Bill C-42 (Historical)

Strengthening Aviation Security Act

An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act

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

Strengthening Aviation Security Act

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my interest in the bill is from having recently spent three years on the access to information, privacy and ethics committee, where I got to know a fair bit about the Privacy Act and PIPEDA, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, and their importance to the protection of Canadians' privacy.

Throughout this debate, a lot of assertions have been made that somehow a great deal of private information is going to be transferred consequential to a flight going over U.S. soil or through their airspace. It is not quite that straightforward.

Bill C-42 is a very short bill. In fact, the information is not prescribed in the bill. That has to be handled through the Aeronautics Act and through the regulations.

When I asked the question earlier, what information did the particular member who spoke on this believe was going to be disclosed, the member rattled off a litany of information, such as what hotel someone was staying at, and a whole bunch of other things. That is not correct. There is not this laundry list of information.

If a person wants to stand in the House and claim, “I am the defender of the privacy rights of Canadians”, and to make general statements raising the spectre of a bogeyman and the invasion of privacy and say that, “I'm protecting them and I'm going to challenge this bill”, there has to be some substance to it. Politically, it is easy to say, “I'm defending privacy rights”. It is like saying, “I have the flag on my chest here and I'm going to protect Canadians”. However, there has to be a substantive way that someone can demonstrate they are protecting Canadians. They have to protect Canadians against something, and that something happens to be information that we provide in many ways when we travel to the United States. We must have a passport these days, with our name, our address, our birthdate, our passport number, and information on everywhere we have travelled. The U.S. has access to that. That is as much information as will be given under the intent of Bill C-42 when someone is flying over U.S. airspace.

The issue was always whether or not there was an obligation or duty to respect another country's right to protect its own airspace. Indeed, when we look at the testimony before committee, and I have looked at the testimony from November last year, particularly the testimony of the Privacy Commissioner when she appeared, and a number of other witnesses, including representatives of the Government of the United States, the Government of Canada, the aviation industry, and a very large list of civil rights groups that had expressed concern about the disclosure of information, it is clear that the bottom line or conclusion of the proceedings of the committee was that there was no choice. We had to allow the requested information to be given.

Thus I guess some of the questions, and maybe members who are not sure may want to inform themselves by other ways, are: who is going to decide what information it will be, where that information is to reside, and when it is going to happen.

This whole thing was supposed to be in place by the end of 2010. It is not. We are carrying on here; we have not completed this bill.

However, I would refer the members to the committee hearings of November 18, 2010. Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner, appeared and gave a statement outlining very succinctly what we were facing.

Ms. Stoddart characterized Bill C-42 as a deceptively simple bill. It is short. It only has two clauses and only does one thing: it amends the Aeronautics Act to allow the operator of an aircraft scheduled to fly over a foreign state to provide certain personal information about passengers on the flight to the foreign state, when required to do so by the laws of that state. That is what it does. It is their right, and if a carrier that is resident of another country is not prepared to respect the rights of the destination country, or a country over whose airspace it travels, it has a choice. It can take another route. We cannot expect one country to dictate what the rules of the game will be in another jurisdiction, another country. That is their sovereign right, and we want to protect our sovereign right as well.

Arguments have been made that it should be reciprocal, that we should get their information too. I am pretty sure that we do in many ways already.

With regard to the specifics, I am looking at the testimony of the Privacy Commissioner and her suggestions, including to:

Ensure that the minimal amount of personal information is disclosed to American authorities.

Here the commissioner noted that the secure flight program, which is another program:

requires only three pieces of information. In particular, Transport Canada should work...to avoid excessive disclosures of personal information.

Of course, that is the role of the Privacy Commission, to protect the disclosure of information that is not essential or necessary for the point, and this is what has happened.

In questioning the Privacy Commissioner, the member for Markham—Unionville asked:

In respect of the minimal amount of information being passed to the U.S. government, are you suggesting that the Canadian government can have regulations to ensure that only the three basic pieces of information—name, date of birth, and gender—can be transferred to the U.S.? Is that what you're suggesting?

The Privacy Commissioner responded:

Yes. I understand that this can be specified under the Aeronautics Act. My understanding is that they would have to specify whether they want Canadian planes to continue to fly over airspace in harmony with what DHS [Department of Homeland Security] is asking for.

I think we have found ourselves in a situation where, if we want to drag out a bill, this is probably a good one with which to do it because it is very short, but it touches on an area that is an important concern, not only to Canadians but also to members of Parliament.

Privacy issues are a big topic, particularly with regard to things that we have studied about Facebook and Google and whatever, including the banking system. The velocity of information in our society is enormous, but we understand that in the United States, with the Department of Homeland Security that operates separately from transport operations, they do have an extraordinary latitude and a mandate to be able to give assurances to American citizens as well.

That is what the United States has done in requesting this accommodation to have this information, but if we are to debate the bill, we had better debate the facts of what information is actually to be transferred. It cannot be acceptable in this place to start saying that hotel addresses will have to be given out and the names of family members. That is not the case. Members really need some focus here.

I understand the fervour for protecting privacy, but we cannot just put it on our sleeves and say we are protecting the privacy of Canadians. We need to understand that we have some obligations.

This is not the only bill involved in our relationship with the United States. We have many arrangements with regard to the United States that work for our mutual benefit. They are not identical in all respects in the way in which they have a special interest, but we have taken a position to work with the United States to ensure public security.

I am sure my time is going to run out shortly, but the other thing that members will find if they look at the testimony of the Privacy Commissioner deals with the retention of the information. That is another area. Indeed, the Privacy Commissioner looked for retention periods of somewhere in the neighbourhood of seven years, mirroring our current practice.

