Information & Ethics committee  You have touched on a very important point. I sometimes think that after the terrible events of 9/11, 7/7 in Britain, and so on, part of the cry that went out was for information sharing über alles. If we just broke down all the walls and shared all our information, the world would be a safer place.

Information & Ethics committee  It's a very good discussion and a very thoughtful book. I highly recommend it.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. We exchange all sorts of information. At times we have to make judgment calls. Again, the answer is in part a process answer and in part a substance answer. First of all, we have to have an arrangement with the country. Second of all, we have to have had enough experience with them that we know they are going to respect our caveats that we've put on the information.

Information & Ethics committee  Well, in terms of the ten, I have reviewed them. I confess that I don't have written notes. The first recommendation is about the necessity test. You will see, from my opening remarks, that we actually have a necessity test for collection in our act. Section 12 of our act says that the “Service shall collect, by investigation or otherwise, to the extent that it is strictly necessary”, information and intelligence respecting activities we suspect of being threats to the security of Canada.

Information & Ethics committee  There are several answers to that. One is that in some cases the Privacy Commissioner, frankly, wouldn't like us to get rid of it, because you want to leave a paper trail or a trail so that someone can check up afterwards as to whether you were collecting it properly or not, if you see what I mean.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I know. But in fact what happens is the first time, frankly, you destroy something, someone comes along and says, “Why did you destroy it? We wanted to review it to ensure that you collected it properly.” So there is again that balance, and we're subject to the archives act, and all of those kinds of things.

Information & Ethics committee  I'll answer the first one, if I may, which is the one about information-sharing and foreign arrangements, because I think it is an important point, and this was one that again came up when the CSIS Act was first passed in 1984. The way we dealt with it was that in section 17 of our act it says that before we enter into any arrangement with a foreign agency....

Information & Ethics committee  That's one of the areas I think is a very good example of what Bob was talking about. We believe there is a capacity there. However, in some ways the chill—and perhaps I shouldn't mention the litigious nature of our society, of which we had, perhaps, an indication in the first 40 minutes of this meeting—has meant that people are cautious.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I'll just pick up on that point, because I think my colleague and this committee did a review of PIPEDA recently, and I know that you focused in on subsection 7(3), for example.

Information & Ethics committee  Frankly, I'd go back to my opening remarks about a process answer rather than a substance answer. First of all, you try to define it as well as possible to minimize the effect that we would be either tempted or able to do something indirectly that we couldn't do directly. The first thing you would try to do is come up with words that would ensure that wouldn't be the case.

Information & Ethics committee  The first answer would be that if you asked about your file you probably would get a “we neither confirm nor deny” answer from us if it was part of the operational holdings. That wouldn't be the end of it, because our system is set up so that under section 41 of our act, any person can complain about any act or thing that they believe the service has done.

Information & Ethics committee  As you probably know, with CSIS there's always a question as to how much information is out there. However, Info Source is the government-published directory under the Privacy Act of all of the data banks that every department and agency has. We're in there, and we've listed ten different data banks--which is publicly available--and they're described in some detail.

Information & Ethics committee  Like Bob, I'm not a member of the Privacy Act club. My old law boss always used to say that the world is made up of clubs, and it just depends which club you're a member of. There is the Privacy Commissioner's club. I noticed that when the Privacy Commissioner testified here, there was a conference in Montreal with 700, I think it was, participants, and so on and so forth.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm happy to defer my brief opening remarks, which were only about a page long, if members would like to go straight to questions. I was simply going to introduce the service and make some general comments.

Information & Ethics committee  No. I was going to wait for questions for that. My only general comment is that in some cases her remarks are quite general, and I think it's important to look at particular agencies, mandates, and situations.