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.

The House resumed 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.

Strengthening Aviation Security Act

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my comments are relevant, but it is not something Conservative members like to hear. They will be hearing it more and more, however, from the public in their ridings. When we look at the implications of Bill C-42, when we couple it with all of the other inept actions of the current government, Canadians should be really concerned about what is going to happen to their personal information.

This short bill rips up the Privacy Act. This short bill says that if we just fly over a foreign country, never mind whether we land there, all of a sudden our personal information can be passed over to the foreign state, whose laws we do not know.

Who is the current government signing this deal with? It is signing it with the United States. But it is also signing it with Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Panama. These are not countries known for their openness. In fact, Mexico rates very low on the international scale of corruption, the Dominican Republic is not a democracy, and Panama is now tied for worst in the world, according to the IRS, for laundering drug money. Yet, the Conservatives want to give the Panamanian secret service open access to Canadians' private information. That is brilliant, but not at all corresponding to what they said.

Back in 2007, the government, before it jumped ship and decided not to pay any attention to Canadians' wishes, issued a press releasing saying how strongly it opposed doing what it is doing today. It said it opposed handing over the personal information of Canadians to the U.S. It also said that the consent to give access to personal privacy records was central to Canadian privacy standards. A year later, before that first prorogation, when the government was on the ropes, it assured us that this type of program would not apply to Canadians. It said that the U.S. had said that a program of this nature would exempt countries like ours with comparable security systems.

This was in response to planted questions during question period from the government's own members.

At the time, the Minister of Transport said they were not going to go that route. The minister said, “Our government is committed to respecting the safety, security and privacy of each and every Canadian”.

Today, with Bill C-42, the government has thrown that out the window. All of its pretensions, all of its promises, like the promise to have prudent financial management, or the promise to respond to the needs of rural and northern Canadians, have been ripped up. Now we see that the commitments made in 2007, 2008, and 2009 have been ripped up and replaced by this bill, which would do the exact opposite.

What is in the passenger name record that is now being handed over to intelligence agencies in places like Panama and the Dominican Republic, simply for the act of flying over? If we want to fly over those states, the current Conservative government is saying our records are free game.

This is where it gets very interesting and very worrisome for those Canadians who value their privacy.

I know the member for Wetaskiwin will want to jump up on this, but for the government to ditch the long form census, to rip it up because of so-called privacy concerns, when it is willing to do this, is an absolute crock. It is pure hypocrisy. On the one hand, the government says it is going to rip up the long form census. On the other hand, the government says it is going to give people's personal information on the passenger records to the secret service of Panama. There is no problem at all.

For Canadians who are not aware of this, the passenger name record is a file that is created by the travel agent when the ticket is booked. This system was created by the travel industry to facilitate travel. The booking information is passed along. It is considered confidential and private. That is why in this bill the government is ripping up the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, because it is protected information now. It can contain credit card information, who a person is travelling with, where a person is staying, the person's home address and other contact information, any medical conditions the person suffers from, even what the person ate on the plane. That is the passenger name record that is protected by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, which would be ripped up by the government.

Now the government is saying that personal information would be shipped to the Dominican Republic's secret service or the Panamanian secret service for the simple act of flying over part of a country to get to somewhere else. Is that absurd and irresponsible? Absolutely, but that is what the government is purporting to do in this bill.

It will be interesting to see over the course of the next few hours whether any Conservative members are going to have the guts to stand up and try to defend this action. This is in direct contradiction to the promises they made prior to the election campaign and in direct contradiction to the promises they made subsequently, even in response to Conservative members' own questions.

Does this bill that rips up the privacy act correspond in any way to the prudent collection and protection of personal information? It does not. It would be worthwhile to take a few minutes to talk about what the government should be doing and what it has not done.

For example, the European Commission has established principles for data collection that must be observed. These principles include, first, a purpose limitation. Private personal information has to be processed for a specific purpose and subsequently used or further communicated only in so far as it is not incompatible with the purpose of the transfer, in other words, one purpose. That is not contained in this bill in any way.

Second is the information quality and proportionality principle. The information should be accurate and kept up to date. The information should be adequate, relevant, and not excessive in relation to the purposes for which it is transferred and further processed.

That is not in this bill at all. There are no safeguards at all. There is one paragraph on ripping up the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act with respect to air travellers, but there is nothing that replaces or puts into place any protections subsequent to that.

Third is the transparency principle. Individuals should be provided with information as to the purpose of the processing and the identity of those in control of the information in the third country.

This bill does nothing of the sort. It is transferred wholesale and the individual would not even be aware that if he or she flew over Panama his or her personal credit card information may be given to the Panamanian secret service.

Fourth is the security principle. Technical and organizational security measures have to be taken by those in control of the information appropriate to the risk presented by the processing.

Again, there is not a single word of protection and security of that information in this bill.

Fifth is the right to access rectification and opposition principle. The subject of the information should have the right to obtain a copy of all the information relating to him or her that is processed and a right of rectification of the information that is inaccurate.

There again, there is not a single word regarding that European Commission principle on data transfer and personal information in the bill.

Sixth is the restriction on outward transfers. Transfers of personal information to further countries should be permitted only where the second country is also subject to the same rules as the country originally receiving the information. That is perhaps the most important.

Here we have a bill that rips up protections offered to Canadians and does not provide any of the principles that are best practices worldwide. I mentioned the European Commission. These are best practices in any industrialized first country. Yet the transfers of the personal information is given over to the Panamanian government, or to the Panamanian secret service, or to the Dominican Republic and its secret service. As we know, that country is not a democracy and yet it is included in this bill and there are no protections at all.

All six of the principles of personal information protection, security and data management are violated in the bill. It is not as if the Conservatives missed by a few words, that they almost got it right, that they really tried to protect Canadians' personal privacy and just missed one of those principles because they did it too quickly, as they do with many of their crime bills on the back of a napkin. They mess up and then the bill goes to committee and the member for Windsor—Tecumseh endeavours to fix the errors. Sometimes we are able to fix them, but sometimes the Conservatives do not co-operate. But we are not talking about missing it by an inch, or a foot, or a metre, we are talking about missing it by a country mile. The Conservatives did not include a single one of the six principles of personal information protection, not a single one. They ripped up the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and did not replace it with anything. It is open season.