I hope I have helped members to understand this is not that complicated.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know this for sure, but I may be the only member of Parliament here who actually worked in the airline industry for over eighteen and one-half years. I can say that if airline industry executives have told members of Parliament that we have to do this in order to keep our routes in and around the United States, it is absolute nonsense. They are deliberately misleading the members of Parliament, especially on that committee. If airline executives have said that not going along with Bill C-42 would hurt their business, it is simply not true. It is false.

Let us think about this. The economies of Canada and the United States are intertwined. We need each other to keep our economies going. The last thing we want to do is involve even more red tape and harassment to hurt business.

When I worked in the airline industry, people could park their cars in the lot and 10 minutes later they could hop on an airplane and off they would go. Now people have to be there well over an hour and sometimes even a few hours before the flight. People have to go through security and pat-downs and provide all sorts of information just to fly from Halifax to Charlottetown.

What are we saying? There are flights from Halifax to Jamaica which fly down the coast of the United States. Are we saying that in order for the United States to feel safer we have to give some unknown person in a building somewhere the passengers' credit card information, health information, the resort they may be staying at, and what car they may be renting? What utter nonsense.

It is amazing that the Conservatives over there and the Liberals on the committee at that time are saying we do not want the long form census because it is an intrusion of Canadians' privacy. We certainly do not want to know how many washrooms are in people's homes, but we will give people's personal information to the United States, which could share it with other countries.

There are flights from Vancouver to Whitehorse, from Vancouver down to Mexico, from Vancouver to Jamaica, but the fact is that 10 times more flights from the United States fly over Canada than flights from Canada fly over the United States. Did we ask the Americans to give us their passenger information? No. Why? Because we do not have the financial resources or even the wherewithal to collect all that information. As well, what would we do with it?

People travelling from California to Amsterdam fly over Canada. I do not think our constituents care about the credit card information of the guy sitting in seat 21-F. I do not think our constituents care what hotel he is staying at in Amsterdam. He is an American passenger travelling to Europe, yet he is flying over Canadian airspace. I do not see Canadians freaking out over that. However, if we fly from Halifax to Jamaica, Cuba or wherever, the Americans need to know everything and we are going to give the information with no reciprocity.

Here is something. The veterans bill of rights says that veterans have a right to have their privacy protected under the Privacy Act. I will use the example of a group of veterans who live in Nova Scotia. After serving their country well in Afghanistan, they want to take a vacation. They want to go to Jamaica for a couple of weeks to wind down. All their private information, including the hotel where they are staying, car rentals, their credit card information, their medical and health information will be given to the Americans. Why? Now we are breaching veterans' rights.

I ask all parliamentarians, especially the Conservatives, to send out their ten-percenters and householders to all their constituents and do an op-ed piece. They should get on the talk shows. They should tell their constituents why somebody in the United States needs their personal credit card, health and travel information if they are not even going to the United States, but are going past the United States. It is incredible. It is absolutely ludicrous.

For those in the industry to say that we have to do this to maintain their routes and maintain their economics in this regard is poppycock. It is nonsense.

The United States economy is suffering and our economy is not doing all that great. To say that the Americans are going to threaten that our flights will not be able to travel in U.S. airspace is just nonsense. We should call their bluff. I am not blaming the negotiators on this because we know they get their marching orders from the Prime Minister's office. That is how it operates.

For the life of me, I do not understand why the Prime Minister and the Conservative Government of Canada would authorize something of this nature. If the Conservatives are fearful, then they should tell Canadians why they are fearful. If it is based on economics, they should show us the facts. They should show us the proof that the United States will stop flights from leaving Canada to go to Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, or wherever. They should show us that.

What are we going to do? Are we going to tell the United States that flights from California, Chicago, Atlanta, et cetera cannot fly over Canadian airspace? Are we going to tell them that? Of course we will not. It is nonsense for us to even contemplate it.

The economic burden of that would be too great for too many people. The reality is this is not what Canadians are asking for. I do not even think the average American is asking for this. There is a bunch of paranoid people somewhere demanding all the personal information of travellers even when they are not travelling to the United States.

We have to ask ourselves, why? Who is going to collect this information? What are they going to do with it? We now hear they can share this information with other entities around the world. Why? What is the absolute reason? It is not about security. It is not about making Americans safer.

I remember very clearly when 9/11 happened, and God bless all those people who suffered that day and all those who helped out. It truly was a sad day. Almost immediately the rumours were flying on Fox and CNN that the terrorists came from Canada, in fact, that they came from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Everyone believed it. Those terrorists were nowhere near Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. People panicked. They freaked out and made accusations. There are probably still a lot of people down there who believe those terrorists came from Canada. It simply was not true.

My colleague, the member for Winnipeg Centre, who flies from Winnipeg to Ottawa, is on a no-fly list. How does that happen? How does a member of Parliament for over thirteen and one-half years get on a no-fly list? How does it happen?

As the member said, in order to get on a plane to come to Ottawa to do his job on behalf of his constituents and the people of Canada, he has to misspell his name. He has to not tell the truth. He has to get some sort of permission. He cannot get his name off the no-fly list. He cannot. I find it incredible.

If the Prime Minister does anything, he should tell Obama to get the name of our colleague from Winnipeg Centre off the no-fly list. That would be considered a good agreement. It is unbelievable that with a common name like his that could happen.

