Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question.

I'd like to organize my answer into two buckets. One is where this comes from and the lengthy case law that defines what reasonableness is. My second bucket is how this compares with some of the other proposals, including a notion of proportionality.

In terms of reasonableness, there are decades of case law established by the Supreme Court on what it means in an administrative law context. That's exactly what we're talking about here with orders in council. They do not deal with the appointments of personnel but rather with orders to telecommunications service providers, in particular, on whether to limit the use of or restrict certain forms of equipment, including high-risk vendor equipment. There's extensive case law on this. The Supreme Court's 2019 Vavilov decision goes into great detail on, specifically, what the criteria are for a reasonable decision.

Those criteria—to get to my second bucket—include principles of proportionality. That's in the Supreme Court's decision. This amendment does not bring up proportionality as separate text. It does not say “reasonable and proportionate”. It doesn't do that because proportionality is already bundled into the reasonableness standard, as established by the Supreme Court. First, it's there. Second, using it on a stand-alone basis is only done in a Charter of Rights context. The Oakes test established by the Supreme Court for reasonable limits on charter rights includes proportionality, but it's specific to charter rights and not, say, the regulation of Bell, Telus or Rogers. It includes a standard called minimal impairment, which asks the government to look at the least intrusive means of accomplishing an objective.

For instance, in this context, rather than have a regulation to restrict certain equipment, maybe you could have a subsidy program to pay the companies to remove that equipment. If that were applied in an administrative law context such as this, there would be the risk of orders being overturned by accident or unintentionally. However, to the extent there are concerns about charter rights, the decisions of the Supreme Court already apply.

Thank you.