If people fly over Panama, their information is gone and there is not a single element of protection in this two clause bill. The Conservatives did not seem to understand the problem, except when we go back to the commitments made over the last three years. They obviously understood in 2007 when they committed not to do this. They obviously understood in 2008 and 2009 when they said they would not do this. Now it is 2010 and they toss this bomb on the floor of the House of Commons for all Canadians who are concerned about their personal information being spread far and wide and there is not even an explanation.

The Conservatives have not stood up in the House and tried to defend or explain this bill. Maybe it is because the Prime Minister's Office has not issued its one page of speaking notes. Still, one has to wonder when they do something so irresponsibly, not ineptly in this case, because they have not responded to any of the data management protection, any of the personal information protection. They have not responded at all. They have just acted as if people can hand over their credit card information and it is okay if a Panamanian secret service agent has it. It is no problem at all, say the Conservatives.

In this corner of the House we tend to review legislation very critically. We go through it word by word. In this corner of the House we are not standing for that kind of irresponsible behaviour.

There is a wide range of people who have spoken against the bill and have raised concerns about it. I want to mention two.

Roch Tassé of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group said about this bill that the Americans will have a veto on every passenger who gets on a plane in Canada even if they passengers are not going to set foot on American soil. Mr. Tassé asked what would happen if Canada invited the ambassador from a country such as Cuba, if we now have to share that personal information even if the plane is just flying over the United States. What could the consequences be?

More important, the Air Transport Association of Canada has said:

The submission of Canadian passengers' details by Canadian airlines violates Canada's laws on the protection of personal information and electronic documents, as well as laws on aeronautics.

That is why we are seeing this bill today. Because it violates Canada's laws, the government through some subterfuge is trying to get this through the House of Commons hoping that opposition members will not be concerned about what is a wholesale handover of Canadians' personal information.

In this corner of the House, NDP members always stand up for ordinary Canadian families. We are the ones who stand up. We are the ones who have read through this document. We are saying that this is irresponsible, inappropriate and we are not going to stand for it.

The fact is that the government has put forward a bill that removes personal information protection, removes that key component and yet in no way replaces it with any of the principles of data management, of personal information protection. The fact that the government is doing this is highly irresponsible. It is something that the NDP will oppose.

As our critic, the member for Western Arctic, has said so eloquently in this House, we are not going to allow information, such as credit card information, whom people are travelling with, where they are staying, their home and other contact information, medical conditions, even such details as what people ate on the plane to be dispatched wholesale, left, right and centre, without any due regard to protection of personal privacy or protection of personal information. We are simply not going to stand for that.

Finally, I am going to cite a comment from a United Kingdom House of Lords' European Union Select Committee report on the passenger name record:

We believe that the use of PNR data for general law enforcement purposes...is undesirable and unacceptable.

We have had comment after comment from people who are concerned about protection of privacy rights and people who are concerned about personal information protection. We have had very eloquent comments from a number of members of Parliament, particularly from this caucus. There has been a very strong reaction. What the government should be doing with this bill is it should be taking a step back. This is a violation of its promise and commitment to Canadians, and it should withdraw this bill. We certainly hope it will do that having heard the comments about this atrocious bit 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--

[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.

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.

Business of the House

[John Baird, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I did want to stand in my place and correct the record.

Earlier today, in answering a question, I neglected to mention the good work of the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification as a woman serving in this cabinet. As well, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, the hon. Marjory LeBreton, makes a very powerful and substantial contribution to this government.

I am also pleased to report that the four House leaders are working well together. We have got off to a very good start.

Today is an opposition day for the Bloc Québécois and we will continue to debate on that for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow, we will resume debate on second reading of Bill C-46, the Canada-Panama free trade agreement; followed by Bill S-9, the tackling auto theft and property crime legislation.

On Monday and Tuesday we will begin with Bill S-9, on tackling auto theft and property crime; followed by Bill C-46, the Canada-Panama free trade agreement; report stage of Bill C-3, gender equity in Indian registration; Bill C-42, strengthening aviation security; Bill C-29, safeguarding Canadians' personal information; Bill C-30, on the Supreme Court of Canada decision in R v. Shoker; Bill C-41, strengthening military justice in the defence of Canada; and Bill S-2, protecting victims from sex offenders.

On Wednesday we will begin debate on Bill C-49, the preventing human smugglers from abusing Canada's immigration system act. If debate on Bill C-49 concludes, we will continue with the business that I outlined on Monday and Tuesday.

The House leader for the official opposition also requested to know about the second budget bill, for the fall. We have begun debate on that. We have already adopted the ways and means motion, but we certainly will be calling it again before the November Remembrance Day break week for constituents. That is obviously an important piece of legislation that we look forward to having the opportunity to debate in this place.

I also neglected to mention the hard work of another member of the priorities and planning committee, the hon. Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.

Strengthening Aviation Security Act

[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.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-42.

I do not think we can trace this one back a number of years with different bill numbers because this bill was introduced on June 17, the last day of the spring sitting, as the member for Eglinton—Lawrence said.

To wit, the new transport critic for the opposition, the member for Markham—Unionville, made his presentation this morning. He said that he had only seen this bill two days ago. I believe he said he thought it looked okay and was good enough to be sent to committee where we would have to study it and improve it. Then the Bloc critic, who I believe is also new to the transport committee, also made a speech. He seemed to think the bill was ready for committee, as well.

Now after question period we have a new round of speakers. We had two very good speeches from members of the official opposition who seemed to be on the other side of the bill.

Given that we only have another 45 minutes of debate today and given that all the parties will be having their caucus meetings tomorrow, it might be a good idea for members of the Liberal Party to revisit their position on this bill. If the critic is seemingly in favour of the bill and two other learned speakers for the Liberal Party are against it, clearly they have an issue to resolve within their caucus.

I would also say that the government might take heed here and look at taking a second look at this bill before it is defeated. Perhaps they could withdraw it and come back with a better solution.

Earlier today I asked the parliamentary secretary whether or not any efforts had been made in the area of reciprocity. On a world basis we only have to look at the drama which has been unfolding over the last week in the fight with the United Arab Emirates. The United Arab Emirates have said that it is going to kick Camp Mirage, our staging base, out of the country in the next 30 days or so because Canada will not let Emirates airlines land any more flights in Toronto than are landing now.

Clearly there is a linkage in this discussion between Canada and the United Arab Emirates. This issue has now become public. There is a tie-in between the base and whether the United Arab Emirates is allowed to fly more flights to Canada. Let us not kid ourselves, every international issue has similar aspects to it. This issue would be no different.

