I think we've been really clear in explaining our rationale for why we think it would be more efficient in this model. I think we've also been really clear to note that in some cases the provincial commissioners don't have the power to issue administrative monetary penalties.

The previous commissioner was reacting a number of years ago to a different bill and a different approach. The current Privacy Commissioner has outlined an interest in seeing compliance agreements be more flexible in their approach. The government's amendment does in fact propose to make that a feature.

As my colleague Ms. Angus pointed out earlier, the ability to change the level of appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal rather than the Federal Court, which is also something that Commissioner Dufresne has pointed out, is not something that can be done in this proceeding, because Bill C-27 doesn't actually open the Federal Courts Act.

The other approaches that Commissioner Dufresne has highlighted have in fact been taken on board. Our conversations with the Privacy Commissioner suggest that there is an openness and an understanding of why this could be important. In fact, in his most recent testimony to this table, the OPC himself suggested that:

Since the bill provides the authority to issue orders and significant fines, more procedural fairness may be warranted.

To address that concern, the government could say, yes, more procedural fairness is needed. That's the model used in Quebec and other parts of the world.

Even in his own testimony before this committee, he did in fact raise that issue and acknowledge that there could be good reasons for doing so.

I would also point out that in your commentary earlier, the way it was presented made it seem like the commissioner could not act quickly. In fact, the exact opposite is true under CPPA. The commissioner can act quickly to issue orders, both compliance orders and stop orders.

This notion that somehow this tribunal function would slow down the ability for the commissioner to act in situations that are requiring speed is not the case, and this notion that somehow investigations or joint investigations would be impeded only because of an administrative monetary penalty, which, by the way, would always be set distinctly anyway.... The ability to collaborate on an investigation is not at all hampered by having a tribunal in place. The only thing the tribunal is responsible for is determining the ultimate amount of any given administrative monetary penalty.

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