Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the question. There are two competing views on the impact of the immunity clause. One is that it is inserted for greater certainty and in fact doesn't change anything. On the other hand, a competing view is the question that is before the S

Justice committee  We argued that in fact it should not be interpreted or applied that way. In that case, it was actually interpreted and applied in a way to create a new source of lawful authority. Those are the two competing arguments before the court, and we will await their decision to see wh

Justice committee  The court's permission is clearly very important. What we are discussing today is the threshold, which has to be assessed and examined very thoroughly. However, the court's participation is already a major factor. The kind of report we talked about is also an important transpare

Justice committee  I will begin. I just want to say that the amendments that have been made to increase accountability and transparency, under the provisions you mentioned, are indeed good news. That's a nice example of amendments that have been made to increase transparency, while recognizing tha

Justice committee  Thank you for the question. Yes, there were many witnesses, as has been pointed out, who have testified before the committee. Quite a number of them as well have advocated in favour of the higher threshold. So in fairness, there are competing views here. One area that I think w

Justice committee  No, I don't think we have any personal knowledge of their position or who actually requested that the immunity clause be amended in this way.

Justice committee  Thank you very much. The Spencer ruling, which is supposed to be handed down this Friday, will definitely clarify the parameters, interpretation and application to the private sector of paragraph 7(3)(c.1) of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or P

Justice committee  We are pleased to see that the provision that would have allowed warrantless access to personal information, and especially to subscriber data, has been removed and is no longer on the table. That is clearly an improvement. However, we did have reservations over some provisions

Information & Ethics committee  With respect to the specific amendment being proposed, do I understand that you're speaking about the source of the information that would be provided—i.e., it could be a whistle-blower or it could be any other journalistic source more generally?

Information & Ethics committee  As I think was mentioned earlier, the revelation of the name of the source would be protected, of course, as personal information that would not be disclosed under an access to information request. There is protection already provided for in the current regime, as it would be und

Information & Ethics committee  It is interesting to note that the present Privacy Act does not refer to activities, but rather to "journalistic, artistic or literary purposes". It uses the word "purposes", not "activities". It is slightly different in our act.

Information & Ethics committee  I think the same question was also posed, if I recall, to earlier witnesses, and there is the concept of custody and control—which government institution has custody and control of the information? In this case, it would be the CBC. If an access requester for personal information

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, as several witnesses have mentioned before the committee, the provision as it stands in our act and in the Access to Information Act suffers from a lack of clarity in that it provides for both an exclusion and an exemption from the exclusion. I believe the purpose of the ame

Information & Ethics committee  You are alluding to an access to information request concerning which a complaint was filed with our office regarding the interpretation and application of section 69.1, which is the relevant section in our case. We had experienced the same situation as the Information Commissio

Information & Ethics committee  No, not often. In that specific case, we had to apply the interpretation of that section, but to my knowledge that does not happen often.