Debates of Nov. 2nd, 1998

Calgary Declaration

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

An amendment to a motion cannot be raised on a point of order. When we got into the right of reply the debate was ended. After the right of reply it is the responsibility of the Chair to put the question forthwith.

[Eric C. Lowther, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the wisdom you have given me. What I am seeking is simply the unanimous consent of the House to consider a motion. I am not at this point putting forward the motion, I am just asking the House to consider an amendment to the motion.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

We will allow the hon. member for Calgary Centre to ask the House for unanimous consent. Just so we are clear, the member for Calgary Centre has requested the unanimous consent of the House to move a motion seeking to move an amendment. Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

There is not unanimous consent. The question is on the main motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

I declare the motion carried.

(Motion agreed to)

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to suspend the House until noon.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

(The sitting of the House was suspended at 11.50 a.m.)

The House resumed at 12 p.m.

The House resumed from October 30 consideration of the motion that Bill C-54, an act to support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances, by providing for the use of electronic means to communicate or record information or transactions and by amending the Canada Evidence Act, the Statutory Instruments Act and the Statute Revision Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee; and of the motion that the question be now put.

Personal Information And Electronic Documents Act

[Daniel Turp, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to again intervene on behalf of the Bloc Quebecois on Bill C-54, the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act.

Right at the start, the Bloc Quebecois had to remind this House that, when it comes to protecting personal information, Quebec's law has for some time been unique in North America.

Quebec had a law protecting privacy in the public sector as far back as 1982. The federal government and the provinces later enacted similar legislation. In 1994, long before the federal government had envisaged doing so, the Quebec law extended the protection of personal information to the private sector. Once again, Quebec was the first jurisdiction in North America to do so.

Quebec's privacy laws were adopted to ensure respect for major fundamental rights provided in international instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantee the right to privacy.

These international instruments were reflected in the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, which was enacted in 1975, and which was in fact the first law dealing with the right to privacy.

I remind this House that section 5 of the Quebec charter, enacted in 1975, provides that “Every person has a right to respect for his private life”. This implies of course that governments must pass laws to protect this right, including against any misuse of personal information.

The Quebec act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector is rather similar to the directive from the European Union on this issue, which is also a leading-edge document. This means that Quebec and the European Union are the jurisdictions that are most respectful of the right to privacy when it comes to the protection of personal information.

As for Bill C-54, which is now before us, it is in response to numerous commitments made by the government to enact a federal law to protect personal information in the private sector, which comes under federal jurisdiction.

However, the title itself shows a will to reduce the level of protection that the legislation should provide, since it reads an act “to support and promote electronic commerce”. This means it is first and foremost an act to promote electronic commerce. Then comes “by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances” only “by providing for the use of electronic means to communicate or record information or transactions”.

Indeed, the title already tells us about the limits which the government wants to impose on the protection of personal information that may be used or collected by the private sector.

So, this bill is not an act to protect personal information but rather an act to manage the use of personal information in the sole area of commercial activities. Unfortunately, Bill C-54 is another bill whose core is to be found in a schedule and one that restates guidelines originally developed at the OECD and embraced by standards organizations in Canada. This is a bill whose schedule, which is its heart, its core, is written in the conditional.

One has to take a close look at this bill and its schedule to notice that the so-called requirements are in fact written in the conditional, which means that for all intents and purposes theses requirements are really only suggestions or recommendations being made to those who hold personal information and should ensure its best use.

In fact, in considering the bill, under paragraph 5(2), every government institution is required to specify the identified purposes to the individual from whom personal information is collected, but subparagraph 4.2.3 of the schedule states, and I draw members' attention to the use of the conditional here, that the identified purpose should be specified at or before the time of collection to the individual from whom the personal information is collected.

Two subparagraphs further, subparagraph 4.2.5 of the schedule states—and again I draw members' attention to the use of the conditional—that persons collecting personal information should be able to explain to individuals the purposes for which the information is being collected.

