Information & Ethics committee  Sure. Perhaps Dr. Landry, as a physician, might answer.

Information & Ethics committee  If I might, I think there are a lot of areas where it's certainly impossible to draw that bright line with respect to research. Gary mentioned clinical trials and the use of the information by pharmaceutical companies to get the word out to physicians about clinical trial work. I think we'd all agree that clinical trials are health research.

Information & Ethics committee  That's right—[Inaudible--Editor].

Information & Ethics committee  Only to suggest that perhaps the way to address the issue is to tightly control what happens to that extra piece of information, the date of birth, once it's used for the alleged purpose that it's necessary for—i.e. to confirm the identity of the voter to prevent fraud—and then it disappears after that from any subsequent circulation or documentation.

Information & Ethics committee  The only comment I would make is that I believe some of the witnesses, including the B.C. privacy commissioner, were dealing with the particular issue in the context of what an organization would be able to disclose about either its clients or employees in a prospective purchase in the mergers and acquisition situation.

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly. It's actually a reference to a bylaw that was passed by the B.C. College of Pharmacists in 1997. Effectively, the college was mandated by the B.C. health minister at that time to change its bylaws to effectively prohibit the disclosure of any information that identifies a physician for the disclosure for commercial purposes.

Information & Ethics committee  The situation is that you have that bylaw, and as you've heard, you have the B.C. PIPA, which excludes work product, which would exclude the type of information. From a legal perspective, there are opinions out there that because one is a law—i.e., PIPA's a law—and the other is only a college bylaw, legally the PIPA exclusion would take precedence over the college bylaw.

Information & Ethics committee  I come from one of those small towns too, by the way. We have had our data examined, from a number of different perspectives, to address precisely those types of questions. We've had statisticians from McGill look at our internal databases with respect to whether you can slice and dice and potentially combine anything to identify an individual.

Information & Ethics committee  There are a number of ways to ensure that it can't be done. At first instance, the information that we receive from our data suppliers goes through a software program that leaves anything related to the patient behind. So that's at first instance, and then we have technological means to ensure that everything is totally screened out.

Information & Ethics committee  I agree, and I was considering Madame Lavallée's question, and I appreciate your asking it again. The short answer is, subject to what Dr. Landry said, nobody that I know of, quite honestly. And I think you've heard from a wide variety of representative organizations and groups who have appeared before the committee, all of which support the distinction.

Information & Ethics committee  No, it's not.

Information & Ethics committee  It has the added part in part 2, the little exclusion, to make sure to address the commissioner's concern that workplace surveillance information might not be inadvertently captured. I think, given that you've heard from different groups, there's a wide spectrum of work product information out there that is of concern to different organizations.

Information & Ethics committee  Our position is that generally PIPEDA is working well as far as it impacts our company, but on this particular issue, on this point, we believe PIPEDA does require some clarification.

Information & Ethics committee  I've heard the concern raised, but I defer to other experts who have appeared before the committee with respect to the details.

Information & Ethics committee  It is not a choice with respect to the way in which we are proposing an amendment. The two parts must work together. The first part is that the definition of personal information, as it is in PIPEDA right now, would have another exclusion, which is for work product information. Then in order to accomplish that, there must be another amendment to the act, a definition of what work product information is.