The member for Western Arctic, our long-time critic on transport, told me this morning that roughly 2,000 flights originating in the United States fly over Canada per day, in Canadian airspace. If we multiply that number by the average number of passengers per plane, that is a lot of people on flights in Canadian airspace every day, going to Europe and other places around the world. In contrast, the number of Canadian flights flying in American airspace per day, according to the member for Western Arctic, is only in the 100 range.

The question we have to ask is would a government that was on the ball, looking out for Canadian passengers and Canadian airline interests not try to drive a harder bargain and try to negotiate? It could say that if we are going to provide the information on a 100 flights per day, which would add extra costs to our airlines and to our government, then we want the United States to reciprocate and provide us with the information on that country's 2,000 flights per day. After all, our airspace is sovereign, too. Quite frankly, we also want to know who is flying in our airspace. That is what it really boils down to.

For a number of years the United States, and I think other countries too, have demanded a list of passengers prior to their boarding an airplane. Even before 9/11, I remember when I was going to Australia, before boarding the plane in Vancouver, the passport information had to be processed.

I believe a lot of that had to do with the whole issue of refugees getting on a plane, flushing their documents down the toilet and arriving in a new country without any documentation. It is the airline that is responsible for the costs of flying the people back. That has been an issue with the airline industry for a number of years. The airlines resent that they have to pay the costs of transporting people back when the new country refuses to take them. They want to make sure they have all the information and get what is known as pre-clearance for passengers.

After many years of allowing airlines to fly over our territory, things are being taken to a whole new level in saying that we are not satisfied with the airport screening devices, the locked cockpits and the air marshalls on board and we now want to know at any given time who is actually sitting in those planes in our airspace. That is what I believe is behind this situation.

What do the Americans think is going to happen? Do they think that somebody is going to blow up an airplane while flying in American airspace? Is that what they are thinking? I am not really sure what the rationale is. The fact of the matter is that regardless what the demands are from the Americans, the Canadian government has a responsibility to the Canadian public to reciprocate, to say that if the Americans want our information, we will take their information, and to negotiate what types of information we want to collect and whether it is worthwhile collecting.

For some time we have been talking about the value of keeping the no-fly list. Senator Ted Kennedy was on the no-fly list. I know the member for Winnipeg Centre would be very motivated to stand and speak to this topic because his name was on a no-fly list and he had to sort it out. He was sorting it out with a government that has a series of rules that do not allow him to sort out the problem. That is my point.

People get tied up in knots. Senator Kennedy got tied up in knots trying to get his name off the no-fly list. The member for Winnipeg Centre tried to get his name off the no-fly list when his name should not have been on it in the first place.

Then there is the situation where a person gets on an airplane and literally breezes through all the security measures that have been put in place.

I think we all remember on December 25, 2009 there was the situation of a 23-year-old, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, everyone knows that name, who got on an airplane in Lagos, Nigeria and flew to Amsterdam and then Detroit. He committed all the sins that are supposed to be picked up.

This is what he did. He bought a round-trip ticket with cash. In the old days it used to be one way, but the geniuses running our security services finally figured out that people should not be buying one-way tickets with cash. That was a sure sign something could go wrong. He bought a round-trip ticket with cash.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was flying to Detroit at Christmas where there was a lot of snow but he had no carry-on baggage at all. He flew from Lagos into Amsterdam Schiphol which is the ultimate in secure airports. It has every type of screening device that one could imagine and this guy boarded a plane without a passport. This is yet another big breach.

We have spent untold billions of dollars developing a system to ensure the member for Winnipeg Centre cannot get on a plane, to ensure Senator Kennedy cannot get on a plane, to ensure a six-year-olds cannot get on a plane and tied ourselves up in knots, and yet this young 23-year-old makes fools of us all and walks right through the system. Had it not been for his own incompetence, he would have killed several hundred people.

We clearly need to start looking at security in a smarter fashion than we do right now. I go to a number of cross-border meetings with American politicians and the whole issue of toughening the border is always raised. We hear how we are torturing ourselves and torturing our own citizens because the bad guys are not lining up at the border. When crossing the Manitoba border at Emerson or a Saskatchewan border point, the people who are smuggling marijuana and drugs across the border are not lined up in their car taking this stuff across the border. They are walking the drugs or driving snowmobiles across the border.

If all the local politicians and residents in South Dakota and North Dakota know that and Manitoba and Saskatchewan know that, why are we continually trying to toughen the border? That is the thinking in Washington. The unfair misrepresentation of Canada for several years has been that the terrorists came through Canada. I know the government has had to fight that, as we all have when we are down there on trips. We need to make it clear to the Americans that none of the 9/11 terrorists came through Canada. I know it is a hard battle.

If the government is going to involve itself in negotiations with the Americans, it should at least stand up for the Canadian side of the arguments and try to argue at least reciprocity. The government should not introduce a bill in the House and somehow unilaterally say that it will start providing this information or that information to third countries. We do not even know how much information will be transferred. There is some discussion that somehow information on the PNRs will be transferred. I do not know if that is the case and I do not know what the information is in total on the PNR.

I can say that if a name is misspelled by one letter on a ticket, it is possible for the agent to correct that by simply putting a note on the PNR. There are all kinds of notes on customers' PNRs on a whole range of things. Therefore, if that is the information that is being passed on, then all of these notes are presumably being passed along with the information already there.

In addition to that, we presume that the Americans have access to passport information. I know that when Manitoba brought in the new drivers' licence-like passports, there was a big argument about how private the information would be and how much information would be provided to the American authorities.

I think the public wants to be safe and, if they understand that the information being provided is safe and they know there is a good reason for the information, they probably would be willing to give up that privacy issue in favour of being safe on the airplane. However, the history so far has not proven that to be the case.

It is almost like the Keystone Kops. We read stories about six-year-olds and eight-year-olds being on the no-fly list and then we have the Abdulmutallab situation where the guy walks through all our defences. After what he did last December, we had to put in full body scanners that cost several hundred million dollars a piece. We then find out that those scanners will not solve the problem because smart terrorists will simply hide the plastic explosives in body cavities.

Body scanners, which have been installed in some airports but it will take another 10 or 20 years to have them in all the airports, do not pick up on explosives that are put into body cavities. Guess what? That is what the terrorists will move on to and now we need to deal with that issue.