Also, there are people who are trying to get security clearances to coach soccer teams and other things. If they have the same birthdate as someone else, they have to wait, get fingerprinted and the whole bit just because they have the same birthdate as somebody somewhere else in the country. Where are we going on this?

In conclusion, I want to say very clearly that this bill should be dead right now. I would encourage my Liberal and Bloc colleagues, and I implore my Conservative counterparts as well, and do what is right for Canadians across this country. They should kill this bill now and protect the privacy and interests of Canadians once and for all.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is not about the rights and powers of the Privacy Commissioner because she will not be able to enforce any infringements of the Privacy Act against the Government of Canada or, indeed, against the United States or any interested parties in the United States.

However, this is not about the Privacy Commissioner. Yes, we did, before the bill came before this House, engage that Privacy Commissioner in dialogue and in consultation. I actually called her after I saw Bill C-42. She expressed some concerns that the government did not take into consideration all of the consultation that she provided. It is unfair for me to say anything beyond that because it was a private conversation. However, the issue is not about the Privacy Commissioner, nor is it about whether we will limit the commercial rights of Canadians and Canadian companies.

The first issue is that the Government of Canada waited until the middle of June before the House rose in order to come forward with an issue it now says is a security issue and a commercial issue when all it is about is the demands of the Americans that it was forewarned about many months before and did nothing about.

The second issue is that it is not about security. It is about the commercial liability risks of our commercial operators, aircraft operators, who comply with American law. They are not doing anything illegal but they need to choose between one law and the other. This is to absolve them of any risk in Canadian law. I do not know how that advances Canadian interests but maybe my colleague would like to expound on that.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was not going to speak to this given that I am not even on the schedule but I am on House duty and I used to be the critic for transport. In fact, I had the pleasure of being the minister for transportation issues when this bill was first proposed on the very last sitting day of the session in June, just before the House recessed for its summer break.

As one can imagine, I was immediately outraged both by the process and the substance of the legislation. I note, with some pleasure, although with some astonishment as well, that the NDP today has arrogated to itself sole possession of the virtue of being the watchdog on people's issues. However, it was rather silent in June. In fact, its silence was only replicated by the deafening tomb-like response of government members on the following issues. Bill C-42 is couched a security issue. The government addresses all issues as matters of security and/or law, crime and justice. There is no other government agenda, none whatsoever, that anyone can discern. In fact, all issues relating to the economy, which it purports to hold as the closest and most important priority of the nation, take second place to security, crime and justice. All economic issues are tied to those but this bill fits in neither of those categories.

Bill C-42 does one specific thing. It alleviates the risk factor, the liability issues associated with revealing information on private Canadian citizens that airline operators might divulge without their knowledge to foreign states. Notice that I said “foreign states”. I did not say the United States. I said foreign states because the bill was poorly drafted. It says that as long as a country can draft regulations demanding to know information that is in the possession of the airline operator on each and every one of its passengers and that airline operator overflies our territory, our airspace, it does not matter where we are, we have a right to demand it.

What the legislation says, notwithstanding the privacy regulations in Canada and the guarantees that we provide our own citizens within our own borders, is that the airline operator can provide passenger information to a foreign state if the plane overflies or lands there. That is all this would do. It would protect the airline operators from any civil suit for the breach of the privacy laws that we have taken great care to implement in this country and, in fact, which we promote everywhere as the hallmark of a very progressive nation.

I might be tempted in an unkind moment, and I am not there yet, to suggest that perhaps the government is treading marginally close to no longer worrying about the progressive component of the quality of Canadian life. However, as I say, I am not there yet so I will move on to the second thing that the legislation does.

The legislation speaks to the total inability of the government to negotiate with the one foreign state that matters to all Canadians, our neighbour. It matters not because we have an economic relationship that we have not nurtured well but take for granted because we are in the same hemisphere and share a common border, most especially in the central Canadian Great Lakes Basin, because that is where the greater part of the population lives, or even out west where the border is long. The Americans defined it in a fashion that is pejorative but I like to think of it as progressive, that it is open and people actually talk to each other across a fence that does not exist.

The bill does not erect a fence but it does say something about the Government of Canada. I am getting close to that unkind moment now so I need to be forgiven if I breach that aura of kindness that I wanted to envelope myself in and name the type of government we have. However, I will not do it yet.

The legislation does not say that we will erect a fence. This is not a security issue. This says that the Government of Canada heard the Government of the United States plead with it for the better part of three years by saying that it will enact homeland security issues that will infringe upon Canadian sovereignty and that the Government of Canada should take note, submit its objections or put in place legislation that will take this into account.

Can members guess what happened? The government snored for three years and then last June suddenly woke up to the fact that homeland security had said that Canada needed to have legislation in place by the end of December for passengers flying over American airspace.

My colleague from Winnipeg, who flies to Ottawa, does not land in the United States. However, he says that his aircraft may fly over the northern tip of the central northern United States, which means that the U.S. would want to know everything that the airline has about him. He is not going to the United States and is not landing or transiting through the United States. He is going directly to Ottawa or Toronto.

The problem is that the shortest distance between Winnipeg and Toronto will probably see that aircraft carrier, for economic reasons, use American airspace. Now the airlines would need to give up information about Canadians who travel from one part of Canada to another part of Canada. The Americans are saying that our airlines should either go around their airspace and pay more or they can come through their airspace and let them know who everybody is.

The Americans were right to do that but we were wrong not to have objected. We were especially negligent in not taking the opportunity to negotiate with them when they invited negotiations. Now we must protect our airlines because of our own negligence. I should not use the first person plural pronoun anymore because it is no longer “our government”. It is the Conservative government that is less than progressive, totally negligent and derelict in protecting the rights of Canadians.

