Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to
take this opportunity to publicly thank our Information and Privacy Commissioner for a lot of hard work that goes on behind the scenes for someone who, up until now, was in a part-time position. We know, moving forward, we will have the luxury of having someone in the office full time. I think this is going to be a huge step in terms of providing transparency and accountability to all stakeholders across the Northwest Territories. For that, I want to say I’m very pleased that we’re going to be looking at a full-time Privacy Commissioner in the near future.
One of the things that I wanted to echo, and it’s probably not going to be captured in the motions and it probably was not captured in the report. It’s something of an observation that, as we move forward, I think the Information and Privacy Commissioner serves an important role for someone who should be scrutinizing a lot of our acts in the infancy stage of an act or basically when the act is being brought into draft stage. I feel that if we’re able to bring the Privacy Commissioner in early on, it will probably negate a lot of concerns when the bill is tabled and when the bill goes out for public consultation. I’m going to challenge the government.
I’m
going
to
challenge
the
departments and Ministers to make sure that their offices work directly with the Information and Privacy Commissioner as her role becomes more definitive in a full-time capacity.
That said, I also want to echo the fact that with the health-specific privacy legislation coming on board, I believe this fall,
we’re going to see a lot more
intervention when our health care system is being
put into action and also being tested for its accountability and its issues around circle of care and custodian of information. I know the Information and Privacy Commissioner is going to be playing a very key and pertinent role and, again, as a committee member, I’m looking forward to her astute judgment and observation at a high level and protecting the public
’s information and their privacy.