Bill C-42 (Historical)

Strengthening Aviation Security Act

An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act

This enactment amends the Aeronautics Act so that the operator of an aircraft that is due to fly over the United States in the course of an international flight may provide information to a competent authority of that country.

Strengthening Aviation Security Act

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member is on the right track. That is why I suggested he get together with his own Liberal caucus tomorrow and iron out where it stands on the bill. Its new critic, the member for Markham—Unionville, says he only saw the bill two days ago, while the member for Eglinton—Lawrence claimed to have read it the day it was introduced on June 17, the last day Parliament sat. So clearly, the Liberal caucus members are not really talking to one another about the bill. Then another Liberal member made a great speech, basically supporting the member for Eglinton—Lawrence. So, we have two Liberals who sound as if they do not like the bill and one who says he only heard about two days ago and it sounds okay to him and maybe we could sort out any problems it has in committee.

I think the Liberals are on the right track. I think they are going in the right direction. They can discuss it in caucus tomorrow.

The member's advice to the government is good, though. Maybe it should look at pulling the bill and coming back with something more palatable. I think it would give the Bloc the opportunity to have a breather too, because I think the Bloc critic today did not seem to clearly understand just where things were going with this bill either. So perhaps we will have another 15 minutes of debate, we will finish for the day and then it will be time to discuss this tomorrow in more depth.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we talk about the accountability of the current government and of course there is absolutely none. We just have to look at the Minister of Natural Resources and the fiasco with the government buildings.

When we see a bill such as this one, it is basically a clear threat to our freedom and an invasion of our privacy. Maybe my colleague would like to speak a bit about what happened with the no-fly list, how Ted Kennedy ended up on it, how the information that is being provided and the wrong information that sometimes is put on there would actually impact a person, and why we are so dead against this type of information going out to these other countries.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think I have been to Washington once over the last 10 years when I have not been told by a member of Congress that he or she has had some problem at the airport that should not have happened, dealing with this flight situation. So clearly the system put in place, Homeland Security, has become a huge monster. Some might say it is bit out of control. We do not know if it is achieving results. I do not have the statistics. I had them before, on the growth of this agency. However, the number of people and the amount of money this agency eats up in a year is just unbelievable. It is incumbent upon governments like the one here to stand up to those agencies, because they will put pressure on us. They have to have checks and balances in their own system, where United States senators and congressmen actually stand up and take a stand against their own Homeland Security and say that it has gone far enough, it is out of control and it is spending too much.

We have no problem with security, as long as it is smart security. We do not want to be running off, spending huge amounts of money on systems that do not necessarily work. Thickening a border when the criminal elements are simply walking across it or driving around it on snowmobiles is not the answer. We are just tying up our own good hard-working citizens in knots over something that should not be done. We have to keep forcefully putting this message across to the Americans, because at the lower levels, at the state levels, those local officials get it. Those local elected officials in South Dakota and North Dakota understand that thickening the border is not where the national government should be going. So, there are allies out there; the government just has to start talking with them.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I must admit that I have been fascinated by this legislation.

I was checking some of the blues of members who have spoken, particularly the critic for transport, and one of the questions that has come up is with regard to the kinds of information that might be there under the control of an operator. The summary actually includes things such as name, gender, passport number, et cetera; however he stated that the authorized foreign governments may request more specific information.

Bill C-42 particularly states that, if the foreign jurisdiction has passed a law requiring it, that information be provided if a plane not only lands in that jurisdiction but also flies over it. Much of the discussion has been with regard to our relationship with the United States, but most of the members who have spoken and raised some concerns on this have tried to answer a couple of questions.

Number one, what does it mean when this bill says that this is going to be known as the Strengthening Aviation Security Act? In itself, it does not. It has nothing to do with strengthening aviation security. What it does is grant an exemption to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA. It basically provides that opportunity whereby the operators will be able to disclose personal information that otherwise would be prohibited under PIPEDA.

The bill is very short, and I do not want to repeat what other members have said about it, but we have talked in the context of the United States. We know about the no-fly list, we know about all the terrorist issues and we are basically trying to identify whether or not there are any risk elements here. I suspect that we could, but I am not so sure that there may not be some unintended consequences of expanding the information required to be provided to what would be required under the legislation of a foreign jurisdiction.

The United States may very well ask for much broader information than simply a name, address, passport number, et cetera. There may be other information that may logically flow. I guess the enabling part of this is that it refers to information in the custody or control of the operator, being the airline. I wanted to raise that concern.

The fact is that there have been questions, and if we look at the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety, we see that he said this is basically to make sure that Canadians who want to travel to other countries are safe and secure and that they are able to travel, because if we do not comply with the requirements of a foreign jurisdiction, then that flight may not be able to go there. That means that businesspeople cannot go and do their business. That means that tourists cannot go there.

However if we carry that to its logical extension, if any country were to say, “Sorry, you are not going to be able to fly over our jurisdiction, or in fact land here, unless you provide this information”, all of a sudden the relationship between two countries becomes very problematic. In fact it could raise an enormous amount of difficulty in terms of trade and other activities.