The government is now saying that it has to protect. Who? Is it the Canadian citizen? It is the corporate citizen first and foremost. In this sense, this now becomes part of an economic issue because the corporate interests of any aircraft carrier needs to take precedence over privacy issues.

The third thing about this bill that grated on everybody was that the Conservative government was not only negligent in its duties and obligations in accepting an invitation, but it was totally incompetent in its negotiations once it was given the final verdict. The Americans said, “Please, do you want to trade something off?” We have lots of things to trade-off but the government chose not to trade-off with whatever leverage the people of Canada had with the Government of the United States on its perceived needs. The government did not do that, but came forward with this legislation. In so doing, the government has now opened us up to every other interest, any country around the world that Canadian carriers fly over.

Is it the Americans' will to harass us to do something? It is not a problem. As they would say, they have regulations and they want the information on those travellers. I am not exaggerating. We were just kicked out of Camp Mirage. Two of our ministers were not allowed to go over Emirates' airspace because it had a problem. What did the Conservatives do by way of negotiations? They got down on their knees and begged forgiveness.

I want to compliment my colleagues from the Liberal Party who sit on this committee for having introduced a couple of motions that would mitigate the absolute atrocities that the Conservative government was trying to perpetrate last June on the people of Canada. My colleagues on that committee deserve to be complimented and I look forward to hearing their advice on where we go from here.

However, these are the initial impressions that Bill C-42. If I were sitting on that side of the table, I would be embarrassed. They have forgotten about Canadians, they have forgotten about our interests and they have promoted everybody else, in their negligence.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in the debate on Bill C-42. It really is a fundamental question about the right of Canadians to privacy versus some other foreign national government's decision, whether it be the United States, or some other third party such as Colombia or Panama or any other country around the world that wishes to have the personal information of me or anyone else in our country who chooses to travel by air.

I find it quite astounding that somehow we think that giving this information up is okay and we can trot out security as being the justification for giving up our private information.

Where does it would stop? Some would say that it is just our names, the hotel we are going to, whether we are renting a car and where we are going to travel in that country. We know there are sophisticated programs in place that could develop profiles about people. However, profiles can be false. I remind the House that there are a number of us who have similar last names. I and the member for Tobique—Mactaquac have the same last name, but we ensure in the House that we identify the member for Welland or the member for Tobique—Mactaquac. The same is done for others whose names are similar.

However, as my colleague and friend from Winnipeg ably pointed out, what we see is that where mistakes are made, they cannot be corrected. Therefore, if a person has a similar name that may sound like someone else's, that person ends up on a list. As my friend described his case earlier, travelling from his Winnipeg riding to his workplace in Ottawa became a great challenge based on being misidentified. Imagine how many other folks have been misidentified.

We know about Maher Arar and the absolutely heinous crime perpetrated against that individual by misinformation that was passed from government to government. Yet they were supposed to have the ability to do it well.

Now airlines will pass information to government agencies and we will not know where it goes. We will not know who they share it with. It could be other foreign national governments. It could be other agencies within the United States or within other foreign national governments. Yet as individuals we will have no control over our information and we will not even be able to come to our own government. People could not come to us and say that they needed us to help them control what had happened to their personal information because these agencies had it wrong and thought they were someone they were not.

As representatives of the citizens of our country, how do we protect the sovereignty of this nation and those citizens if we cannot correct the information that we helped deliver to a foreign national that got it wrong, when it simply puts up the roadblock, puts its hands in the air and says that it is sorry but that is the way it is going to be?

I remind my colleagues of the days in elementary school. One of the activities that many teachers used to give elementary school children was to whisper a story into the ear of the first child in a row and ask each child to whisper it to the next and pass it all the way through. By the time it came out from child number 23, the class would see how close it matched the original story. I believe, as that information goes from one government to one agency to a second agency to a third to a fourth to a fifth to another government then another government and its agencies, by the time it is finished I am not sure who they think I am anymore.

If it is our sense that somehow we are keeping terrorists out of the sky, we are really mistaken. That will not prevent folks from doing that. Folks who intend to perpetrate heinous crimes find a way to work outside of the system.

My friends in the government are always keen to talk about the long gun registry and how it does not prevent crime because criminals do not obey the law. Terrorists do not obey the law. Developing a law to give information to someone will not prevent terrorists from simply saying that they think they will become Mr. or Mrs. so and so today.

We know how easy it is in this Internet age to steal identities of other people. In my case, I would hate for someone to steal my identity. I could end up, like my colleague from Winnipeg, thinking I am going on vacation with my family and getting turned away at the airport. Because I am headed back to my ancestral homeland, going back to Glasgow, Scotland to visit with my aunts and uncles, I could find out that I cannot get there because I am about to fly over some foreign country. In this case it could be Greenland or Iceland.

I could be told that my name is on a list, unbeknownst to me and because of someone else who decided to misappropriate my identity. It could end up not being able to be corrected. We face this serious situation. Somehow we have not come to grips with it in our rush to simply give up the personal information of our citizens.

We are not asking for this to be done, by the way. There is no great groundswell of public opinion in Canada asking us to do this.

One of the questions earlier was about information. I believe the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore asked if the government was delineating this information in any kind of political way. Forget about the politics, the government ought to tell Canadians that it is willing to tell foreign governments all about them, that it is willing to give them the information of Canadians, that it is not going to fight to ensure Canadians can keep their privacy and that it is going to pass a bill to ensure their privacy is compromised. Let us see what Canadians have to say to us about that.

