The clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-27 in the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology are ongoing. I've managed to listen to a number of them.

Unlike the very first meeting, I'm happy to report the committee now looks more functional. The lawmakers are regularly coming to compromise agreements in order to move forward with their very important work.

Some of the amendments the committee has approved include adding a definition to the term "lawful authority." Interestingly, the committee came to an agreement that essentially codifies the Supreme Court decision in R. v. Spencer. I didn't record the wording of the exact definition, but essentially organizations will now evaluate the lawful authority being identified by government institutions to make sure it meets a certain standard before disclosing personal information to that government institution without consent.

Another amendment put forth by the Conservative Party was to include a definition of the term "minor." Most members seemed content to set the age at 18, but they did debate whether that was too high. They didn't end up voting on this amendment, but reserved it for Monday's meeting.

Probably the most interesting debate was about the wording surrounding the term "anonymous." Because truly anonymized data is not covered by the law at all, it is an important concept. But setting the actual standard for what is anonymous proved to be the subject of much concern.

The government proposed generally acceptable best practices be the standard used to evaluate if a data set is anonymous or not, but in the end, committee members voted to remove the reference to generally acceptable best practices. The main reason was fear that the generally acceptable best practices would be a standard industry sets for itself, and committee members didn't like that idea. I do wonder, now, if such a rigid definition will result in a situation that is virtually impossible to meet.

Lastly, there was a discrepancy between the English and French versions of proposed law which was a rather good catch and that the committee easily agreed to fix.

All in all, I was left mildly encouraged by the progress. I'm still not sure that they will have enough time to get through everything before the next election, because they have an awfully large number of amendments to debate. So far, they have been meeting for about four or five hours per week and I think they may need to schedule a few more than that if they want to get through it all.

There you have your latest report from Ottawa. Have a great weekend and remember to register for the IAPP Canada Privacy Symposium!