One of the questions I raise is with regard to military aircraft. Does that mean a foreign jurisdiction can say, “I want to know everybody on the plane. How many troops are on there?” This is information that would be in the control of the operator, if we take this literally. I am hoping, and I am pretty sure, that somewhere in the rules of the game the government is playing on this, there is an exclusion with regard to that.

The title with regard to the citation is the Strengthening Aviation Security Act. The protection issue actually is handled under what is called the passenger protect program.

The legislative summary says that the Aeronautics Act is the authority for the federal government program called the passenger protect program, formally known as PPP and informally known as the no-fly list, under which Transport Canada provides aircraft operators with a list of names of potential passengers that must be checked before issuing boarding passes. That is referred to as the specified persons list.

There has been much discussion about this program. In fact, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has done an audit of the passenger protect program of Transport Canada and made a number of observations, and I found, interestingly enough, that it had sufficient concerns that it indicated it would review this again in 2011. Even with regard to the existing program, the Privacy Commissioner has indicated there are some areas of concern.

If we broadened the scope of this and we start dealing with other jurisdictions that may have a variety of information requirements for whatever reason, we have to ask ourselves whether or not it opens up a bigger ballpark of activity than currently exists.

I am not satisfied that this simply is a bill that relates to the United States, because if it were then it would have been specifically dedicated to addressing the United States and not foreign states.

Even though the bill is about 14 lines and forms the entire clause, the amendment to this legislation is only about 20 words. It adds the words “or fly over a foreign state and land outside Canada” and adds the words “or fly over” a foreign state in accordance with regulations. Those words alone would not mean anything to anybody. In fact, reading this clause, even with the amended words in there, is probably not going to answer all the questions because we have to see the context in which this clause fits.

In clause 2 of the bill, subsection 4.83(1) is being amended and it refers specifically to subsection 7(3) of the act. We need to have the act in front of us as well. Not only that, but the bill also refers to the regulations. If we look for the regulations on the statutes website, we will see there are piles of regulations, and I still have yet to be able to find the specific regulation that relates to the particular clause being amended.

I get the sense from what people have said so far that the government seems to think this is something it has to do to comply with U.S. requirements. However, there may be some unintended consequences. I am not convinced, and I do not think a lot of members are convinced, that the government has thought this through as it relates to other jurisdictions. We understand sovereignty of air space.

Canadians were a little concerned even when the United States required information be provided when Canadian aircraft flew over American airspace even though it was going between two Canadian points. All of a sudden the scope of information being provided becomes a very intrusive concept to Canadians, considering the problems we have been having in terms of maintenance of records and the privacy issues that have been swirling around in the media of late, like people's medical records with regard to Veterans Affairs officials.

Whenever members have questions of this kind of breadth it raises the point: Why is it that the government did not take the time to properly brief members of Parliament as to the who, what, where, when and why?

Why is it that the legislative summary, for instance, is very weak in terms of the content? It spends more time talking about the passenger protect program than it does about this legislation.

It does not address some of the analysis. It talks a lot about PIPEDA and the importance of PIPEDA protecting privacy, but it does not deal with identifying the specific information, as defined, that would qualify as being in the custody or control of the operator.

That kind of fundamental information would seem to be important enough to articulate in debate, to provide in briefing sessions, to present in order to earn the support and the confidence of members. It is amazing how even the smallest bills with the smallest amendments seem to cause the most difficulty for members, and it is simply because there are questions that are unanswered.

I do not think it is helpful to say that the opposition parties are getting together and are not for anything. I am sorry, but we have had many bills that have been introduced and for months never called for debate. If things are important, the priority of those matters should be raised when that debate starts by the spokesman on behalf of the government, and it did not happen. It did not happen in the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety. It gave just two brief points. It glossed over a few other things, saying not to worry, to be happy, to remember that this is the United States and this is safety and security.

However, as many members have pointed out already, the bill does not improve the safety and security of Canadian passengers travelling. Privacy is the issue, and the parliamentary secretary who spoke on behalf of the government on this did not raise the significant points of privacy under PIPEDA that were the substance of the amendment to the bill, which would provide an exemption under PIPEDA.

I am a little frustrated that the government would like to come back to members and say this is our problem, not the government's. I would simply suggest to hon. members that I believe the problem is the government, and I would be happy to continue this speech at a later time.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member will have about seven minutes when this returns for debate.

It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from October 19 consideration of the motion that Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak in the debate on Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act or, the short title as suggested by the government, the strengthening aviation security act.

We know the government has been very creative in selecting short titles or nicknames for some of its legislation. This is one of the least creative it has come up with. There are probably some other possibilities that should have been considered, certainly from a New Democratic perspective. We might have called this the compromising Canadians' privacy act, or the caving in to U.S. security interests act or the dumping Canadians' personal information into an American black hole act. There are a number of other possibilities. Given those suggestions, it is very clear that New Democrats have very serious concerns about the legislation and that we do oppose the bill.