This is so far under the radar, no pun intended, that it is ridiculous. We need to inform our citizens that the government is about to compromise their privacy. They believe they have a right to privacy. The charter says they do have a right to privacy.

If citizens believe it and it is enshrined in law, why is the government compromising it, all in the name of “security”? I believe those who work for our security services, whether it be CSIS, the CBSA, the RCMP or the other agencies across this land, are up to the job. When people board a plane, folks have a sense of who they are. They have to identify themselves.

If there is an issue with me, if I have some difficulties with the law, security services will know that and they will then be able to do something about it.

We are contracting out, like we do with so many other things, the security and the privacy of Canadians to someone else. It could be to Panama, Bolivia, Guatemala, the U.S. or the EU. Our right is to our citizens. Our work is on behalf of our citizens. In my view we do not have the right to contract that obligation and that responsibility out to third, fourth, fifth, sixth parties. As they pass it around, that is exactly where it is going to go.

This is from testimony that came before the committee from some of the witnesses who talked about how this thing actually took place. It states:

After running a risk assessment for each passenger using data-mining technology, the Department of Homeland Security in turn issues a boarding pass result back to the airline. The result instructs the airline to issue a boarding pass...

In other words, someone in Canada is looking to get a board pass, the list goes somewhere else, to Homeland Security in this case because he or she is going to over fly the U.S. The U.S. Homeland Security will decided whether people can get a boarding pass, even though they are not going to the United States. They could be going to a destination wedding in Mexico. My family is participating in one next week for a very gorgeous young woman who I have known from the age of five.

I cannot comprehend the thought of my wife and two daughters showing at the airport and somehow their names being on a list. They could get turned away and not be able to go to the wedding of that young woman, simply because someone in the U.S. said that their names were on a list. Their name would be on a list inappropriately.

We need to ensure we do the job in our country and do it well. I think Canadians expect us to do that. We need to ensure that our security forces are robust, and they are. We do not need the help of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security still thinks the 9/11 terrorists came across the 49th parallel and flew those planes into the Twin Towers. The bottom line is it was wrong. It was such a horrendous, heinous crime and yet Homeland Security cannot get it right. I do not know it can get Smith and Allen right quite frankly.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly do have a sensitivity to the privacy issues and the potential misuse of information, but I think the member has maybe inadvertently misled the House with regard to the exact information that is required to be disclosed under this bill and under the agreement with the U.S.

I wonder if the member would care to share with the House exactly what he thinks the required disclosure is, pursuant to Bill C-42.

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

Mr. Speaker, I greatly appreciate the people who are speaking against the bill today. It is extremely important to recognize the lack of security that would be a part of this and the fact that the amount of information that would be provided would actually surpass what we should be providing.

I just want to refer to the European Commission of 1998, which put forward six key principles that must be included: the purpose limitation principle; the information quality and proportionality principle; the transparency principle; the security principle; the right to access, rectification and opposition principle; and the restriction on onward transfers principle.

Bill C-42 does not include any of these protections. Under the bill, it is open season on the private information of Canadians. We know what happens with that. We just have to look at Maher Arar. He was detained for over a year for being on a list.

My question to my colleague is, could he elaborate on the difficulties that families would have in trying to get their loved ones back, should this information be provided?

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in the House today to speak on this bill.

One of the most disturbing pieces of legislation the government has brought forward is Bill C-42. As I understand it, Bill C-42 amends the Aeronautics Act to allow airlines to send the personal information of passengers to foreign countries. The information to be forwarded will be determined by the requirements laid out in a secret agreement with other countries.

Imagine, it was the current federal government that cancelled the long form census, because it was too invasive of Canadians' privacy, but it is now trying to pass a law to hand over to foreign security agencies undisclosed information about Canadian passengers who may not even be landing on those countries' soil. This secretive government, which is so eager to divulge its citizens' private information to other governments, will not talk about these secret agreements, but we have some understanding of similar information transfer agreements between the European Union and the United States and they are all very troubling.

We know that the agreement allows the forwarding of a passenger's name record, which is the file a travel agent creates when the passenger books a vacation. This file could include credit card information; the name of the person a citizen is travelling with; hotel details and other booking information, such as tours and car rentals, et cetera. This agreement also provides details of any serious medical conditions of passengers.

The information collected can be retained by the United States for up to 40 years. This information may be forwarded to the security service of a third nation without the consent or notification of other signatories. I will dwell on this because it particularly concerns me.

Canada has signed another secret deal with one of the countries that is on this list, and that is Brazil. The secret agreement that was signed concerns the Investment Canada Act. Now we would be sending information on all Canadian citizens who fly over the United States to this country. It was this country that came to Canada under a secret agreement and then put our workers on strike for one year and used scab labour. This same country was given $1 billion by the Canadian government so it could lay off most of its employees in Thompson, Manitoba. Now Canada is going to send to this country all of the information about Canadians who fly to the United States. I think it is unreasonable that we would be sending this information to this country in particular.

No person may know what information is being held about them by the United States and may not correct that information if there are errors. I will also dwell on this.

We had a very good example by our colleague from Winnipeg a few minutes ago. An error was made on his information and it cannot be corrected. This information can be kept for 40 years. Our colleague from Winnipeg is stuck for 40 years. I am sure he is not the only Canadian who had mistakes made, and this is going to increase if we sign this agreement.

The United States may unilaterally amend this agreement as long as it advises the EU of the change. In essence, this bill would allow data mining of Canadians' personal information by foreign security services.