There is one airline alone in the world that has dealt successfully with the whole issue of terrorism and it is the safest airline in the world on which to fly. I flew EL AL Airlines a number of years ago, but at the time, in 1970, EL AL was probably the most unsafe airline in the world. It had several skyjackings. I believe it had planes blowing up in the Sinai desert in 1970. After that point, the Israeli government and the EL AL officials changed the way they dealt with security.

When I went over there in 1987, it was a totally different experience than flying with a Canadian or American carrier. They put people through a three-hour interview and examination process. They did not stop with just checking people's bags to see how much liquids they had in their bags. They actually asked people what they were going over there for. They more or less did a type of psychological profile on people.

When we discussed that issue with the Americans, they said that it would not work there. They said that in order to balance the need to move masses of people very fast, they had to sacrifice a little on safety.

I now want to deal with the issue of the trusted shippers program. I was totally shocked and surprised to find out that there are 1,000 trusted shippers in either North America or the United States who can ship things. These people are shipping packages that are sitting in the cargo hold of the planes and a very small percentage, if any, are being scanned, tested or checked. It is an absolute disaster waiting for a place to happen.

The whole business of the trusted shipper program must be looked into and tightened up on because sooner or later somebody will put a letter or a package through this trusted shipper program with an explosive device and we will be reading about the terrible horror story and asking why we did not do something in advance.

The government should be spending its time on trying to make flying safer than it is right now.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member has brought to the debate something fundamental about what the object is of this legislation, the strengthening aviation security act.

We do have a passenger protection program. The Privacy Commissioner issued a report in 2009 which concluded that there are even some problems with regard to the Canadian system of protection of that information, but that is the program under which passenger protection is covered.

This is not just about Canada and the U.S. This is about any country in the world that happens to have legislation requiring this information. For instance, if a flight left Canada and flew over Pakistan but did not land in Pakistan, the Pakistani government could say that it wanted to know the name of everybody on that plane, without having some sort of reciprocal requirement or objective. It really could get ugly and complicated as to how to coordinate all that information when there may be no contact between that plane and the government.

If a foreign government does enact legislation requiring information for aircraft flying over its land, how do we comply without--

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have respect for my hon. colleague, but when I ask him to have the Conservative government describe how this legislation would protect Canadians, I do not think the most logical argument is that a number of years ago some member of Parliament stepped on a doll. I suggest that is window-dressing and rhetoric as opposed to answering the question.

When the member speaks about a previous government's bill, once again, that is window-dressing and rhetoric, since it is the Conservative government's bill, Bill C-42. This bill seeks to put these onerous restrictions on the privacy of Canadians by letting the Americans know all about these people on the flight, even the ones who are flying just across Canada.

For him to suggest somehow that his rational, logical argument in favour of the bill is doll stamping or that some years before somebody introduced some other bill, which is not the one we are discussing, that is not a rational response.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak to Bill C-42 today. I would like to start with an analysis of the title: strengthening aviation security act. My question, given that this is how the government has entitled it, is how does this strengthen Canadian aviation security? How does it strengthen Canada? How does it strengthen the safety of Canadians going on such flights? My suggestion is that it does not in any way.

First of all, under the existing law we can already have airlines disclose the information of persons travelling on planes when they are landing in foreign countries. That is perfectly reasonable. Every sovereign state has the right to know who is coming into their country. I would expect no different for Canadians or any other country.

The government is now essentially trying to amend it so that if flights are going over a foreign jurisdiction, and let us be clear that we are talking about the United States and this is why we are having this discussion at all, if flights are going over the United States, even if they are not landing in the United States, private information on Canadians will have to be disclosed. How does it strengthen Canadians or in any way live up to the descriptive “strengthening aviation security act”? How does it strengthen aviation security for the benefit of Canadians to disclose this information when the flights are not landing in a foreign jurisdiction, period, and they are not landing in Canada? How is it even logical to say that this is strengthening protections for Canadians?

I would like to take a particular example in terms of our sovereignty. It is one thing to say in the circumstance of flights going over the United States and landing in some other foreign jurisdiction that information has to be disclosed. It does not strengthen anything for Canadians and it is still problematic, but that example needs to be compared specifically to the example of a flight leaving Toronto and landing in Vancouver. So if a flight goes over the United States to go from one Canadian jurisdiction to another Canadian jurisdiction, there are multiple concerns.

First of all, once again, how does this strengthen the safety of Canadians? It is not logical. It is not reasonable. It just makes no sense. Second, how is it that the Conservative government is willing to give up sovereignty, willing to give up privacy concerns, when there is a flight originating specifically, as this example indicates, in Toronto and landing in Vancouver and never landing in the United States? Please explain how that in any way strengthens the safety of Canadians.

Also, this is not even logical. How does that strengthen the safety of Americans?

Canadians need to know that the Conservatives are willing to give up our sovereignty. A flight from Toronto going to Vancouver never leaves the grasp of Canadian jurisdiction. At all times that flight will be governed by Canadian law. Those passengers will never get onto foreign soil. It is Canada--Canada, going over the United States, yet in those circumstances the Conservative government is willing to give up our sovereignty by giving private information about those passengers to a foreign government when those passengers will never set foot on foreign soil. How is that logical? It is not logical. We all know it is not logical.

The only thing that seems obvious is twofold. One, the Conservatives are not very good negotiators when it comes to foreign relations, and I will give a couple of examples that we have all been speaking about already. But two, for whatever reason, although they can be tough on Canadians and have no problem with not helping people through EI and various benefits, and when it comes to social and economic issues in Canada they have no problem being tough there, how can they not be tough when it comes to a foreign country, and particularly in this instance, the Americans? What are they afraid of?

We are a partner in Afghanistan. We are the Americans' largest trading partner. They trade 25% to one third, depending on the current statistics, to Canada. We trade 80% to the Americans. We are their largest exporter of oil and energy.

The Americans need us just as much as we need them. Why do we have to be afraid of them? If there is a reasonable request, as with any friend, we negotiate, we say yes and we work it out. However, when the request is not reasonable, we say no, we give our reasons and be respectful.

Once again, how does it strengthen and protect Americans to give information when the flights are going from Canada or to Canada or from Canada to a foreign jurisdiction? The only thing I can think of is perhaps, in addition to other concerns, the Americans do not trust the Conservative government, despite the fact that it has spent a lot of money, some people say billions, on screening mechanisms and other initiatives. Does that not work? It is not good enough? Does the government admit that they are not working, that the initiatives are broken, or that it has not spent enough money or it has not drafted legislation or regulations properly?