The bill would amend the Aeronautics Act to exempt airlines from the obligations set out in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA, to allow information in the airlines' control about passengers to be shared with a foreign state.

Currently this information is only shared when a Canadian plane is scheduled to land in a foreign country. However, the bill would expand that to cover any Canadian plane that is due to fly over a foreign country. We are primarily talking about Canadian flights to the United States and over the United States, and certainly over the United States, and it is the United States that is driving these changes.

It is also done in the context where we know that the United States has not always appropriately or justly used the information it has received. I think for all of us the case of Maher Arar comes immediately to mind in that circumstance.

We know there have very serious problems. The situation that Mr. Arar found himself in was a horrible situation and it arose from this kind of transfer of passenger information to a foreign authority.

The bill does not currently cover flights of Canadian aircraft between Canadian destinations that fly over another country. When I fly back and forth from Vancouver to Ottawa, often the flight will go over the United States. Right now, information about the passengers on those flights is not shared with the Americans. However, one wonders when that will happen. I suspect that is the next ask from the Americans when it comes to sharing passenger information. I expect it is not far down the list of demands that the Americans will make of us in this regard. I think that will be a huge concern to Canadians, not that the current proposal is not a real concern to them, because it is.

By proposing to exempt Canadian airlines from the obligations they must currently meet under PIPEDA, the government is throwing out the key operative principles of PIPEDA, which were established to protect the privacy of Canadians, principles such as accountability, identifying purposes, consent, limiting collection, limiting use disclosure and retention, accuracy, safeguards, openness, individual access and challenging compliance. There are 10 principles and they are outlined in great detail in schedule 1 of PIPEDA.

For instance, the first principle is “Accountability” and is described as:

An organization is responsible for personal information under its control and shall designate an individual or individuals who are accountable for the organization’s compliance with the following principles.

It goes on to outline four subsidiary principles from that one on accountability, relating to how an organization handles the information under its control.

The second principle in schedule 1 of PIPEDA is “Identifying Purposes”, which is explained as

The purposes for which personal information is collected shall be identified by the organization at or before the time the information is collected.

Therefore, there is a requirement around clarity of what is around the sharing of that information.

The third principle in schedule 1 attached to PIPEDA is “Consent”. It says:

The knowledge and consent of the individual are required for the collection, use, or disclosure of personal information, except where inappropriate.

The fourth principle is “Limiting Collection” of information. It says:

The collection of personal information shall be limited to that which is necessary for the purposes identified by the organization. Information shall be collected by fair and lawful means.

This one goes on to be elucidated with further sub-principles.

The fifth principle, “Limiting Use, Disclosure, and Retention”, is described as:

Personal information shall not be used or disclosed for purposes other than those for which it was collected, except with the consent of the individual or as required by law. Personal information shall be retained only as long as necessary for the fulfilment of those purposes.

There are some pretty particular requirements in PIPEDA around that principle.

“Accuracy” is the sixth principle. It says:

Personal information shall be as accurate, complete, and up-to-date as is necessary for the purposes for which it is to be used.

Again, it is further elucidated in the schedule.

“Safeguards” is the seventh principle in PIPEDA. It says:

Personal information shall be protected by security safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information.

Therefore, organizations are required to safeguard and make appropriate arrangements for the protection of that information.

The eighth principle is “Openness”. It says:

An organization shall make readily available to individuals specific information about its policies and practices relating to the management of personal information.

The ninth principle is “Individual Access”. It says:

Upon request, an individual shall be informed of the existence, use and disclosure of his or her personal information and shall be given access to that information. An individual shall be able to challenge the accuracy and completeness of the information and have it amended as appropriate.

The tenth principle is “Challenging Compliance”. It says:

An individual shall be able to address a challenge concerning compliance with the above principles to the designated individual or individuals accountable for the organization's compliance.

PIPEDA has a very detailed outline of the kinds of principles that should be part of any process of sharing the personal information of Canadians by organizations in the private sector, which airlines are required to comply with currently. What this law seeks to do is grant an exemption to that schedule for airlines with regard to passenger information.

Instead of developing an agreement with the United States that addresses these principles and complies with PIPEDA and showing where security requirements might require some change or safety might require a compromise, what we are presented with in the legislation is a blanket override of PIPEDA. There is no subtlety to this. It gives the government the ability to negotiate something with the United States or another country that completely ignores the requirements of PIPEDA around the sharing of the personal information of Canadians, and I do not think that is appropriate.

PIPEDA outlines some important principles that should be considered and struggled with. It may well be that there is an appropriate compromise to be had in a case of national security, but we will not that out of the process that is elucidated in Bill C-42.

When we look at the current Aeronautics Act, there are a lot of places in the act where the minister has discretion in the name of national security. In that circumstance, where there is a combination of an override of the principles established in our law about the personal information and privacy of Canadians and it is combined with an override by the minister, which is hugely discretionary, there is a huge potential for problems and one that goes much too far, especially when we look at the record of the current government.

