Hon. Frances Lankin: Thank you for your report, Senator Dean. I am very pleased to see the thorough job that the committee did.

I wonder if you could comment if there has been any further correspondence or communication from people within the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada with respect to concerns they may have had or how those concerns may have been alleviated by encompassing and using the existing, known and tried-and-true legal standard threshold.

Senator Dean: Thank you for the question, Senator Lankin. I believe we did receive submissions from the Privacy Commissioner, and they have been received previously with respect to this concern. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner was supportive of moving to a standard that was clearer and more definitive.

Senator Lankin: This might be more difficult for you to answer, and maybe it would be fair to wait until the sponsor of the bill speaks, but do we have any indication whether the government will view these amendments positively?

Senator Dean: I will speculate here just by reading the room. With respect to clarifying and strengthening a requirement to ensure that a digital device is disconnected from the network, the officials told us that would be covered in some regulations and that it is, indeed, the current practice.

I didn’t hear concerns about that being toughened up through an amendment, I will say. Similarly, officials told us that they did have some pre-existing provisions in terms of solicitor-client privilege, but, again, I wasn’t hearing concerns about those being replicated for certainty. There clearly was a difference of views with respect to the legal threshold, though.

[Translation]