Why does this have to take place? Why do the Americans not trust the Conservative government to ensure that persons boarding Canadian flights will not be a risk? If the government's position is that the Americans should trust us, then, by definition and logically, its position should be they are overstepping their reach and we should simply say no in these circumstances.

On foreign affairs, I would like to know what specific negotiations have taken place between the Conservative government and the American officials on their request of Canada and Canadians. Why can the Conservative government not convince the Americans that the steps it has taken to increase airline security in Canada are good enough? Why does this private information need to be disclosed? Maybe the Americans cannot be convinced or maybe the steps are not good enough. It is the government's onus to tell us why the security measures in Canada are not good enough that we would need to then disclose to a foreign jurisdiction this private information. Frankly, Canadians deserve better.

We have the recent example of losing Camp Mirage. We have the case of the security council seat. When I was in my riding of Brampton West over the break week, I received a lot of calls from people who were both upset and embarrassed that we had lost that security council seat because of, as many commentators have written, the foreign policy of Canada was no longer Canadian. Our foreign policy is not what the world expects and has become used to, a progressive and involved one. What we have is a American republican foreign policy, which does not bode us well in the international scene.

In addition to the weakened sovereignty and to the fact that the amendment to the statute is not logical, we have other concerns.

At the transport committee on May 11, as has been mentioned earlier, the assistant privacy commissioner, Chantal Bernier, stated that, the United States would retain this information for as long as 7 days to 99 years. She also added:

—our understanding is that information collected can be disclosed and used for purposes other than aviation security, such as for law enforcement and immigration purposes.

Once the Americans have the information, they will use it for whatever they so choose.

Let us look at why this is a concern. What if the Americans decide they are providing information to other countries? Not all countries are equal, but the Americans are our good friends, and that is fine. However, what about other countries across the world to which Canadians would not want their personal information disclosed? What if we have Canadians who have been naturalized, who have come from foreign countries, who were refugees, who were persecuted, who were in some way hurt, whose families were hurt, who have families remaining in those countries that could be subject to blackmail or harm?

Once this information is out and the Americans have it and they choose to disclose it to a third country, Canadians could be at risk and for no logical or rational purpose. The fact that the Conservative government wishes to disclose this personal information in those circumstances could be harmful to Canadians who have come from other countries, specifically refugees who have been naturalized. This is a serious concern.

What about the precedent that this would create? The Americans are our good friends, but if we give them everything they want just because they ask—

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I looked at this bill briefly when it was first presented on the last day that the House sat before it recessed for the summer. I would like members to think for a moment about the timing at work here.

The Conservatives entered the election in 2006 saying they would stand up for Canada. I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that meant they were going to stand up for Canadians. Here we are now at second reading of this bill. But it was presented on the last day that the House sat in the middle of June 2010. I asked myself: Who is standing up for Canadians? What would this bill do? It is a very brief bill. It is a paragraph of some 14 lines.

The bill outlines four separate areas that deserve the attention of every member of Parliament who proposes or espouses to defend the interests of Canadians, whether on issues of privacy, sovereignty, commerce, or security.

The first statement in the bill says that, notwithstanding whatever is in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA, every Canadian operator of an aircraft is obliged to hand over any information in its control that is required by the laws of a foreign state. The carrier does not have an option. Imagine that.

We have been paying attention to the United States for such a long time in this debate that I have to use it as an example, but this does refer to the U.S. exclusively. The Americans have passed the Patriot Act, and under that act they justify requests for information that go beyond anybody's imagination. This bill says that it does not matter. Whatever protections Canadians think they have under PIPEDA, for example, or the Privacy Act, they have no longer, because the Americans, according to the competent authority that flows from the Patriot Act, have the right to ask for that information and to use it in any way they wish.

I am not paranoid by nature, notwithstanding the profession we are in, but the bill says “any foreign state” over which a Canadian operator of an aircraft flies. The operator does not necessarily have to land in that foreign state.

I want to change the boundaries of the discussion and think for a moment about someone who leaves Ottawa, Montreal, or Toronto to fly to Dubai. If I am not mistaken, if an individual flies on a Canadian aircraft that individual is probably going to fly over the United States, maybe Portugal, probably Spain, or alternatively, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and any of the Emirates. This legislation says that any of those countries can demand information from that Canadian operator. Without that information, any one of those countries can deny our aircraft the opportunity to fly over its airspace.

No one contests that every country has its own right to demand certain conditions be met in its airspace. I think that is called sovereignty, which I will get to in a minute. If we want to respect other countries' sovereignty, we must at least understand that we live in a grown-up world and that a few of the countries that I just cited might have an interest that goes beyond simply trying to find out if Paul Smith or Peter Szabo is actually on that flight. They might actually have an interest in promoting the affairs of their own carriers, and one of the ways to do it is to initiate a series of debilitating actions in law that require our carriers to go through a series of demands that they must satisfy. That would be the business world.

Here we have focused on the United States, forgetting, of course, that there are a lot of other countries over which Canadian carriers must fly in order to maintain a competitive and an economically viable business. We just said, with this piece of legislation, that if any of those carriers want to do business, they can, provided they can convince their passengers that they are up that proverbial creek without that paddle, because the Canadian government will not come to their defence. The Canadian government, under this bill, has completely washed its hands of anybody who boards a plane and flies outside of Canada. If passengers are prepared to expose their entire life, their business practices, whatever private matters they have to a foreign authority, they should not count on the Canadian government coming to their defence.

I know what they would say. They would say so what because that is already the case. The Canadian government is walking away from everybody who runs into trouble, whether they do it deliberately or whether they are caught in a jam abroad, so why should passengers be any different?

According to this bill, if people board a Canadian operated aircraft in Paris and they want to fly to Canada, if the English, the Irish and the Scots demand to have information on them, they cannot get a boarding pass until that aircraft operator provides that information to those three countries, because, of course, that is part of the route to get back into Canada.