The government has shown on many occasions that it is always ready to compromise the rights of Canadians in the name of the fight against terrorism. It seems like we just have to say the “T” word and all kinds of other things are expected to fall away, things that we hold dear. Rather than a careful reasoned approach to coming up with policy around national security and safety sometimes, the government goes to an extreme. We have to look at the situation of the security certificate cases. A provision in the Canadian Immigration Act, which was intended to allow for expedited deportation of non-citizens and non-permanent residents, has been used in some cases for indefinite detention, not the purpose for which it was intended.

When we look at some of the specific cases that have been argued and taken to court, we can see that, even when the government extended and re-issued security certificates in the name of national security and the concerns it had about individuals' attachment or participation in terrorist organizations or terrorist activity, the government did not follow the process very appropriately. It did not review all of the information at hand. It did not make available all of the information that was available. In one particular case it did not update its files on the individual involved.

The concern for security allowed all kinds of other sloppiness to happen in that process. I think it was pretty damning of the former minister of public safety and his actions in regard to the re-issuance of security certificates in the court judgment to which I am referring.

There are problems with how the government has approached the use of information in the situations where it has determined it believes there is a question of national security. We have to make sure that all information is taken into consideration in those cases.

Another example might be the use of full-body scanning at Canadian airports, and more intrusive forms of full-body scanning are on the way. We know that backscatter technology, which has been developed and which is being implemented in some American airports, gives a sharper, more defined image than the very basic image the current technology that is in use here in Canada. It is already available and being deployed in some places in the United States.

Canada jumped on that band wagon, probably at the urging of our American neighbours. We have invested heavily in full-body scanning equipment; I think it is millions of dollars. Probably if they had their choice, Canadians would have preferred the kind of scanners that go into hospitals rather than these airport full-body scanners. That is a question about how we use the technology and how we make decisions around security.

It is interesting to look at the example of Israel. An Israeli airline security expert appeared before a parliamentary committee to say that he had great doubts about the value of this kind of technology and did not see Israel moving to adopt that technology. He said Israel thought there were more effective means of ensuring passenger safety and airline safety that did not go down that road.

Again, it seems as if we jumped on a band wagon to appease our American neighbours and their concerns about safety and security. Why would we do this? That is a good question, why we continue to adopt the American agenda, why we do not take our own particular course and why we do not try to negotiate something different with the Americans.

I think there is a concern with regard to the transfer of data to Americans, that the Americans might prevent Canadian airlines from flying over the United States on the way to another destination and that this would increase the cost and be very inconvenient for the airlines and for Canadian airline passengers. There has been some suggestion that they are holding that out as a possibility if we do not comply with this demand for passenger info for Canadian airline flights that are not planning on stopping in the United States, that are not destined there.

I hope that is not the case. Certainly that idea has been floated. The reality is, as my colleague has pointed out, that there are far more U.S. flights flying over Canada to other destinations without stopping in Canada than Canadian flights flying over the United States to other destinations. In fact it is something like 2,000 U.S. flights flying over Canada when only 100 Canadian flights fly over the United States. That is the proportion.

So it is a bigger issue, in some sense, for Americans. What is the reciprocity? Are we demanding similar information from the Americans, or do we see any need to do that? Why would we ask for that personal information about American airline passengers? I think that is the real question. If it is something we do not see the need for, why are we kowtowing to the Americans' demand for it?

The European Commission is also looking at this issue, and last month it released proposals for negotiating an agreement with the Americans and other countries regarding the limits on the transfer of passenger name record data, which is the basic information that we are talking about here. It is the information that airlines collect about us when we fly.

We have to wonder why it would be necessary for airlines to share, for instance, what kind of meal we ordered on the plane, and if we are ordering a special meal of some kind, how this is appropriate or is any kind of information that is necessary to national security or a national security arrangement.

Canada also has an agreement with Europe on the passenger name record issue, but apparently it has to be renegotiated due to the expiration of certain legal commitments. That is something that is either being engaged in or will be engaged in soon.

As I mentioned, last month the European Commission outlined some principles that any PNR, passenger name record, agreement should observe.

I want to go over them so we can see what the Europeans are demanding in their agreement with the United States and other countries. The first principle they are looking to enshrine in any agreement is the protection of personal data, aiming to protect the rights of passengers. They are saying that this data should be used exclusively to fight terrorism; that categories of this information that are exchanged should be limited to what is necessary for that purpose and be clearly listed in the agreement; and that passengers should be given clear information about the exchange of their PNR data and have the right to see their PNR data and the right to effective administrative and judicial redress. This is to help ensure full respect for privacy, that any violation of privacy will be remedied.

They are pointing out that decisions having adverse effects on passengers must never be based on an automated processing of passenger name record data. A human being must be involved before a passenger is denied boarding. This is their attempt to avoid racial and religious profiling of passengers.