So, it would seem that the purpose of Bill-54 is, through watered down obligations written in the conditional, to promote electronic commerce by making the right to privacy in the private sector a secondary consideration. Worse yet, the Bloc Quebecois believes that, in some instances, this bill will restrict the rights Quebeckers currently have under legislation passed by the Quebec national assembly.

Under section 17 of Quebec's protection of personal information legislation, an Eaton employee in Montreal is entitled to see his personal file, even if it is kept in Toronto. However, with Bill C-54, he would not necessarily be able to view his file, because his request would be subject to legislation that ignores the right to privacy when the access to information request is made under labour relations provisions and is not of a commercial nature.

One of the weaknesses of this bill, and we have pointed this out in the last few days, is that clause 27(2)(b) gives the Governor in Council excessive powers that should never be given to a government and that should be spelled out in the bill if there is really to be any respect for the fundamental right to privacy.

The bill relies on the voluntary CSA code. This code is mentioned in the preamble to the schedule. But those with primary responsibility for protection of personal information were not impressed.

We gave an example that is worth repeating today. The access to information commissioners for Quebec and for British Columbia were quite critical of this code and argued that it did not go far enough and did not provide optimal protection.

In his 1997-98 annual report, the Quebec access to information commissioner said that going along with this proposal, the CSA standard, would be a step backward from the current situation in Quebec as far as protection of personal information is concerned. The British Columbia commissioner made similar comments.

In conclusion, the Bloc Quebecois feels that Bill C-54 makes this a long and complex procedure that will do nothing to protect the legislation—

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

I am sorry but your time is up.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, Mercier, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak once again to Bill C-54, because it represents a missed opportunity by the federal government and the Minister of Labour to assume the leadership role announced on a number of occasions.

It is surprising that the thrust of this bill is not the protection of personal information and privacy. As we look into it, we realize how different it could be and in fact how much work went into making it different.

I would be amiss if I did not mention that the Minister of Justice had announced at an international conference he would be tabling a bill on the protection of personal information. We understand it was the upcoming OECD conference that pushed the government into action. Unfortunately, this haste caused it to circumvent the federal-provincial consensus reached. The consensus was on harmonization.

It is important to note that, for a long time, it was hoped in Canada—and it was the wish expressed by the former privacy commissioner, Mr. Grace—that protection of personal information in the private sector would be voluntary.

When privacy commissioner Bruce Phillips was appointed, and after he himself had tried to provide for a voluntary arrangement that would adequately protect the public, he said, in his 1997-98 annual report, that he had reached a different conclusion.

I quote:

The past seven years have brought one signal change: that is in my views on how best to face the mounting challenges to preserving privacy rights. My first annual report expressed a scepticism about the need for stronger privacy laws and “some hope yet for the path of voluntary action”. That hope did not long survive.

By 1995, I confessed “Reluctantly and by stages” to having concluded that “voluntarism is inadequate”. I pressed for both federal and provincial action to bring the private sector under the umbrella of privacy laws.

This evolution in thinking occurred partly (but not entirely) because of the inadequate response of the private sector. Other important influences were at work. These include growing government and private sector exchanges of information, privatization of government operations with the resulting loss of existing privacy information—

—and the developing European Union common data law which risks restricting information flow to countries with inadequate private standards—of which Canada is one.

The preparatory work done by Mr. Phillips, the commissioner, and by the provinces and the federal government was based on harmony and dialogue.

However, we have no choice but to deplore as strongly as we can the fact that Bill C-54 and particularly clause 27 not only have the federal government establishing a lower national standard, but also give it the outrageous power to decide whether the Quebec legislation applies to Quebec, and when, because they give the federal government the power to decide to what type of organizations and activities the provincial legislation applies.

This is totally unacceptable and incomprehensible, particularly in the case of Quebec and in light of the comments made by the privacy commissioner. Quebec has had a law since 1994 to protect not only commercial information, but also the numerous exchanges between businesses, associations, and so on, a law to protect privacy and personal information.

As it now stands, the federal bill restricts in many ways the scope of the provincial act. Some of the conclusions stated in the Owen report were reaffirmed by the task force on the future of Canadian financial services. The Owen report also recognizes that the Quebec act currently applies to all businesses in the province.