We focused on the United States. I understand the problem with the United States. If people come from the interior of Canada, as I do, for example in southern Ontario, they have two options. If they want to travel down south, whether to Cuba, Mexico, Latin America, South America or anywhere else, they can go across the lake into Buffalo and use its airport and they do not need to worry about anything. They maintain their privacy. People could board a plane at Pearson and then have to go through this, because the Canadian government just said that their option is to go down the 401 or the Queen Elizabeth Way and go to a foreign country to board another carrier because the government will not help out its carrier. Why will the government not help them out? Because Canadian carriers are already bending over backwards and breaking the law to provide information for homeland security defence in the United States, otherwise they cannot do business there, or they will increase the costs to their business by taking a circuitous route to a further destination, i.e. they will not be competitive with the other carriers in North America.

What does the Canadian government do? Does it stand up for Canada and Canadians? No, it abandons them completely. This bill is a total abnegation of our sovereignty responsibility. Can anyone imagine letting a foreign authority, not the government, but a competent authority within the government of another country, determine what it must know about whatever passenger boards a plane in Canada to go someplace else or another place in order to come to Canada.

A border security agent is the person making decisions for what happens to Canadians either aboard a Canadian carrier here or abroad to come home. The Canadian government stands up for Canada where? It has given up on Canadians and has said ”to heck with that airline business, let the airlines do something else because we need to ensure that we comply with a foreign state's demands”.

The alternative is that it could negotiate. I heard one of the parliamentary secretaries say that we negotiated exemptions. I do not know who the “we” were. I thought the Conservative government wanted to wash its hands of everything that was Liberal, but the negotiations and that exemption took place under a Liberal government. I think somebody said that it was in 2001. I could have sworn it was a little later, but it does not matter. It certainly was not the Conservative government because it refuses to negotiate. It gave up on negotiation.

The government presented this in the middle of the last day that the House sat before it recessed so it would not have the scrutiny of Parliament on running and hiding from its responsibility to protect Canadian sovereignty, Canadian sovereignty, as expressed through commercial interests, through the harassment of the interests of Canadian carriers and through the privacy concerns of every Canadian. Even if Canadians do not understand or do not care about their own privacy, it is integral to what we think is a Canadian.

We have the right to maintain our own decisions regarding the dignity of information that relates to us as individuals unless we give it up. The Conservative Government of Canada just said that it was not worth a tinker's damn. I have it here in 14 lines. It said goodbye. The government does not think it is worthwhile and if there are foreign states that want it, the government will give it to them. If people think they would like to take the aircraft operator to court for giving up their privacy rights, it says here that they should forget it because they will not have a base in court on which to stand.

One of my colleagues from the Bloc was talking about the security issues and the problems of being on a no-fly list. The government made a big deal of having a passenger protect system. That is a no-fly list. People do not know how they got on that list. There are all kinds of ways. Only one person can take someone off that list and that is the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. However, let people try to get a hold of him when they are being prevented from boarding a plane. He has to contact people at homeland security and they do not answer the phone.

Is there a way to keep Canadians safe? We should think about that for a moment. When the Americans asked for this, they told everybody in Canada to forget about the nonsense of $11 million to buy 40 full body scanners because they would not make Americans feel any better about the kinds of people who board Canadian planes. That is essentially what they are doing.

Last spring, the Minister of Finance said that the government would raise another $3.2 billion so that it could invest a further $1.5 billion in air security. In other words, Canada would make a further investment in ensuring that the Americans think that whenever people board planes in Canada, they will be okay. What did the Americans say? They said, “We don't believe you”. I am being polite. They said, “We just don't believe you”.

What did we do? Did we protest? Did we negotiate? Did we go to them and tell them about all of these things that we were doing? Did we tell them that we had spent $11 million on 40 scanners and that we will be spending another $1.5 billion on securing our borders and ports to ensure that anybody who goes anywhere near American territory will be receiving a stamp of approval for safety and security that only Canada can provide and that America will respect?

Did the government do that? No, it did not stand up for Canada. Its current slogan is here for Canada. I do not know where it thinks Canada is. Is it not in our midst? Is it not to protect the interests of Canadians no matter where they go? Is it not to be there to negotiate with other neighbours here in our hemisphere? Should it not be telling them what we have done to ensure that our backyard is safe so they can feel safe and secure ?

No, it did not do that. The government came up with Bill C-42, which basically says that the government can beat anybody in a 100-yard dash as long as it is moving away from trouble. It is just insane.

I know some of my colleagues from the other parties think this will be remedied and rectified when it goes to committee. That will not happen. The patriot act goes into effect in December. The Americans warned the Canadian government last year that it had one year to comply or to negotiate.

The government said that there was a better tactic. It said that it would go to sleep for six months and then in June it would present the amendment to the Aeronautics Act that washes its hands of any responsibility to Canadians and Canadian businesses, and then it would send the bill off to committee. By that time, of course, the House will either have been prorogued or it will be close to Christmas and it will say that it has already been done and the message has been sent off.

That is not governance and that is not standing up for Canada or for Canadians. That is an abnegation and abdication of responsibility and authority. If the government asks Canadians for the right to govern this country, it is because it wants to do something that protects their interests and advances their progress. This does neither.

When we are so concerned about security issues, economic issues, privacy issues and sovereignty issues, the government, with this legislation, is taking the fastest route available to sell out on all four. I would have been embarrassed to have been the minister who had to present this legislation.

I was not happy then as the critic for transport to look for ways to be supportive. We always try to look for ways to co-operate. I was looking for the proverbial silver lining in this legislation. I wear glasses but I took them off, got a microscope and went through everything with a fine-toothed comb. I could not find that silver lining.

I was a little distressed to hear that everybody thinks that the silver lining will be in committee. Well, one of the people who will be called as a witness just happens to be a great authority on privacy issues. The Assistant Privacy Commissioner, Chantal Bernier, already came to the committee this past spring. She was asked what the Americans or anybody else would do with this information. As my colleague from the Western Arctic will recall, as he was sitting in that committee, she said that they could keep that information for from 7 days to 99 years. For what will they use that information? They could use it for anything they want.

Who is standing up for Canada? Who says that it is here for Canada? Who is being deceptive? Who is being duplicitous? Who is acting in a fashion that can only be called cowardly? I think Canadians are asking us to point in the direction of the Conservative government.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-42.

Before us we truly have a misleading bill. On its face, Bill C-42 seems pretty innocuous, with simple changes to the Aeronautics Act, a word here, a word there, which do not appear to provide much difference. What it really does is implement secret letters and memorandums of understanding, not treaties, to invade the privacy of Canadians by handing over our personal information to secret service agencies in foreign countries. Under the bill, just flying over another country is sufficient reason to hand over detailed personal information.