I think that is a very crucial one, that this just cannot be some computer generated process but that actual real people must be involved when there is a negative decision involved.

The Europeans are also seeking to have in the agreement that third countries must ensure a high level of data security and an effective independent oversight of the authorities that use PNR data. They are also saying that PNR data cannot be stored longer than necessary to fight terrorism and third countries should limit who has access to the data gradually during the period of retention.

They are also saying that PNR data may be shared by the third country with other countries, in a process called onward transfer, only if those countries respect the standards laid down in the PNR agreement between the European Union and the third country and only on a case-by-case basis.

I think this is a really crucial aspect of this. What happens with the information about Canadians that is provided to, say, the United States? Is that information then available to be transferred to another country, which may not meet the standards that Canadians want to ensure and may not even meet the standards that Americans have agreed to for the treatment of the personal data of Canadians? I think that is a very crucial consideration that we should be insisting on as well.

The second principle that the Europeans are using in terms of negotiating these agreements is the modalities of transfer of the PNR data, which aim to provide legal certainty to air carriers and keep costs at an acceptable level. We have to worry about what costs are involved for airlines.

They are also talking about standards on monitoring the correct implementation of the PNR agreement. And reciprocity is another principle, which I have already mentioned.

We can see that the Europeans are making some very clear demands. Yet here in Canada we are debating legislation and we have no idea what demands our own government is making. The government is asking for a blank cheque to make these changes, to negotiate this agreement, and we have no idea where it is going with it.

I think there are very serious problems. Canada's privacy commissioners in the past have called for written agreements that can be examined, and that was a very serious question when they were looking at the passenger protect program in 2007. We need to make sure we have the detailed and specific agreements and the detailed and specific legislative authority for the provisions of those agreements.

I think we compromise the principles of PIPEDA at our peril. That is what this legislation seeks to do.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to my colleague from Burnaby—Douglas on this issue, and it amazes me to discover, from his speech and from what else we have learned about the bill, that the government intends to enter into an agreement on the use and transfer of data without Canadians having any idea where this information is going to go.

If we happen to go on a holiday to Mexico and are flying over the United States, with no intention of even being in the United States, information about us is going to be made available to the American authorities and there apparently are no guarantees from anyone as to where this information will ultimately go, how long it will be kept or to whom it will be given.

This runs counter to the principles contained in not only our own privacy legislation but, as other countries have determined, the same thing goes for the United Kingdom. The House of Lords' European Union Select Committee had a similar problem with the issues in the agreement between the U.S. and the EU in terms of informing passengers about what happens to their data and specifics about what can be collected, what happens to it and who the data should be going to.

This seems to be required by elementary requirements of privacy. Whether the entire PIPEDA applies is another question, but to just exclude it and say that there is nothing in its place seems to me to be ignoring the privacy rights of Canadians in a very reckless way.

I wonder whether the member has gotten any assurances from the government that that is not going to be the case.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do think it is a really serious issue that there is too broad an exemption in this bill from the provisions and principles of PIPEDA, and when we combine that with the fact that in the Aeronautics Act there is broad discretion for the minister of transport, it is a very problematic combination that will lead to a situation where Canadians really do not know what is happening with our information.

We remember the situations that cropped up when the no-fly list was implemented and the number of people who were delayed at airports or subject to questioning, who missed their flights, who were detained for hours when they were trying to travel and the problems they had clarifying the information, correcting information, and whether they ever really knew if that was done, why that was done or who to approach about it. There were all kinds of problems that arose with the implementation of the passenger protect program.

We should learn something from the implementation of the no-fly list or the specified persons list. There were real problems that came up there, and there will be real problems that come from this proposal to share more personal information of Canadians with countries such as the United States, just because a Canadian is flying to a holiday in Mexico or the Caribbean and the flight happens to go over the United States.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would really like to hear from somebody as to how this bill is actually going to increase passenger safety with these measures. The fact of the matter is that the bad guys should not be on the plane in the first place, based on the no-fly list and all the security we have in place at the airport.

I am much more concerned about the trusted shippers program, the 1,000 or so companies that are part of the trusted shippers program, because in fact mail, parcels and other packages are routinely put on planes every day. Right below where we are sitting on that plane are all kinds of mail, none of which has been scanned. If we want to look for a real security problem, that is a big area that has to be looked at both in Canada and the United States.

Here we are running around, trying to appease the Americans with information on people on 100 flights to the United States, for what reason? We do not even know that giving them the information is going to be of any value in increasing safety. In fact the Americans have 2,000 flights a day going over Canada. Has anybody over here in the government figured out yet that we should be asking the Americans for reciprocity, that if we are going to give them the information on passengers on 100 flights a day over the United States, we want information in its 2,000 over Canada, because we have sovereign airspace as well, and if it wants its planes to be flying around Canada, avoiding our airspace, then it will have to put up with all the complaints it is going to get, thousands and thousands, to its elected people in Congress and to the airlines, because it is going to be inconveniencing the passengers?

