Thank you, Mr. Chair. This amendment is similar to Nunavut's section 9 of their legislation to address information-sharing with other organizations. It would ensure that any ownership and exclusive rights issues to the information that we share must be addressed by the terms of the agreement to the satisfaction of the Minister. This would, in effect, ensure that Indigenous organizations and governments and other third parties, including NGOs, private corporations, et cetera, could place conditions into information-sharing agreements that protect their ownership of the data. Without this section, no such conditions are required, and the disposition of any information collected in these agreements would fall to the sole discretion of the Statistics Bureau, or ownership issues would be unresolved at best.

Earlier the Minister spoke about ensuring that this legislation is consistent with other statistics acts throughout the country, and we, as the standing committee, reviewed those acts and the legislative framework that underpins those statistical agencies. With the ever-increasing importance of information in the modern world, the committee felt very strongly that that needed to be addressed in any third-party agreements.

We received a submission from the Information and Privacy Commissioner that was very helpful in understanding the impact that this information has on the personal privacy of individuals and organizations. Data-sharing agreements are outside the government's normal possession of information, so they have to be handled differently. In this sense, where there has been a great deal of debate in Canada around the receipt of statistical information from Indigenous governments and nations to provincial and the federal government, we wanted to ensure that that issue was properly addressed in the legislation itself.

Now, certainly, the Minister can come up with any agreement that the Minister wants to and address any issue, but this gives certainty to any organization that is concerned about the particulars of ownership, copyright, and rights to use information that those will be part of any agreement signed into. It is not saying that the government will hold ownership, copyright, and the exclusive right to use their information; rather, it is saying that the Minister must address that concern before an agreement is entered into to the satisfaction of both parties.

That is what we intended with this amendment, to ensure that the security and ownership of information given to the Statistics Bureau was protected, and that it is clear to any member of the public and any organization concerned around the collection of statistical information that, at the end of the day, ownership will be something that will come up and will be part of any agreement that they sign with the government. Thank you, Mr. Chair.