The government would have us believe that we need the bill to fight terrorism. The truth is the government needs the bill so it and other foreign organizations can compile detailed files on Canadians. It will tell us the information is only name and address, et cetera. In reality, what the government is getting ready to hand over is the passenger name record, which includes such vital pieces of security information such as what one ate on the plane, one's medical condition, among other things.

However, the government will not admit to this. In fact, we have a situation where the government is moving ahead with a variety of secret agreements with other countries that will provide the same information to other countries and not simply to the United States.

The government wants us to believe that it is working hard to protect our privacy. Cynically, with Bill C-42, it is stripping away the privacy protection of Canadians.

Perhaps there is a need for some information sharing on flights between countries. That is something the government has said there is a need for. How can we deal with that and maintain the basic principles of privacy for Canadians?

In 1998 the European Commission put forward six key principles, which must be included in any kind of arrangement that is struck with other countries in terms of sharing information. This was specifically tailored towards the aviation industry.

One of the principles is the purpose limitation principle. Private personal information should be processed for a specific purpose and subsequently used or further communicated only in so far as it is not incompatible with the purpose of the transfer.

Another principle is the information quality and proportionality principle, which is Information should be accurate and, when necessary, kept up to date. The information should be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purposes for which it is transferred or further processed.

This is extremely important to Canadians. If we hand over information about Canadians to another country, we need to have the ability to ensure that information is kept correctly and is kept up to date. If that is not the case, then we can come into situations where, in the case of a Canadian getting a pardon for particular offences, those are not included in that record.

There is the transparency principle. Individuals should be provided with information as to the purpose of the processing and the identity of those in control of the information in the third country and other information in so far as this is necessary to ensure fairness. In other words, it is part of the rights of people right to understand who else has information about them, where it is kept, what they are using it for, how long it is going to be kept, all those particular things.

The security principle is another one. Technical and organizational security measures should be taken for those in control of the information that are appropriate to the risk presented by the processing. Any person acting under the authority of those in control of the information, including a processor, must not process information except on instructions from the controllers. In other words, if the person collecting the information is not capable of upholding the security of that information, then that is not something we wish to see for the personal information of Canadians.

There is also the right of access, rectification and opposition principle. The subject of the information should have the right to obtain a copy of all the information relating to him or her that is processed and a right to rectification if the information is inaccurate. Further, in some situations people should be able to object to the processing of the information relating to them. In other words, when we take information from people, they should have an understanding of what that information is and the opportunity and the access to those who control that information if the information is not correct.

Then the final one is the restriction on onward transfers principle. Transfers of the personal information to further countries should be permitted only where the second country is also subject to the same rules as the country originally receiving the information.

We have a situation where, when we pass the information on to the United States, it may use it in one fashion. If it passes it on to another country, we understand how that information will be used in the third country and we accept and control how they use that information in that third country.

Bill C-42 does not include any of these protections. It has nothing about the protection of personal privacy in the putting forward of information about Canadians. In other words, under this bill there is an open season on information about Canadians being given to foreign countries.

Two weeks ago, we spent considerable time on an opposition motion talking about the use of the long form consensus. The government was very concerned about the collection of information from Canadians, even though that information was anonymous.

Here we have a situation where, not anonymously, with people's names attached it, we are giving information to another country without any understanding or any control of how that information is going to be used, in a public fashion.

The government may have an agreement behind the scenes about how that information is to be used, but that is not in the legislation. That is not in the law. The government or any further government following it will not be bound to do that with that information.

In defence of this bill, the office of the Minister of Public Safety said it had to do this to ensure Canadians do not face any undue delays in their travel plans. However do we really want to trade off a few minutes' delay for the total loss of our privacy? Is that what is going on here? I do not think so. I do not think that is really a reason at all why we should move ahead with a bill without any controls attached to it.

If we accept this at second reading, there will be no opportunity to insert a major change to this bill, which is required in order to protect Canadians, to make the primary function of this to protect the personal privacy of Canadians. I do not think that is possible. I do not think we will be able to accomplish that in any committee setting.

Not too long ago we went through this with the long form census. I wish the government would bring back the argument it was using then. I wish it would take those arguments and ask, “Does this not mean something to us? Did we not get up and pontificate on this particular issue? Did we not make this a point of principle for us, that the personal information of Canadians is personal, that it belongs to them, that there are privacy aspects to that?”

The government chose not to engage in that principle here with this bill. It chose not to put principles attached to the bill, which would guide the government and ensure that, if we chose and had to put it into a context of giving Canadians' information to another country, if we chose to do that, Canadians would understand how their information was protected.

On November 22, 2007, the government issued a press release saying it strongly opposed handing over to the United States, and one assumes other countries, the personal information of Canadians.

In that release the government said,

However, in light of our complementary security systems and the security cooperation of Canada and the United States, and the relative risk, we believe that there are excellent security grounds for the proposed Secure Flight Program to exempt all flights to, from and within Canada that overfly the United States.

Why did the government give in? It certainly would not have said that if it did not think it had some opportunity to negotiate a different arrangement. Remember, the flights that overfly Canada from the United States are considerably more and considerably more important to the United States than the flights from Canada that overfly the United States. That is clearly the case. Clearly Canada had the leverage to do something different with this bill.

My question is: Did the government even want to do that, or has it made a decision along with its secret negotiations with other countries around the world to share information? Has it made the decision that it is okay to share this information, that we want to give up this information, that we do not care about the privacy rights of Canadians, that we are going to leave them wide open?

A year later, just before they prorogued for the first time, the Conservatives assured the House that the secure flight program would not apply to Canadians. The government then told the House that the U.S. had indicated the secure flight program would be exempt for countries with a comparable security system. This was in response to a tame question from the government's own benches. We could not put it down to the minister not understanding the question because he had been given the answer directly. At that time the Minister of Transport said, “Our government is committed to respecting the safety, security and privacy of each and every Canadian”.

With Bill C-42 this commitment has gone straight out the window, flushed down the toilet, disposed of. This is the same government that killed the long form census just recently because it was too much of an invasion of privacy. This is the government that feels the long gun registry is too much of an invasion of privacy. The same government brings forward Bill C-42, which will make it possible for the personal and private information of Canadians to be sent out not just to the United States but perhaps to Panama, Mexico, the Dominican Republic or any other country the Canadian government deems appropriate.

