Committee
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Add search criteria
Results: 1 - 15 of 935
View David Lametti Profile
Lib. (QC)
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning, honourable colleagues.
To begin, I would like to acknowledge that I'm on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people, in Ottawa.
I would also like to thank the members of the committee, as well as the chair, for convening this special session. As always, your contribution in helping to shape the character of one of Canada's most important and enduring institutions is deeply valued.
I would also like to thank the Right Honourable Kim Campbell for being with us this morning, but also for her work in the process that I'll highlight later.
The Supreme Court of Canada is a place close to my heart. It is the place where, years ago, I began my own legal career as a law clerk to a cherished mentor and friend, the late Honourable Peter deCarteret Cory. His example serves to remind me that our great public institutions depend on the dedication and integrity of those who occupy them.
It is my privilege today to speak in support of the Honourable Mahmud Jamal, a nominee who I am confident will honour the highest ideals of the Supreme Court and help to guide the evolution of Canada’s laws with wisdom, fairness, humility and a deep understanding of the society he serves.
I offer my heartfelt congratulations to Justice Jamal, and I look forward to his appearance before parliamentarians this afternoon.
I would also be remiss not to take this opportunity to acknowledge the lifetime of contribution and service to Canada, and to the rule of law, of Justice Jamal’s predecessor, the Honourable Rosie Silberman Abella. Justice Abella is a trailblazer and a jurist of remarkable intellect and character, and she has left an indelible mark on Canada’s legal landscape. She will be deeply missed on our highest court, but I have no doubt that she will continue to make important contributions to our public life in other roles.
Justice Jamal is the fourth person appointed to the Supreme Court by Prime Minister Trudeau as part of the government's modernized judicial selection process that was implemented in 2016. This process prioritizes individual merit, as well as the values of social representativeness and transparency. It requires every person seeking appointment to our highest court to apply by responding to a rigorous and publicly accessible questionnaire. It requires individuals to demonstrate not only legal and professional excellence, but also how their personal experiences have shaped their views and understanding of Canadian society in all its diversity. This process also requires that all candidates be assessed against consistent, transparent and merit‑based criteria, first and foremost, by an independent advisory board of highly qualified individuals. that reflect the highest standards of communities across Canada.
The independent advisory board for Supreme Court appointments, or IAB, is the heart of the selection process. I am pleased to be joined today by its chair, the Right Honourable Kim Campbell, who has contributed so much to the success of the Supreme Court appointment process through her stewardship of four nominations, including today's. Ms. Campbell never fails to inform and support this committee with characteristic intelligence and candour, and we owe her a deep debt of gratitude. I am looking forward to hearing her remarks today.
I am also deeply grateful to the individuals who served with Ms. Campbell as members of the IAB. These members are nominated not just by the government, but by organizations committed to the rule of law and to serving Canadians. They include the Canadian Bar Association, the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, the Canadian Judicial Council and the Council of Canadian Law Deans. The thoughtful nominees of these organizations and the dedicated service of these individuals on the IAB ensure that the judicial selection process mirrors a critical aspiration for the Supreme Court itself: that it truly reflect our society and be a place in which Canadians can see themselves and their life experiences represented.
The current selection process was initiated by Prime Minister Trudeau on February 19, 2021, to fill the position that will soon become vacant when Justice Abella retires.
As publicly stated in its terms of reference, the Independent Advisory Board for Supreme Court of Canada Judicial Appointments, or IAB, has been tasked with recommending candidates of the highest calibre who are functionally bilingual and representative of Canada's diversity.
In keeping with the long‑standing regional representation agreement, this selection process was open to all qualified individuals in Ontario. Interested candidates were given six weeks to submit their applications, after which the IAB reviewed them. This review included consultation with the Chief Justice of Canada, references and stakeholders, and personal meetings with some of the candidates. The IAB conducted its work in a confidential manner, as required by its terms of reference, and each member of the IAB signed a confidentiality agreement in advance.
At the end of the process, the IAB provided the Prime Minister with a report containing a shortlist of individuals, all of whom met the publicly announced merit criteria and who were the most distinguished. I then consulted on the shortlisted candidates to provide advice to the Prime Minister.
I consulted with chief justices, including the Chief Justice of Canada, the Attorney General of Ontario, cabinet colleagues, opposition justice critics, members of this committee and the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, and senior members of the bar. The Prime Minister then made his final selection.
I wish to stress, again, the confidentiality of this process, which is essential in ensuring that exceptional candidates come forward and speak to their life experiences and skills with honesty and candour. Members of Parliament, senators, and members of the bar were each required to complete a non-disclosure agreement.
All persons involved in conducting the process, including me, the Prime Minister, and members of the IAB, understand the importance of confidentiality in providing candidates with the fair treatment they deserve and the rigorous scrutiny that an appointment to the Supreme Court demands.
I would like to now invite the Right Hon. Kim Campbell to speak to the process from her perspective.