We have no problem doing things that make sense and that make people safer, but where is the proof that this is going to happen in this case?

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know where the proof is. I certainly have not heard it in the debate so far on this legislation and I certainly have not heard it from the government.

The member is quite right to point out that we would probably have already intercepted the bad guys before we shared the information with the United States about a flight flying over its airspace with no intention of stopping in the United States.

He is right to raise the shipping concerns, because that may very well be the weak spot in our security system.

The member talked about reciprocity, whether we should be getting the information about the thousands of U.S. flights that go over Canada. I am not sure that is really the issue. We need to ask ourselves, do we need that information? Is it just to collect that information? Why would we want to have that kind of information about American citizens, American airline passengers? What would Canada do with all of that information? Why should we be collecting that information? Do we really have any interest in that information, or are we just collecting it because the U.S. is collecting it?

That might be the way to draw attention to this issue. That might be the way to get American citizens who are concerned about their privacy and the integrity of their own personal information interested in this issue. However, I am not sure that it is the kind of principle on which we would want to base this kind of legislation.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on behalf of the New Democrats against what I think is a bill that is so thoroughly flawed in principle and execution that every right-thinking Canadian would demand that his or her MP vote against the bill.

This is Bill C-42, which would amend the Aeronautics Act. Let me just say very simply what the bill does. The bill would require airlines in Canada to send information on their passengers, Canadians who are boarding Canadian aircraft, simply if that aircraft flies over a portion of the United States and does not even land in the United States.

For Canadians who are familiar with airline routes, many times a day Canadians get on aircraft, perhaps even flying from one Canadian destination to another, that may go over American airspace.

My colleague is talking about that perhaps being exempted by the bill, but for flights that are going from a Canadian destination to a foreign destination that does not even touch the United States but simply flies over its airspace for a portion of that, we would have to send information about our passengers to the United States.

What information would be forwarded is determined by requirements that are, up to now, laid out in agreements that we have not even been able to see as parliamentarians. We have a bill before the House that would fundamentally violate Canadians' privacy rights over some very important pieces of information, which I will tell the House about in a moment, and we do not even know exactly what parameters surround that information or what that information would consist of.

What we do know is that Canada has signed or is negotiating agreements with the European Union, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Panama, Dominican Republic and the United States, and that details of the agreement between the European Union and the United States for the same information transfer are troubling.

That agreement allows the following. The information forwarded will be the passenger name record, which is the file the travel agent creates when we book a vacation. This is the kind of information that the passenger name record can include: our credit card information, who we are travelling with, our hotel, other booking information such as tours or rental cars, any medical condition of the passenger that may have been disclosed, dietary preferences, our email address, our employer information, our telephone information, our baggage information, and again, with whom we may be travelling.

This is the kind of information that this piece of legislation would permit Canadian airlines to send to American security authorities without those Canadian passengers even knowing about, even if those Canadians have chosen not to fly to the United States. A Canadian could get up and say that they do not want to go to the United States, that they will not fly there, and they still may be subject to having highly personal information about the passenger being sent to American security authorities simply because that aircraft touches American airspace.

This information collected, as we know in some of these other agreements, can be retained by the United States for up to 40 years. The information may be forwarded to the security service of a third nation without the consent or notification of the other signatory.

No person may known what information is being held about them by the United States and may not correct that information even if there are errors. The United States may unilaterally amend the agreement as long as it advises the EU of the changes. There has already been one amendment whereby all documents held by the EU concerning the agreement shall not be publicly released for 10 years, and that is clearly an attempt to avoid access to information requests.

Those are the kinds of details that exist in agreements that we know of and we have every reason to believe are the kind of details that would exist if this very flawed bill were to become law.

Again, as has been pointed out by my colleague, the government has a penchant for coming up with little nicknames for its bills, and this bill has been described by the government as the “strengthening aviation security act”. A true description of the bill would be the “violating Canadians' privacy act”, because that is exactly what the bill would do.

I want to talk a little about this, because we do not hear the government going out to the public talking about it. I have not heard the Prime Minister or any cabinet minister tell Canadians that the government is secretly negotiating a deal that would see flight information about Canadians transferred to the United States government, even if one chose not to fly to the United States.

I am going to mention two very pivotal words that I think ought to be in every parliamentarian's mind as we discuss this bill. One is “sovereignty” and the second is “privacy”, and there is a dramatic effect in violating those two principles of Canadians' rights.

If a person has the same name as someone on a list, he or she may be questioned, delayed, or even barred from flight. Even if one's name does not match, Homeland Security has told the airlines that the person may be denied a boarding pass, or if the person already has a boarding pass, he or she should be watched.

These are the kinds of real life examples and impacts that this legislation will have on Canadians.

