Information & Ethics committee  Could I just make a couple of points? One is that the sources of inspiration were the CSIS Act, and it's meant to cover that, and “a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interest of the State” in section 3 of the Security of Information Act, and the terrorist activity and terror

Information & Ethics committee  I think there are a number of them in the act. The compelling national security purpose is important. SCISA is a very contextual act. It has one operating provision, which is section 5. The rest is context, because it applies to so many institutions. There are a number of featur

Information & Ethics committee  Right, but they do help set the context of the act, and the courts would take them into account.

Information & Ethics committee  The definition, as you point out, is a bit novel, so perhaps people aren't familiar with it, but as it was intended to apply to all institutions and to cover all the mandates of the recipient institutions, and to be evergreen and evolve with threats, it is conceptual. Its opening

Information & Ethics committee  That was the idea behind the definition.

Information & Ethics committee  We've intended to have the provisions developed in a way that meets those goals of both encouraging responsible disclosure and doing so in a charter-compliant way. We have the reference in the preamble to the charter. We have guiding principles that are intended to help guide int

Information & Ethics committee  I have just one point, and this was alluded to earlier on: SCISA does not affect collection. It only deals with disclosure. If, for example, you need a warrant to collect information, SCISA would not interfere with that. That would prevail in circumstances where it would be req

Information & Ethics committee  I think there may be some misunderstanding about the scope of SCISA. SCISA is a disclosure authority only. It does not deal with the use of the information that's collected by a recipient agency or with any downward disclosure of it to another agency. As long as the threshold in

Information & Ethics committee  Sorry—did you say “section 8”?

Information & Ethics committee  I don't really think it pertains to the situation you're talking about. It's perhaps useful to explain something about this provision. When we decided to include it, we consulted with operating agencies and departments, which revealed that some civil servants were reluctant to

Information & Ethics committee  That's correct.