Mr. Dubreuil, a constitutional expert, was asked what would happen if the constitutionality of the provincial legislation was challenged. Mr. Dubreuil stated twice that the Quebec law would survive such a challenge. That means that this law applies now not only broadly to all businesses on Quebec soil, but it protects the rights of Quebec citizens when information about them is used elsewhere.

The same report notes, and I quote Richard C. Owen: “National institutions across the country will have to come to terms with these provisions”—the ones in the Quebec law—“when personal information is sent outside Quebec. In practical terms, this means that they may be required to not send personal information about residents of Quebec, unless measures meeting the requirements of the law throughout Canada are met”.

That means Quebeckers are protected beyond the borders of Quebec. Now what happens with Bill C-54? This bill has the power to regulate all transactions outside Quebec. It will also have the power to regulate transactions of businesses in Quebec under federal jurisdiction.

There is at least a third matter of concern: the influence of the federal bill, which recognizes the CSA code in the schedule, on future jurisprudence as it applies to the meaning of the Quebec legislation.

This is a clear collision of what I might call Quebec and Canadian cultures. The effort in Quebec and elsewhere before was focussed on harmonizing the two. It might be advantageous for Canada, but this was not what the federal government chose.

This government chose to deprive Quebeckers of the rights they enjoy under their law. It chose to not give Canadians equivalent protection. It chose to include the schedule in the bill, the CSA code.

This code, which businesses have agreed to apply, is a good one. However, the code is unclear. It errs seriously in the matter of requirements concerning the consent businesses must obtain so people will know what information about them is being gathered and how it may be used.

For us and for all Quebeckers—since the Quebec legislation was recently revised by the Liberals and the PQ—Bill C-54 is unacceptable.

[Jean-Guy Chrétien, Bloc, Frontenac—Mégantic, QC]

Madam Speaker, needless to say, I take great interest in joining with my colleague for Mercier at third reading of Bill C-54 to support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected. I will not read the title in full.

In my opinion, the primary purpose of this bill is to promote e-commerce. If there is time, and if the government and public servants are so disposed, an effort will be made to protect the personal information that has been gathered using the increasingly sophisticated electronic equipment available on the market.

Bill C-54 contains a number of shortcomings. Primarily, this is an extremely fragile and confusing piece of legislation that is liable to interpretation and to problems in determining divisions between the provinces and territories and the central government. This bill hands discriminatory power to the governor-in-council, or in other words the cabinet. What is more, the commissioner has no real power. Finally, this legislation will interfere with the Quebec legislation which has already been in place since 1982 and which has been reinforced in order to protect personal information not only in the public sector, in publicly owned corporations and in government, but also in the private sector.

For all these reasons, therefore, the Bloc Quebecois will most definitely object to Bill C-54, to which we are speaking this afternoon.

In this context, there is danger that the bill will limit Quebeckers' right to privacy , and no certainty that it will be capable of meeting the expectations of Canadian consumers.

Since ensuring homogeneity across Canada in the protection of personal information would appear to require the harmonization of legislation, one might well have expected the federal government to at least take some of its inspiration from what has been going on in Quebec for the past four years, from our experience with the protection of personal information. But it did no such thing.

Privacy is a fundamental right. The experts equate the right to privacy with other human rights such as the right to equality and justice.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations over 50 years ago and to which Canada was a signatory, states that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person. It also states that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.

Privacy is also protected in Canada, although only partially. This protection is not specifically included in the Charter, but that is how the courts have interpreted two important sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, sections 7 and 8.

I will take a moment or two to read these sections. Section 7 reads as follows:

“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice”.

Section 8 provides as follows:

“Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure”.

This brings me to what happened a scant year ago in Vancouver, when the Prime Minister was host to APEC leaders. One of these leaders was Suharto, a head of state who was trampling the most elementary human rights within his own country.