I want to talk about what some eminent Canadians who study these issues have to say about this bill. Ms. Chantal Bernier, the Assistant Privacy Commissioner of Canada, testified before the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in May and said:

[P]rivacy and security do not have to be at odds. In fact, they must be integrated. And they converge. They converge in this fashion: privacy commands that we collect as little information as possible, in a minimal approach, and as well in the effectiveness of security, in the sense that its effectiveness rests upon collecting only the information that is relevant.

Let us just pause here. How is it possibly relevant to the United States to know the dietary preferences, the medical conditions, the home telephone numbers, or who a Canadian rents a car from if he or she flies from Canada to Mexico for a holiday? How is that any of their business? How does that enhance security?

The Assistant Privacy Commissioner of Canada also said:

The first [principle] is that the right to privacy is a fundamental right that cannot be infringed upon, unless it is demonstrably necessary for the public good. It follows, then, that the collection of personal information can only occur when it is proven necessary, and it must be proportionate to that necessity.

What necessity has been demonstrated? We do not know, because this again is an agreement negotiated in secrecy.

Before we violate Canadians' right to privacy, Canadians have a right to know upon what basis that privacy is going to be infringed. Let us get the onus correct here. Canadians do not have to demonstrate why we have a right to privacy, the state has to demonstrate why it seeks to take that away. We have no evidence to suggest that there is any reasonable basis as to why Canadians need to give their information to American security institutions if Canadians are not even flying to the United States.

I want to talk about what Roch Tassé had to say when he testified before the public safety committee. He is with the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. He said:

These regulations give the U.S. access to a whole subset of information on air passengers who are not entering the U.S. but merely overflying its airspace. The program gives the government of a foreign country a de facto right to decide who gets to travel to and from Canada, since the vast majority of Canadian flights to and from Europe and all the flights, of course, to Latin America and the Caribbean will overfly U.S. territory.

Let us stop and think about that. Every single flight to Latin America, every flight to the Caribbean, and most flights to Europe would be caught by this legislation and Canadians would have to send their information to the U.S.

He also said:

There are other concerns related to Canada's sovereignty. For example, half the cabinet of Evo Morales in Bolivia are persona non grata in the United States, so if Canada were to invite one of those ministers for a diplomatic meeting in Canada it is ultimately the U.S. that would decide if that minister has the right to come to Canada after being invited by the Canadian government. The same could apply to refugee claimants from Colombia, who, even if they were admitted by Canada, could be denied the possibility of leaving their country by the U.S.

Disclosure of personal information to the Department of Homeland Security on passengers travelling to certain [controversial in the opinion of the United States] destinations, particularly Cuba, could lead to very unpleasant consequences. ... [T]his information could be used to identify Canadian companies that do business with Cuba or penalize travellers who have visited Cuba by subsequently refusing them entry to the U.S.

He asked:

How will Canada ensure that the U.S. does not use the secure flight program to apply its Helms-Burton Act, which imposes penalties on foreign companies that do business with Cuba?

His organization pointed out that it had received testimony from several Canadians who have already been intercepted as false positives by the U.S. list in Canadian airports and have been told by the Department of Homeland Security that the secure flight redress mechanism does not apply to them because the incident did not even occur on U.S. territory. Once again, that leaves Canadians with absolute restrictions on the right to travel with no mechanism for redress.

I want to talk a bit about safety and security. The government, which touts this bill as somehow strengthening security, is the same government that earlier this year cut the funding to provide armed police patrols in Canadian airports. This week the government announced that it was cutting the funding that had up to 50 air marshals on Canadian aircraft.

What keeps Canadians safer, sending private information about Canadians to the Americans when they are not even going to the United States, violating Canadians' privacy, or actually having patrols in our airports and air marshals on our aircraft? Shockingly and astonishingly, the government cut the latter two things and is selling out Canadians' privacy interests.

Ever since 9/11, we have said that we want to protect our way of life and that we do not want to give in to terrorism that would seek to disrupt the traditional rights that we enjoy, the right to privacy, the right to freedom, the right to rule of law and the right to live in a modern, mature democracy, because to do so would then, in a perverse way, allow those who practice terrorism to win.

If that is true, and that phrase has often been said by members on the government side, then let us apply that lens to this. Here we are, nine years after 9/11, and we are debating legislation in the House of Commons that would violate Canadians' privacy rights and force Canadians to send information about their personal lives to the United States security institutions when they are not even going to the United States.

This bill would effectively allow the United States to determine when Canadians can leave Canada to fly to many destinations in the world that have nothing to do with the United States. This bill violates Canadians' freedoms, mobility rights and rights to privacy and it is all done in the name of security and keeping us secure. We cannot sacrifice freedom and privacy in the name of protecting liberty. It is a vicious cycle. It does not make sense and it is illogical.

As was pointed out by Madame Bernier, we can have respect for rights, for privacy, for freedom and for mobility, and concoct an effective security mechanism in this country. This bill does not do that. This bill is a one-sided assault on Canadians' privacy, freedom and mobility.