We know that Canada is being bullied by the U.S., that unless this bill passes, the United States could close its airspace to Canadian aircraft. The truth is that Canada and the United States have a long history of co-operation in politics, economics, defence, security and culture. We know that the United States cannot simply cut off its airspace to our flights and passengers. That is simply not realistic.

The government could do better for its citizens, but it is not. We on this side of the House are dumbfounded as to why the government, which bills itself as a great defender of our privacy, would so readily abandon our rights. It is utterly shameful.

I want to stress that this debate is not an ideological one. Its significance is due to the extent to which the federal government would go in relinquishing our rights without any disclosure to its citizens. This is truly a bad piece of legislation.

Do not take my word for it. I will read what others have had to say about this legislation. Roch Tassé, the national coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, has stated:

After running a risk assessment for each passenger using data-mining technology, the Department of Homeland Security in turn issues a boarding pass result back to the airline. The result instructs the airline to issue a boarding pass, deny permission to travel, or issue enhanced screening requirements.

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.

Another witness at committee has noted:

Furthermore, this information can be shared among at least 16 U.S. agencies and with foreign governments. 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, the Caribbean, and South America overfly American airspace.

There are many cases that involve Canadians. Canadians have been denied boarding by the U.S. Even domestic flights in Canada have been reported. These cases include several individuals who have been deemed by Canadian courts and commissions of inquiry not to pose a risk to the national security of Canada.

Dr. Mark Salter, associate professor at the School of Political Studies of the University of Ottawa, had this to say:

Governments want this information so that they can build profiles of not just risky passengers but safe passengers as well.

He went on to say:

What worries me about this particular legislation is that the data not only go to the destination country but may go to all states that the airline might fly over. That, I feel, is the significant change that this legislation brings, and it worries me a great deal.

He is right when he says:

...I think it is dangerous to sacrifice our privacy and our freedoms for the dream of zero risk or perfect security. This particular measure does not provide additional security for the aviation sector, and it places an additional burden on Canadian citizens who are flying.

Mr. Edward Hasbrouck of the Liberty Coalition, a U.S.-based civil liberties group, stated:

You should be very clear that the enactment of Bill C-42 would grant to the U.S. government de facto veto power over the ability of virtually anyone to obtain sanctuary in Canada, since in most cases it's impossible to get to Canada to make a claim for political asylum or refugee status without overflying the U.S., and that power of the U.S. would be exercised at the worst possible point: while a refugee is still on the soil of and subject to the persecution of the regime they are trying to flee.

I want to speak about one point that my colleague from Vancouver East touched on. She said there were six points and she touched on one. I would like to touch on the second point, the information quality and proportionality principle. Information should be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date.

I just want to inform the House that if this information is not accurate, we cannot make any changes to it. How many Canadians will this affect? We know there are many Canadians who fly regularly over the United States. It will result in more and more mistakes, and these mistakes will not be correctable.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore has raised a very interesting question.

I wonder how proud the Conservative members of Parliament in this chamber or the other chamber are of this intrusion into and erosion of the privacy rights of Canadians. I wonder if they will be using their extraordinary mailing privileges to brag and advertise what they did when they went down to that trading session. Somebody mentioned what terrible negotiators they are. It is like Jack and the Beanstalk; they went down and traded their cow for three beans or something. The Conservative members did not come back with something to the advantage of Canada. They came back with this appalling policy, much to the detriment of Canadian rights and freedoms.

It is an appalling situation that the Conservatives were carpet bombing other ridings with their political propaganda. Now that they have actually overdone it to the point where they have been prohibited from doing so, they are allowing their colleagues in the Senate to mail propaganda to ridings such as Winnipeg South Centre using the Senate mailing privileges. That is one example I know of.

My Liberal colleague is getting hate mail essentially from the Conservative members in the Senate regarding her voting record on issues before the House of Commons, and that is funded by taxpayer dollars. The Conservatives should be ashamed of that communication strategy. As well, they should be ashamed of Bill C-42.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member raised this point because it is one of the core issues of the bill that we must struggle with and the conflict that it presents. Information is being mined about people and is being stored in enormous data warehouses. Where is the transparency and accountability pertaining to these massive institutions and bureaucracies that develop and control this data?

One of the most fundamental issues is that people do not know what information is being gathered. If they do have a sense that something is wrong because they have been turned away for a flight or they find out that they are on the no-fly list, then under this legislation their ability to get that information is nil. This is why I wanted to draw attention to the European Commission report and the six principles which it claims are fundamental to any legislation such as this. However, Bill C-42 does not adhere to these particular principles. It appears to me that is a serious matter and if we are acting in the public interest and protecting the rights of our constituents, we should not allow this to go ahead.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to continue my remarks from yesterday. I appreciate the information about the significance of the mace today and the fact that we are remembering the fire of 1916 in Parliament. It is very interesting to be in the House on this historical day. I appreciate that being brought forward.

I want to speak to this bill because there is a lot of concern from Canadians about how so much is being eroded in terms of civil liberties and privacy of information by security measures. Certainly Bill C-42 is a very strong case in terms of a further erosion of privacy of Canadians.

There has been a lot of debate about this bill and certainly our critic, the member for Western Arctic, has done an incredible job of bringing forward information, both at committee and in the House, to show just how dangerous this bill will be. As he said in an earlier debate, Bill C-42 really means stripping away the privacy of Canadians and that is something we should be very concerned about.

