he has done, the Canadian Bar Association's access and privacy branches have been engaged with this very issue. Not only did that involve the opportunity to hear Professor

Information & Ethics committee  In Alberta and British Columbia, for example, the process is clearly more formal. There are more opportunities for parties to be able to see what the other side is saying and what other parties are submitting by way of argument. That, of course, is part of procedural fairness. W

Information & Ethics committee  I guess the hope is that you're still going to get a relatively small number of matters that end up going to court, and that is the experience right across Canada, and federally too. The bulk of these matters are dealt with ultimately by recommendations accepted by the public bo

Information & Ethics committee  I think my response would be this. If you take the approach the CBA does—that Canadians have quasi-constitutional rights to have their privacy protected and to have access to government records and government information—then the focus needs to be on accessibility, and accessibil