Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members. I am pleased to appear before this committee on the subject of the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act. As the chair has mentioned, I am accompanied by Mr. Bill Galbraith, the executive director of my office. Before I make a

Information & Ethics committee  Just to answer your first point with regard to the possibility for review bodies to carry out joint work, right now we can't do that, as noted by my colleague. We work in silos. This is not adequate. I have stated in the past that it would be desirable to give the existing revie

Information & Ethics committee  With regard to the 14 institutions, as I said previously, in my view it's important that they be subject to expert review one way or the other, or the committee of parliamentarians could decide that they want to do that themselves. It's up to them to decide that, but I still beli

Information & Ethics committee  If I may, I'll comment on your question. I think maybe one way to do it would be to incorporate into the act a provision that any information that is not relevant, which is the threshold used presently in the act, should be destroyed. This is not built into the act right now. In

Information & Ethics committee  The short answer is in Justice O’Connor's report. He has studied in depth having one super-agency versus keeping the existing agencies as they are. As an example, with regard to CSE or the Office of the CSE commissioner, Justice O'Connor has stated that it should not be included

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, there is.

Information & Ethics committee  In our case, as I think I mentioned previously, if the information that is gathered by CSE doesn't meet the criteria set out in the National Defence Act, it will be destroyed. They cannot keep it.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not able to say, I guess.

Information & Ethics committee  I think we are, with all due respect, wandering away a little bit from SCISA, but anyway. With regard to CSE, CSE has arrangements, or MOUs, with the Five Eyes partners—that's evident—but again what is important in those arrangements and MOUs is the fact that CSE stressed the po

Information & Ethics committee  Are you quoting from Mr. Therrien?

Information & Ethics committee  I guess at first blush what I would answer is that it is important and vital to have a balance between security measures on the one hand and the protection of the privacy of Canadians on the other hand. I know that this objective is not easily attained, but I think this is what i

Information & Ethics committee  To be very honest, I'm not....

Information & Ethics committee  If I could comment on this very point, you mentioned that if there's a breach of privacy, in essence it would be for the Privacy Commissioner to investigate, but I want to stress that with regard to CSE, under the law in my mandate, I have also a mandate to protect the privacy of

Information & Ethics committee  It's called the PIF.

Information & Ethics committee  Even if we are buddies.