I'd like to thank the member for her question, Mr. Chair.
I think we heard a number of important elements that both make up the basis of what the minister spoke to and also reinforce important parts of the bill. What we heard through the dialogue with stakeholders was a commitment that privacy legislation is important to modernize and that we absolutely need to bring it up to fit for purpose in the digital era.
We heard some very particular aspects from stakeholders that I think are a reflection of what was at the heart of some of what was discussed in the remarks.
One, we heard very clearly from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner that enshrining the fundamental right to privacy is a very important element in ensuring that the foundations of our private sector privacy law are rooted in individuals' ability to enjoy privacy in their ongoing commercial relationships with industry.
Second, we heard a number of elements related to the enforcement powers. We heard a lot of recognition of the very important work that the bill was already doing with respect to bringing enforcement powers into a modern era. The enforcement mechanisms under PIPEDA, as they currently stand, lack a lot of the capacities for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to meaningfully engage in enforcement activity. There is no capacity, necessarily, for meaningful penalties. There's no capacity for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to issue orders or to suspend activities related to the collection and use of personal information when there are actual harms occurring. All of that was reinforced in many of the stakeholder discussions.
It was also reinforced that there need to be important guardrails, fairness and due diligence around the use of that enforcement power. Many people underscored the value of a tribunal, which would be a check, in some ways, on what are extraordinary powers now being afforded to the Privacy Commissioner.
With the amendments related to consent or compliance agreements, the notion was that, in many cases, you might be able to get to the heart of an issue between the industrial player and the Privacy Commissioner without actually having to go to the tribunal to pursue an administrative monetary penalty. Providing that additional flexibility to come to a common agreement is an important element that could be added in.
So, we have the fundamental right of privacy, the checks and balances around meaningful enforcement, the new capacities for the Privacy Commissioner around that effective enforcement, and then some definitional work. People dug in, not surprisingly, in the many meetings—many of which were with a lot of technical experts and specialists—and spoke to the fact that we need to be very clear about things like de-identified information and about the definitions in a number of spaces, and I think you'll find that those are important aspects that we've introduced in this bill.