It does not take much to fly over a country and give the Canadian government the right to hand that information over. Whether the current government does it or the next government, the rights of Canadians are not being protected.

In August 2007, the European Commission released an opinion on an EU-U.S. agreement on the processing and transfer of PNR by air carriers to the United States Department of Homeland Security. The opinion compared the 2007 agreement to others, and remember that the European Union does not fly over the U.S. nearly as much as Canadians do.

The opinion found that safeguards for private information are weaker than other types of agreements. Especially and specifically, the amount of information transferred is increased; the Department of Homeland Security may use sensitive information that has been excluded by previous agreements; transfers of information to foreign agencies were made easier and no longer subject to previous protection safeguards; and information under that EU agreement with the United States would be kept for at least 15 years and, in some cases, for 40 years.

The opinion also found that the new agreement contains an increased number of exemptions. Specifically, safeguards protecting personal information can be waived at the discretion of the United States.

So if we are following in the footsteps of the European Union in its secret agreement that is not public with the United States, we are going in the wrong direction.

The European Commission stated: “...the new agreement does not strike the right balance to uphold the fundamental rights of citizens as regards data protection”.

However, I am not the only one to oppose this bill. Roch Tassé of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group said: “The Americans will have a veto on every passenger that gets on a plane in Canada even if they are not going to set foot on American soil”. Mr. Tassé added, “What will happen if Canada invites the ambassador from a country such as Cuba?”

The Air Transport Association of Canada made its grievances known to America's Department of Homeland Security last December. Chief in ATAC's critique was that “the submission of Canadian passenger’s details by Canadian airlines violates Canada’s laws on the protection of personal information and electronic documents, as well as laws on aeronautics”.

We are changing the law, so this quotation might be a bit out of date, but the purpose of the law would protect information.

Interestingly enough, the government has already been handing over personal information about Canadians to foreign security services for some time, even if it was against the law. Take the case of Teresa Healy.

In June 2007, Ms. Healy, the lead researcher of the Canadian Labour Congress, was the subject of a prolonged interrogation by American customs officers at the Cornwall, Ontario, border crossing when she set off a radiation detector. After it came to light that the radiation was due to medical tests, they switched the subject of her interrogation to her 1991 arrest at a non-violent protest. No charges were filed at the time, but the customs officers had her digitized fingerprints at their disposal nonetheless. She said that they told her, “Do not worry about it; we are just keeping them in case you do anything else”.

That is the truly worrying issue here. This information can be held for years and used for purposes other than what it was first provided for. Now the government will tell Canadians it is taking steps to ensure the information handed over will be only kept for a few days. The reality is that, once this information is handed out, the monkey is out of the bag. That is it for that.

The only way we can ensure the privacy of Canadians is protected is to stop this information grab by the U.S. and other countries, but the government will not protect Canadians' personal privacy.

What should have been done when the Americans and other nations demanded that we violate the privacy of Canadians? If the government had the concerns of Canadians really at heart, it would have clearly said no, but the government cynically plays the game of let us pretend. Let us pretend we are protecting Canadian privacy, while all the time working to erode the very laws protecting our privacy.

What will Canadians get for this gross violation? Not much. Maybe they will get a slightly shorter waiting time to board an aircraft, but they will get an increased risk that they will be arrested or denied boarding, by mistake, by accident or for some unknown purpose.

The no-fly list has a very dismal record, and my colleague in the Bloc referred to a number of very prominent cases that fit under that, such as Maher Arar and the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

The likelihood is that this information is going to be used in an incorrect fashion. This bill, as it stands, is a poor attempt and a miserable little bill that does nothing to protect the personal privacy of Canadians in difficult situations that we face. If the government had come forward with a bill that showed it was serious about protecting personal privacy, I could support it. I could find some way to support it. However this is not a bill that can be supported in this fashion, and there is no opportunity to change the bill in committee to the degree that it needs to be changed. That is not on. So what are we to do here? What can we do with this bill?

My sense is to send it back to the government and get it to come back with a better answer.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to make myself understood in this cacophony. We know that since 2001, in the wake of September 11, a series of measures has been implemented, in the United States in particular, to improve public safety.

Sometimes these measures infringed and still infringe in a real, tangible or perceived way on the right to privacy. In the aftermath came the implementation of what is commonly referred to in the airline industry as the no-fly list. Being on this list means being prohibited from boarding flights. In order for this list to be fully operational, it is important to know passengers' identity ahead of time. That is why, in 2001, at the request of the United States, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-44, which received the Bloc Québécois' support.

That bill was passed quickly. It authorized airline companies to disclose to local authorities all passenger information prescribed by regulation. The next words I am about to say are important, if not crucial, because they make a distinction between Bill C-44 and the bill currently before us. Bill C-44 allowed all information to be given to authorities in the country of arrival or transit, where the plane touches the ground, whereas Bill C-42 before us covers flying through a given country's airspace. That distinction is of capital importance.

The information requested was name, date of birth, sex, and sometimes, passport number. If, at first glance, access to that information seems innocuous, keep in mind the many problems with the no-fly list.

To show just how ridiculous the United States' no-fly list is, I want to mention two cases where the system went very wrong. One of the people whose name appeared on the no-fly list was Ted Kennedy, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, who died just a few months ago. In 2004, he was apprehended and interrogated five times at the airport, even though his name should not have been on the list. Despite his fame and influence, it took more than three weeks for his team of Congressional aides to get his name off the list. That was one of the mistakes that received the most media coverage, but it was not the only one. There is another example of how ridiculous this list is. Last May in the United States, the Thomas family was apprehended at the airport. Why? Because the name of one of the Thomas girls, who was six years old, was on the no-fly list.

People certainly realized there had been a mistake. It was still very difficult, though, to get on the plane. That is basically what I had to say.

I just want to repeat what I said before the members’ statements and question period, namely that the Bloc Québécois will vote for this bill in principle. We will agree to send it to a committee so that it can be studied seriously and in depth, with witnesses, specialists and experts. I want to thank my colleague, the hon. member for Ahuntsic, who is our outstanding public safety critic. She sent me an email suggesting the names of witnesses, groups and individuals who could enlighten the committee with their expertise so that Bill C-42 can be subjected to some serious analysis.

I want to be clear. The Bloc Québécois will vote at second reading in favour of the principle of this bill so that it can be sent to a committee. Regarding how we will proceed after that, though, we reserve the right to change our position on this issue if necessary.

The House resumed 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.