The issue of reciprocity has also been raised and the fact that the Americans, according to what we can discern from this legislation, have put pressure on Canada to agree to these very one-sided and very unfair provisions that violate Canadians' privacy rights. We do not even know if Canada has secured a reciprocal agreement from the United States, not that I think that would make this any better. It does not make Canadians feel any better to know that American citizens may have had their privacy rights and their free movement also truncated by legislation.

What all Canadian and American citizens share in common, I believe, is that we stand up and fight for our rights to live in a free, democratic society and that we fight for our rights and respect our rights to live in a country where our privacy is respected and cherished. We do not want to give up those rights, whether we live in the United States or in Canada. This bill, which would violate those very principles, is put before the House of Commons with hardly a whimper from the other side.

I must point out what is a bit puzzling for me. The Conservatives tend to use and toss around words like “freedom and human rights” quite a bit. The Prime Minister is in Europe today talking about those very concepts in the Ukraine. He actually mentioned human rights and freedom and here we are in Canada debating a bill in the House of Commons that would violate Canadians' personal private right to control information about themselves and may potentially limit their mobility by a decision of a different government that is not even democratically accountable to its citizens. Therefore, a decision made by homeland security in the United States may determine whether someone in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto or St. John's can actually fly to the Caribbean for a holiday at Christmas. If that is a wrong decision, people would not even know and they have no mechanism to redress it.

There is a concept called responsible government and a concept of no taxation without representation. This violates those principles as well. Citizens need to have the ability to influence the policies that impact on their daily lives and that is why this bill violates that and it violates Canadians' right to sovereignty. If we make a bad law in the House of Commons, Canadians have the ability and the right to remove us from office and replace us with someone else. However, how does a Canadian get at an American politician who might make a rule or a law or implement a decision of homeland security that Canadians have no way of knowing about or even addressing? That is fundamentally unjust.

This bill, which would amend the Aeronautics Act, ought to be sent right back to the trash heap from whence it came. Canadians have a right to know exactly what agreements are being negotiated between the Canadian government and any other state about their private information and about any information that may impact or impede their ability to go where they want to go in the world.

It has already been pointed out that we have had real life examples of this. We have the case of Maher Arar. Lest Canadians think that something bad cannot happen to them, Maher Arar was picked up by authorities in the United States and sent to Syria where he spent 10 months in what has been described as a grave-like cell. The Canadian government in 2007 had to pay him over $10 million of taxpayer money because his rights were violated. Why? It was because information was used by the United States against a Canadian citizen and that person suffered torture and unbelievable harm as a result of that.

Has the government learned from that lesson? I do not think so, not if it tables legislation here that would enshrine potentially thousands of Maher Arars. Any Canadian travelling from a Canadian airport would run the risk of having his or her name and personal information similarly misunderstood and misapplied by the American security institutions with no avenue of redress. Again, that is wrong.

I want to point out again that this is not for a Canadian citizen who is flying to the United States. If that were the case, the present Aeronautics Act already allows information to go to the U.S. security apparatus if people are flying to the United States, which is reasonable because Canadians can choose not to fly to the United States if they do not want their information to go there. However, this would allow the United States to get information about a Canadian, notwithstanding that the Canadian is not flying to the United States but is choosing to fly somewhere else in world. That is astonishingly misconceived.

Canadians want to live in a secure country but they do not want to sacrifice their fundamental liberties to do so. Once again, we can live in a country where we rationalize our need for security and safety and our respect for our fundamental rights that we have as Canadian citizens living in a mature western democracy. In fact, as parliamentarians, that is exactly what we should be doing. We should always be seeking to ensure that balance is maintained.

Benjamin Franklin said that those who would sacrifice their liberty to gain a little security deserve neither.

I hope that when government members read this legislation they will go to their cabinet ministers and the minister responsible and tell them that this bill would violate our liberties and harm our constituents. Any time a constituent wants to fly to Mexico or somewhere--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Thunder Bay--Superior North.

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as usual, the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway is well informed and quite erudite. I am quite impressed. I thank him for doing such a good job of describing what is happening and the implications of this bill.

I wonder if he would be willing to share his opinion on why such a silly bill is being promulgated. Is it that the Conservatives are more concerned about the wishes of foreign countries than they are about Canadians' right to privacy? Is it that the Conservatives are paranoid on this issue? Worst of all, is this a deliberate strategy, learned from George Bush and Dick Cheney, on how to instill false panic among Canadians so that they will not notice the largest deficit in Canadian history and the loss of Canadian democratic rights?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I remember a time in this country when Canadians were proud of the fact that their government charted an independent course on the world stage and where we acted with respect and maturity but had no problem telling other countries that we will fight for and protect Canadians' rights.

I remember a time when Canadians expected their government to stand up to attempts by governments, the U.S. government in particular, to violate Canadians' expectations of sovereignty. I cannot explain exactly why that does not seem to be a priority for the Conservative government.

The Conservative government has left a Canadian citizen languishing in Guantanamo Bay. It is the only government in the world that has let one of its nationals stay in an illegal U.S. prison in Cuba and not do anything to repatriate that person.