Dominic Cardy
View Dominic Cardy Profile
Hon. Dominic Cardy
2021-06-21 18:43
We had members of the Chinese Communist Party who were working for the Confucius Institute who have access to the databases and student information of New Brunswick students. I heard about that from members of the Chinese diaspora, who are extremely concerned about that fact.
Daniel Therrien
View Daniel Therrien Profile
Daniel Therrien
2021-06-21 11:51
I certainly agree that it is urgent to better regulate the issue, both in terms of human rights and in terms of having a solid framework regulating the use of data in order to protect privacy. It is urgent.
Daniel Therrien
View Daniel Therrien Profile
Daniel Therrien
2021-06-21 12:08
We do some, perhaps less than we should or could.
Certainly our role with respect to attempts by ill-intentioned people to access personal information of Canadians mostly has to do with ensuring that government and the private sector have the right security measures in place to protect against these attempts. However, when the level of the attempt reaches a criminal law level, we certainly refer individuals to the authorities, including the fraud centre.
Daniel Therrien
View Daniel Therrien Profile
Daniel Therrien
2021-06-21 12:10
It's a multi-faceted issue. It requires action by a number of actors. Not that long ago, there was an important impetus for advice to individual consumers: Be careful; do not put too much information on the Internet; use strong passwords.
That's all very true. People should be prudent. They should use rigorous passwords. However, I think it would be wrong to put too much responsibility on individual consumers in protecting their data.
Daniel Therrien
View Daniel Therrien Profile
Daniel Therrien
2021-06-21 12:11
An important part of the solution, I think, clearly lies in ensuring that government departments and private sector entities have the right security safeguards to protect their consumers or citizens from these attempts. We have seen many, many privacy breaches in the past years in Canada and elsewhere. I can think of Desjardins being a recent case in point, and other companies, which suggests that although companies, particularly large companies, take measures to protect information, it is not the priority that it should be.
My final point is that in order for companies to pay sufficient attention to this, having a law that provides for significant penalties, so that companies that profit from personal information protect it as they should, is part of the solution too.
Daniel Therrien
View Daniel Therrien Profile
Daniel Therrien
2021-06-21 12:14
As you say, my team is extremely talented and knowledgeable about privacy issues.
I inherited a group that was already excellent when I took office. I hope to leave my successor with a group that is just as good. As for a transfer of knowledge to a successor, plenty of people in Canada already very knowledgeable about privacy issues. I'm not sure it's a matter of transferring knowledge from one person to another as such.
I think my role over the next year will be to continue to make comments that I hope will be helpful not only in terms of the principles—remember that privacy is a human right—but also in terms of how to articulate those concepts in a way that protects citizens and allows the use of data for public purposes or even private, but still legitimate, purposes. I think that's what my role will be in the coming year.
It will then be up to the government and Parliament to find—
Daniel Therrien
View Daniel Therrien Profile
Daniel Therrien
2021-06-21 12:21
At the beginning of my mandate, there was a lot of emphasis on public and national security issues, and on measures that followed the events of September 11.
The Snowden phenomenon highlighted certain government practices. It's not all perfect, but we have made progress on those issues. Legislation has been passed to raise the bar on which departments [Technical difficulty—Editor] for national security purposes. Most importantly, independent oversight bodies have been established and are now in place within the public service and within Parliament. As I mentioned, not everything is perfect, but significant progress has been made.
In recent years, with Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and all the rest, there has been a lot of focus on what some call surveillance capitalism, where companies collect, process and disclose a lot of information about their consumers to provide services, but also to make money, of course. That is where we are at now, which is why it is extremely important that these issues be properly regulated through Bill C‑11 or its successor.
I have to say that recently we are seeing more and more public‑private partnerships. Clearview AI and the RCMP are just one example among many. This leads me to suggest that you think seriously about the relationship between the public sector and the private sector in terms of sharing personal information, and the idea of the same legislation governing both sectors, which we think would be extremely desirable. If two laws are used, it would be best if they had very similar principles, because data has no geographic borders and no boundaries between the public and private sectors. It is important that similar rules govern both sectors.
I would add that, to maintain the confidence of the public and consumers, it is essential that [Technical difficulty—Editor] result in penalties that are proportionate to the magnitude of the impact of the privacy breach on privacy. Order powers and consequent fines are therefore crucial. The reason for recommending substantial fines is not to be punitive. Rather, it is to ensure that the consequences for people whose privacy has been breached are proportionate to the consequences for the companies involved, so that, over time, imposing such a regime will result in governments, departments and companies properly protecting the personal information of the public and consumers.
Daniel Therrien
View Daniel Therrien Profile
Daniel Therrien
2021-06-21 12:25
I'll be brief. It's about the concept of privacy as a human right.
The issues we are talking about are extremely complex from a technical point of view, as everyone agrees. Despite the complexity of the technology and the privacy rules, it is clear to me that the goal should be for our Canadian values to be reflected in our laws. One of those values is to treat privacy as a fundamental right, and that is an important principle no matter how complex the technology is. If our goal is to ensure that our values in privacy or other areas are reflected in our laws on digital, I think we can't go wrong.