While some 200 students demonstrated across from where the area where the meeting was to take place, the Prime Minister's Office and the Prime Minister himself issued no-nonsense orders to the RCMP to clear the area by 4 p.m. We all saw what happened. The duty RCMP staff sergeant gave orders to the demonstrators, students aged 17, 18 or 20 years old, several of whom were accompanied by their father or mother.

Imagine being with your daughter, who is exercizing her civic right here in this country to express her dissatisfaction with our Prime Minister for showing so much deference to a dictator like Suharto. This same Prime Minister then asks the police to give a warning, but 20 seconds later, the police go all out, using what our PM referred to as civilized methods, that is pepper spray. The next day, the Prime Minister mocked us by saying he only used pepper in his soup.

How do you expect our privacy rights to be respected in a country where even our civic rights are not respected? In this respect, I had the opportunity and pleasure to meet Roch Gosselin from East Angus Sunday morning. This middle-aged man was proud to tell me he got arrested, not under this government but under another Liberal government that was in office in 1970, when the current Prime Minister was a very high-ranking member of the cabinet that passed the War Measures Act.

Nearly 500 arrests were made among the Quebec elite, often without just cause. Roch Gosselin, of East Angus, was one of those who were detained for a dozen days without knowing why. His only fault was to want to give his children and grandchildren a country: Quebec. Like Pauline Julien, he was jailed.

Today, the government is apologizing profusely, but the same men and women are now sitting across the way and proposing Bill C-54 presumably to protect our privacy, our personal information. They want to see this legislation passed. Why do they not tell us the truth this afternoon? Why not say that the primary purpose of this bill is to promote the sale of electronic products?

Roch Gosselin is a distinguished citizen in his town of East Angus, yet his civic rights were trampled. He was jailed. What did the current Prime Minister, the member for Saint-Maurice, do when in cabinet at the time? Again, he mocked us.

In a free vote, this government refused to fund the legal representation of financially challenged Vancouver students by renowned lawyers. An artist slated to receive a $10,000 prize from the governor general, has agreed, and I congratulate him on this, to donate his prize money to the student legal representation fund.

[Pierre De Savoye, Bloc, Portneuf, QC]

Madam Speaker, we are continuing a very important debate on Bill C-54, the purpose of which is to support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information.

It will be recalled that the government introduced this bill last week, and everyone in this House, except the Bloc Quebecois, seemed to expect it to move rapidly along, like a hot knife through butter, more or less. Fortunately, that was not how things went. Fortunately, the Bloc Quebecois pointed out some of the shortcomings and serious problems in Bill C-54, and once the House was aware of these, it was able to engage in a more thorough debate.

The Bloc Quebecois is pleased to have been able to make a highly significant contribution to this examination, one which is all the more significant because we are well placed to judge the enormous shortcomings in the bill, since we in Quebec have legislation for the protection of personal information in the private sector. That legislation has been in place for the past four years and has proven itself.

There is always room for improvement in any legislation, of course, but ours is a serious act, one with muscle, one that is useful in defending people against intrusion into their private lives.

The bill we have before us now, however, unfortunately lacks muscle. It is a bill without sufficient regulations and provisions to really protect the public. All that it does contain is a number of precautions and covers, very often in the conditional, things that should be done, with no obligation to comply. People can opt out. Where e-commerce is concerned, merely having a few obligations is really very weak.

That is not the worse thing, however. In some ways, this bill is undermining what Quebec has so wisely accomplished. We in Quebec find ourselves trying to move ahead up an escalator, while the federal government is trying to make us go back down. The bill is a serious step backwards.

I will give a few examples. Paragraph 5(2) of the Privacy Act, which governs the public sector, provides that:

5.(2) A government institution shall inform any individual from whom the institution collects personal information about the individual of the purpose for which the information is being collected.

This is the legislation governing the public sector, federal institutions. Now, this government is going to treat the private sector differently.

Clause 4.2.3 of the schedule to Bill C-54 reads as follows:

4.2.3 The identified purposes should be specified at or before the time of collection to the individual from whom the personal information is collected—

Clause 4.2.5 of the schedule provides that:

4.2.5 Persons collecting personal information should be able to explain to individuals the purposes for which the information is being collected.