Out in the broader community, people are very worried about how much government legislation, whether it is so-called anti-terrorism legislation, no-fly lists, or this bill, is impacting the rights and privacy of Canadians. It is all being done in the name of security. Yet there is no evidence to show that these very broad measures that cast such a wide net over every segment of our society actually do improve our security or prevent terrorism from taking place. However, they do create an enormous chill in our society.

As parliamentarians, we have a responsibility to examine this kind of legislation in great detail to establish whether or not it is warranted and whether or not the legislation goes too far towards invading the privacy of Canadians. I would say for us in the NDP, we have come to the conclusion that this legislation does go too far. We know it will allow airlines to send personal information of passengers to foreign security services.

The information that will be forwarded is determined by requirements that are laid out in secret agreements with other countries. In and of itself, that is a huge problem. There is no transparency. I would note that in 1998, the European Commission put forward six key principles that must be included for this type of legislation. They had a very thorough examination because this has been a huge issue in Europe as well as around the world. I do not have time to go into the six principles, but briefly they outline the purpose limitation principle; the information, quality and proportionality principle; the transparency principle; the security principle; the right to access restitution opposition principle; and restriction on onward transfers principle.

The right to access principle says that subjects of the information should have the right to obtain a copy of all the information relating to them that is processed and the right to restitution of the information which is inaccurate. Further, in some situations people should be able to object to the processing of the data that relates to them.

I want to be very clear that this bill we are debating today does not include any of these protections, so that is a very serious matter.

When the bill was examined earlier by committee, there were some very notable witnesses who came forward. One of them was Dr. Mark Salter of the School of Political Studies here in Ottawa who said:

Governments want this information so that they can build profiles of not just risky passengers but safe passengers as well. Research clearly demonstrates that in the United States and the U.K., government agencies are trying to collect as much data about travellers as possible.

He went on at some length about what that means.

There was further evidence from Nathalie Des Rosiers who is the general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

In her testimony she said:

There's no safeguard that the TSA will not pass information to other government agencies, such as law enforcement or immigration. There is no safeguard that the TSA will not pass this information to third countries. And we know this has been a particularly difficult issue for some Canadians, Maher Arar being a case in point. There's no guarantee that the TSA will not use the information for profiling Canadians, to put them on their watch list or the no-fly list.

We have heard many incredible stories about the no-fly list, about people who are on there by mistake, people who are legitimately and in good faith travelling to the United States or elsewhere who cannot access information regarding why they are on the no-fly list. It is a grievous error and problem we face. We can see that, if approved, the legislation will have an enormous impact on our rights, on our privacy. We are not doing our job properly if we allow the bill to go through, so I am proud that members of the NDP are standing in the House to speak out against the bill and make it very clear that we do not believe it is in the public interest nor in the interest of so-called security. It is simply further integrating us with U.S. policies which people are very concerned about, all in the name of security. There is no transparency and no accountability.

I hope other members will reflect on the bill at this stage and decide that it should not go forward and should not be supported.

The House resumed from February 2 consideration of Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, although I only have a few minutes this afternoon, I am sure this debate will continue tomorrow because it is a very important bill that we are debating. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-42, the Aeronautics Act.

I first want to thank my colleague from Western Arctic who is the NDP transport critic. I know the member from Western Arctic and his team, the folks in his office, his researchers, have put together just a wealth of information that when one reads through it leaves one with a very troubling sense as to what the bill is all about.

The bill was before the House before the holiday break. There was a sense of urgency, a deadline and it had to be rushed through. This is such a familiar story in this place that it almost makes the notion of Parliament and the work of parliamentarians seem redundant. Everything has an urgency and must be rushed through.

We are here to dig into legislation, to find out what it is about, to look at its merits, to give it a sober first thought and second thought, to have it go through committee and then through all the other processes. That is very important, especially in this day and age when everything is so focused on security, technology and the movement of information from government to government. There are huge issues involved here in terms of people's privacy.

While we have the opportunity and the right to see this legislation, we just think of what it means to the people out there who have not the vaguest notion of how these massive changes are taking place in our society. These days, travelling by air is something that millions of people do. It is part of daily living, part of business and part of one's family life.

Something I find deeply troubling is that most people have absolutely no awareness or knowledge of the rules that are being imposed, the secret agreements that are being laid out, which affect how their personal information is being used. When we relate that to a bigger picture about what is taking place with the deep integration with United States' policies, whether it is trade, security issues or border issues, this is something that I know many Canadians are more and more concerned about.

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

Madam Speaker, I think the question regarding Bill C-42 at this point is what would happen if we did not pass this bill. The government told us that if it was not in force by December 31, the Americans would deny overflights of United States territory, but here we are on February 2 and Air Transat is operating fine.

I understand the Bloc's concern that it has to do what Air Transat tells it to do. In the area of the air passenger bill of rights, the Bloc members were onside with the NDP in the beginning. Then Air Transat got to the Bloc members and they flipped to the other side and did what Air Transat told them to do. Now Air Transat is telling the Bloc members that they have to pass this bill because it is going to cost too much to fly around the edges of the United States. I guess those are valid concerns, but there are broader concerns to be dealt with on this issue.

At the end of the day, I feel, and I think this caucus feels, that if we had negotiated with the Americans in a tougher manner, they would have backed down. If we had said to the Americans that they would have sovereignty over their airspace and we would provide the information for those passengers for those 100 flights a day flying over their territory, but they would have to reciprocate and provide information on those passengers on the 2,000 planes that fly over Canadian airspace each day, I think we would have seen the Americans back off a bit.

