Your proceedings are of particular interest to the Law Commission because they show the necessity of a multidisciplinary approach to the social problems that affect us all. As a law reform agency responsible to the Parliament of Canada, the mission of The Law Commission of Canada is to make recommendations to Parliament for improving, updating and renewing the law to ensure that it is just, equitable and accessible to all Canadians. Since the Commission's mission is to invent new concepts of law, it must therefore question the traditional ways of thinking the law. It must always ask why a given notion has been invented, who used it and for whom.
Confidentiality raises interesting questions in the legal perspective.
I will deal with confidentiality as an issue of human relationships, rather than as an attribute of private life and therefore of civil or constitutional law. The right to confidential information is served well enough by an analysis of rights and liberties acting on the principle of human dignity and the individual's right to privacy. I believe other speakers will say more on this. I also believe that an analysis founded on the usefulness of the concept of confidentiality in human relationships could open new vistas in the public debate. First, I will question the reasons why confidentiality has been protected in the framework of human relationships.