Industry committee  Right now there are no bars at all, so there's no gating at all for individuals who wish to pursue direct court action against—

Industry committee  That's with this amendment.

Industry committee  In the first instance, in the current understanding of the PRA, as it was introduced in the statute—or as in this draft—there is a bar, which is that the commissioner has heard your complaint and ruled that it is actually a violation. Therefore, you're then allowed to proceed on the civil basis for penalties.

Industry committee  Essentially what it does is create a dual track. You have one track where individuals essentially don't have to wait for a trusted entity to actually have made findings related to privacy violations, and instead those who can—

Industry committee  —and are privileged enough to be able to mount a case would be able to do so. We have seen instances in other legislation where there are private rights of action without necessary conditions, and that does potentially incentivize behaviour and encourage people to see what they can get through and then to share in any benefits that come from that.

Industry committee  I'd like to thank the member for his question. As it relates to the current subamendment, what is being reintroduced is a portion of the “Private Right of Action” section—the first five lines, which is essentially proposed subsection 107(1). In both the French and the English, you'll note there are prerequisites for the purposes of the private right of action.

Industry committee  I'll just quickly say that Statistics Canada has long been at the forefront of new models for utilizing technology to aid and abet the statistical system. It wasn't AI, but certainly their pioneering efforts in waste water as a means to be able to continue to understand both the use of drugs and the relative level of vaccines and pandemic incidents was novel.

Industry committee  There is, in fact, a millimetre wave consultation that's being held. There's also one on...I'm going to get the name of it wrong.

Industry committee  It's a separate framework for essentially what we call unused segments of the sector, so those are the two spectrum frameworks that are still out.

Industry committee  It's different, so “use it or lose it” is part of the build-out conditions that are part of the ultimate result of a spectrum auction. When spectrum is actually auctioned, it then has conditions assigned to it, including licence conditions for what the build-out rate is and how quickly it has to be put in force.

Industry committee  Just quickly, I'd say that it's a law of general economic application that applies across the entirety of the economy. It will modify behaviour as it relates to how people approach the overall actions they're going to take in areas in which competition has a really big bearing. That's things like mergers and acquisitions.

Industry committee  We have proposed to highlight a number of high-impact AI systems that would be subject to regulation and that would have obligations in terms of transparency, red teaming and some of the protections against potential harm and bias that would be put in place as a function of that.

Industry committee  The entire regime is overseen by the Privacy Commissioner, who has considerable capacity, such as the power to make orders and recommend AMPs and the ability to enter into consent agreements to modify the behaviour of those who potentially violate the privacy of Canadians. All of this is interpreted within the broad category of a fundamental right to privacy, which was inserted in the preamble and at the outset of the bill.

Industry committee  I'm not sufficiently familiar, as this hearing today is on the privacy bill, with the full international examples of Crown copyright.

Industry committee  As it relates to the government's position on Crown copyright, it's not a singular position. I think it's important to look at the Treasury Board guidance that relates to the publicity of information generated by the Crown, including the open-by-default standard and the importance of ensuring that information is actually openly shared.