They would have had to come to grips with what their constituents would have to say about this, what their airline industry and airlines would say to their government, and what all those thousands of passengers would have to say. There would be an uprising in the United States against their congressmen and senators. They would be telling the U.S. government at this point to hold back and be a little more understanding of the situation.

Let us look at what we would be providing under this agreement versus what we are providing under the agreement with the European Union.

Under this agreement, I do not think we negotiated anything with the Americans. I think we simply kept their demands and said, “Yes sir, whatever you want you are going to get”. The reality is that we would provide all the PNR information to the United States, which the U.S. could keep for up to 40 years and perhaps share with other foreign governments. We are not really sure about that. The information on the PNR is tied to an individual's name, so privacy is a huge issue.

Let us look at the agreement Canada has with the European Union regarding the same information in the PNR. As a matter of fact, the Canada–E.U. agreement has been praised by Canadian and European data protection authorities because it has specific time periods for the disposal of data. In other words, they cannot keep it for 40 years as the Americans can under Bill C-42. They have to dispose of it after, I believe, a week. I am not sure of the days, but it is not a very long period before they have to dispose of the data. It limits the data's use, unlike what we are giving to the Americans. It limits, in particular, the individualization of the data. This is a really important point.

The information under the Canada–E.U. agreement is rendered anonymous. This allows the security services to build up the profile without attaching it to any one individual. Therefore, security is maintained.

If the member for Winnipeg North wants to get on a plane under this agreement that he is likely to vote for with his caucus colleagues, the Bloc and the government in the next number of days, the information he would have to provide would be in the Americans' computer system and it would be tied to him. They would do data mining and build a bank of information and a profile on him over time.

Under the Canada–E.U. agreement, the PNR information is separated from the person's name. Therefore, a person's privacy is maintained. They still accomplish the same goal that they are trying to get. They can build up profiles but they are not violating privacy. This has become one of the global standards for international treaties on PNR agreements. By getting involved with the Americans in Bill C-42, we are moving away from that high standard with the passage of this legislation.

I wish the Liberals and the Bloc would pause for a second and take another look at this.

As I said, we were supposed to pass this bill by the end of the year or the flights would stop. Well, the flights are continuing, and if we do not pass this legislation now, the flights are going to continue into the future. The Prime Minister will be in Washington on Friday no doubt to provide some answers and excuses as to why his government has been unable to get this legislation through the House. It is his problem to explain it, because he waited until the last possible minute to bring the legislation before the House in the first place.

There are other broader issues we should be looking at here. We should get the initial infrastructure that we have had in place since 9/11 working properly first. I will give a few examples of things that are not working right and some broad areas that we should be looking at.

One example is the trusted shippers program. We have a huge exposure in Canada and the United States with I believe it is 1,000 trusted shippers under the trusted shippers program who are not following up on packages and baggage. People are sitting on airplanes after having gone through all the security procedures, and packages and parcels that have not been checked are on the planes right underneath them. Does that make any sense at all?

We should be concentrating on where the exposures are. Right now the biggest exposure according to the American Air Line Pilots Association is the trusted shippers program, all the mail and packages that are being put on planes without being checked. Why are we not looking at that area? In the whole area of the no-fly list, we do not even have the bugs worked out on that yet.

A couple of years ago, we were stopping Senator Ted Kennedy and refusing to let him on a plane. The member for Winnipeg Centre was denied boarding several times because another person with the same name was on the no-fly list. Six-year-old Alyssa Thomas was denied boarding because her name is on the no-fly list. They would not let her on the plane.

And we trust these people with all these data? Good luck, if the Bloc and the Liberals, and the government for that matter, think that giving all this information to the Americans is somehow going to provide security.

All we are going to get at the end of the day is perhaps a delayed flight if we have to go around American airspace. I am not suggesting that is ever going to happen. I would suggest that we should call their bluff and not pass the legislation.

What are other countries doing? What is Mexico doing? The member for Western Arctic said the Mexicans are not participating in this program. Why do we not check these things out? Clearly, the government has no desire to give us information as to what is going on.

When I talk about a reciprocal agreement, what kind of negotiating is going on in the government when it simply holus-bolus accepts what the Americans want it to do? The Conservative government does not say that if we are going to give them information, we want theirs. Did it occur to anybody over there in the government, the government negotiators, at least to suggest that to the Americans? Perhaps that would have slowed down the process a bit. But no, we are simply rolling over.

The government told me that it does not want to ask them for the information because we do not have a computer system that could handle all the information. The Americans are going to take our information on 100 flights and they are going to spend, and I forget the figure I was told, but a huge amount of money anyway to deal with this data and we would have to do the same thing if we got information from them.

I would suggest that the government start looking at its negotiating team and maybe get it to do a little more work.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague asked an excellent question.

Thank heaven there have been New Democrats in the House. We have seen the government cave under tremendous pressure on things like the MacDonald, Dettwiler takeover and the potash situation in Saskatchewan. Without our voices in the House talking about the importance of Canada maintaining its own identity, about Canada maintaining control over its own resources, about Canada maintaining its own sovereignty, we would have seen more Canadian resources sold down the river.

All of these foreign takeovers that supposedly have government oversight are rubber-stamped by what we call the ministry of rubber-stamping. Virtually none, except for the two that I have mentioned, have been turned down by the government and, it is sad to say, by previous Liberal governments.

We really need a government that stands up for Canadians, that stands up for the protection of our resources, for the protection of our sovereignty, for the protection of our privacy. Pieces of legislation like Bill C-42 do not give comfort to Canadians that the Conservative government is acting on their behalf.