Daniel Therrien
View Daniel Therrien Profile
Daniel Therrien
2021-06-21 12:27
For more details, let me refer you to my submission.
Generally speaking, I would say that the principles can be clear and unambiguous, but not the rules. I agree with many of the speakers who speak favourably of the importance of having principle‑based privacy laws, such as the principle of corporate social responsibility. That principle needs to be defined broadly. Since technology is constantly and exponentially changing, I think it would be wishful thinking to believe that it is possible to have very precise, clear and permanent rules.
I agree that we must aim at the principle of transposing our values into our legislation. You are clearly asking the right question in asking how to do this in practice. There is a need for general principles, defined flexibly enough to accommodate the evolution of technology, but not so specific as to be detrimental to it, with the aim of both protecting privacy and allowing the use of data for the benefit of society.
Daniel Therrien
View Daniel Therrien Profile
Daniel Therrien
2021-06-21 12:30
Yes. We think that for Canada to be competitive—and the government underlined this in Bill C-11, and I would completely agree.... We have a confidence problem, a trust problem. Consistently Canadians, at the level of 90% or so, have expressed their concerns that privacy is not currently respected. They continue to use the Internet, because frankly you cannot live outside of the digital world in 2021. However, they still have important concerns, so we have a trust issue.
In order to deal with the trust issue, you need to have laws that enhance trust. That means ensuring that with regard to privacy laws, rights and values, consumers and citizens see that the legislation is apt to protect rights and values and produces proportional consequences, penalties, if these rights and values are not respected.
The law should provide for flexibility for companies to use data for legitimate commercial purposes, and our submissions I think go in that vein. There is no opposition really between privacy protection and economic development or innovation. As far as our relationship with the Competition Bureau and other regulators is concerned, it's extremely important that digital regulators are able to co-operate and share information so as to have an effective regulatory framework across all sectors. We have a good relationship with the Competition Bureau.
Daniel Therrien
View Daniel Therrien Profile
Daniel Therrien
2021-06-23 15:43
Thank you to the Chair and members of the committee for your invitation to share our views on your current study.
As you said, I am accompanied by Gregory Smolynec, the Deputy Commissioner. Due to a prior engagement, I cannot be here for the entire meeting, but Mr. Smolynec will remain afterwards to address any questions that you may wish to ask.
I am here to speak to you today about what the Privacy Act does and does not allow with respect to the production of documents under provisions of the Act related to disclosures of personal information.
Let me begin by stating that the role of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner is to oversee compliance with the duties and obligations in both the Privacy Act (the public sector law) and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (the private sector law).
The public sector law, the Privacy Act, enacted in 1983, applies to the personal information handling practices of federal government departments and agencies. The act defines personal information as information about an identifiable individual that has been recorded in any form. The act states that personal information collected by federal institutions can only be used for the purpose for which it was collected, for uses consistent with that purpose, or for purposes specifically provided for under subsection 8(2) of the Act. I believe this to be the provision most relevant to this discussion.
According to the Privacy Act, personal information cannot be disclosed without consent unless exceptions delineated in subsection 8(2) of the Privacy Act apply, two of which are most relevant for this discussion.
The first I would highlight is paragraph 8(2)(m). This provision allows for the disclosure of personal information where, “in the opinion of the head of the institution...the public interest...clearly outweighs any invasion of privacy that could result from the disclosure, or” if the “disclosure would clearly benefit the individual to whom the information relates”. Fundamental to this exercise of discretion is that there must be a clear public interest in the disclosure. The discretion to disclose or not to disclose personal information lies with the institutional head.
The second relevant provision is paragraph 8(2)(c) of the Privacy Act, which allows for the disclosure of personal information to “a court, person or body with jurisdiction” and the power “to compel the production of information” through the issuance of an order, subpoena or warrant. In relation to this provision, we recognize Parliament's authority to compel the production of documents that may contain personal information and acknowledge that the Privacy Act therefore allows for the disclosure of personal information to a committee.
In previous instances where this issue has arisen, we have recommended that committees explore a range of options to ensure that the authority of committees is exercised in ways that do not unduly invade on privacy. For example, mechanisms that might be considered include having committees come to an agreement that they will limit the personal information sought to only those cases that are clearly necessary to resolve the public interest at issue. Another possibility would be to hold meetings in camera where personal information is to be examined and discussed, or ensuring that there are proper procedures for securing that information once it is in the possession of both the committee as a whole as well as individual members. These are examples of privacy protective measures.
We hope—
Philippe Dufresne
View Philippe Dufresne Profile
Philippe Dufresne
2021-06-23 17:08
We have received approximately 6,307 documents.
Philippe Dufresne
View Philippe Dufresne Profile
Philippe Dufresne
2021-06-23 17:08
They have. Excuse me, some that have been received have not been released to the committee because they have not been translated, so 6,307 have been tabled—
Results: 1 - 15 of 935 | Page: 1 of 63

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
>
>|
Export As: XML CSV RSS

For more data options, please see Open Data