Senator Gold: Thank you, senator, for your question. Of course, the government and I share the concern, as we all should, that the application of any legal standard could encourage a bias or racial profiling.

I do believe that the general concern speaks more to the fact that with digital devices, unlike other kinds of measures — and I addressed this in my speech — the officer may have no specific contravention in mind and no knowledge of what he or she may find because they are simply in the moment, although there would have been objective indicators to signal that something may be being hidden.

We had testimony before the committee as to what some of these indicators might be. I believe that it is still very much focused on the individual before the officer who has, in some way or other, in the answering of the normal questions one is asked, given some indication that there is something amiss and, therefore, is then required to go to a second stage of questioning, at which point the officer may very well have reached the conclusion that the threshold has been met.

Senator Gold: The attendance of the official at the party was a mistake and unacceptable. It has been so stated by the minister and by the Prime Minister himself. It shall not happen again.

Senator MacDonald: According to the answer tabled in the other place in February of this year, the Department of National Defence awarded a contract of $125,000 of taxpayer dollars to one consultant firm to process just one Access to Information and Privacy, or ATIP, request. As well, the document showed that Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada paid $36,000 to one consulting firm for a contract between February and March of 2020, and processed no access to information requests — not one.

Senator Gold, how does the government possibly justify these contracts?

Senator Gold: I will have to make inquiries as to the nature of the contracts, as well as the nature and extent of the requests. As senators will undoubtedly know, one request can encompass a desire to access thousands if not millions of documents, which may or may not be easily accessible and would have to be reviewed under the appropriate circumstances. So again, as dramatic as the figure seems, I will have to make inquiries and provide proper factual context for the answer.

Senator Dupuis: Senator Gold, thank you for encouraging me to ask the question in committee. I have been doing that consistently for years in the Senate, and I am trying to find a more efficient way of obtaining the information that is often “missing,” as the Auditor General regularly laments in his annual report. I take note of your commitment to get the information, and I thank you.

The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Ataullahjan, do you have another question?

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Senator Gold, will you take a question, please?

Senator Jaffer: May I ask you another question?

Senator Omidvar: Senator Gold, I would have felt far more comfortable with this bill if it had first been preceded by the bill setting up the independent civilian oversight of the CBSA.

Do you have a comment on the timing of this?

Senator Gold: Again, let me answer it simply this way: Until changes are made, anybody who reckons they have been treated unfairly have only recourse to the existing procedures.

Again, Bill S-7, as amended before us, sets out, for the first time, a legal threshold governing the searches of digital devices. It is a very narrowly focused law responding, as it does, to the court decisions to which I referred.

The much larger questions about oversight will have to wait until another day. When we do have the opportunity to receive such a bill, I have every confidence that we will study it with the same diligence and intensity that we did this bill as well.

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, when shall this bill be read the third time?

(On motion of Senator Boehm, bill placed on the Orders of the Day for third reading at the next sitting of the Senate.)

The Hon. the Speaker: Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, I wish to draw your attention to the presence in the gallery of three refugees from Yemen who are visiting the Senate today on World Refugee Day: Lamees Alwasabi, Kais Al-ariani and Mohammed Al‑shuwaiter. They are the guests of the Honourable Senator Jaffer.

On behalf of all honourable senators, I welcome you to the Senate of Canada.

The Hon. the Speaker: Is leave granted, honourable senators?

Senator Gold: When I said I wasn’t sure of all the facts, I wasn’t referring to the statistics so much as all the circumstances surrounding the cause of the delays.

I’m not aware of the proportion of workers who are still working at home nor the many different reasons that may explain that. I’ll certainly look into it and report back. Again, I can assure the chamber that the government is very aware of the unreasonably long delays and the impact that’s having on Canadians and is doing its very best to address the situation.

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Again, I’m not sure it’s accurate to describe the work that was done as censoring government documents. Be that as it may, I don’t have the details of the work that was done. I will certainly make inquiries and report back.

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Senator, thank you for your question. The Cannabis Act established a new control framework for cannabis, and was designed to better protect public health, public safety and minimize harms associated with cannabis use. As you properly point out, the act requires a legislative review to start within three years after coming into force and a report to be tabled in both houses of Parliament within 18 months after the review begins. The government remains committed to putting into place a credible, evidence-driven process for the legislative review which will assess the progress made towards achieving the objectives of the act.

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Honourable senators, my question is for the government leader in the Senate. On Friday morning, Canadians who had waited overnight in front of Service Canada office in Laval in the hopes of obtaining their passports were expelled from the premises when the police were called in to disperse the crowd. This is not service; this is shameful.

Yesterday, Brian Lilley reported the surge in passport applications that has completely overwhelmed this Trudeau government is actually just 55% of what the government processed before the pandemic — an average of 75,000 per week now versus 90,000 to 98,000 per week then.

Leader, what is your government’s response to this report? Is this correct? If no one who processes passports was laid off, as Minister Gould has said, then why can your government not keep up with the demand?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for the question and for underlining the very troubling situation that affects so many Canadians waiting for their passport renewals.

I don’t know whether all details are correct. I do know that the government has invested significantly to engage additional personnel to support and supplement the current working staff to address this problem. The challenge is a serious one, and the government is working hard to address it.

I’m advised that the focus is on ensuring that anyone who has travel planned within 25 business days are given priority for service and, although there is no question that processing times are longer than prior to the pandemic and longer than they should reasonably be, 72% of applications are being processed within the service standards.