Here we have two conditionals, two clauses in the schedule that are not obligatory and easily ignored. The identified purposes should be specified to the individual. They should be, but if they are not, it is not a serious matter.

What kind of legislation is this? The bill says “should”but failure to do so is not serious. Who will comply? Nobody, obviously.

Later on, the bill says:

Persons collecting personal information should be able to explain to individuals the purposes for which the information is being collected.

It says “should be able to explain”. This is wishful thinking. If the person is unable to explain, too bad. The public will provide information but will not know for what purpose. There is no obligation to explain. The public is not entitled to know.

The person should be able to explain, but may not be able to or does not feel like explaining and, whoops, the law becomes null and void.

These are two simple and clear examples, but they show that this law lacks vigour and teeth. It renders no service to the public. It is essentially a useless law.

However, there is worse. Bill C-54, in some cases, will restrict the rights of Quebeckers, rights they enjoy under provincial legislation. Under the Quebec law, someone working for Eaton's in Montreal is entitled to see his personnel records, even if they are kept in Toronto. Section 17 of the Quebec legislation provides for this.

Under Bill C-54, this same employee in Montreal will now no longer have access to his records, because Bill C-54 makes no provision for the right to privacy in connection with a request for access under labour relations laws or when, in any case, the request for access is not of a commercial nature.

Quebec spent a lot of money on parliamentary commissions, hearings, receiving memorandums and legislation that is solid and respects individuals' right to privacy. It cost money. Today, and for a week now, what have we been doing? We have been trying to save Quebec, because the federal minister is trying to undermine what it has done.

In other words, I am being paid at the moment not to improve the situation, but to prevent its deterioration. If Quebec were a sovereign state, if it made its own laws—in fact it already has a law to protect personal information—I would not be here trying to defend its legislation. Federalism is not just a question of profitability and non-profitability. It is also a matter of respect for the decisions made by citizens, in a legitimate and democratic fashion.

This bill will undermine a Quebec initiative, an important right for its citizens, in this era of telecommunications and at a time when electronic commerce is expanding. This makes no sense, but I have no choice. In fact, this is not the only bill that puts us in such a situation.

For example, I can think of the young offenders bill, which was introduced by the Minister of Justice and which includes measures that are totally opposite to Quebec's successful initiatives. Sometimes, we Quebeckers look at what is going on and it makes us feel sad. However, when we get here, we feel much better.

There are some things that we in Quebec do very well. The protection of personal information is ensured in a very adequate manner. The same is true regarding the rehabilitation of our young offenders. It is in Quebec that the youth crime rate is lowest and that rehabilitation measures are most successful.

It is so because, for over 25 years now, we have had a youth protection branch that has constantly been improving and providing really useful services. But the federal Minister of Justice introduced a bill whose content contradicts Quebec's successful initiatives, a bill which will lead us to the abyss where the other provinces already are when it comes to young offenders.

Again, I am looking forward to the day when Quebec becomes a sovereign state so we will no longer have to try to save what is working well in Quebec and prevent Ottawa from imposing lower standards. Indeed, Quebec's sovereignty looks more and more like the solution for our province.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-54. As I told this House previously, this bill is about a fundamental value in our society, namely the protection of privacy.

It has an impact beyond this chamber. This morning, there was an article in Le Devoir entitled “Increasing Pressure for the Protection of Consumers' Privacy”. It discusses the threats to our privacy and the need for consumers to be informed of their rights.

It also discusses the bill we are debating today, emphasizing that the federal legislation will be imposed on any province that has not passed its own legislation in this respect within three years.

The need for a bill protecting personal information and privacy is not new. Most provinces have already passed such legislation. The federal government is the one dragging its feet when it comes to taking its responsibilities and introducing a bill governing federally regulated businesses.

In fact, we expected this government to draw on existing provincial legislation to bring forward a bill that is coherent, effective, clear and in harmony with provincial jurisdictions. Unfortunately for all Quebeckers and Canadians, this bill is wide off the mark.

Instead of protecting privacy as it should, this bill only protects the right of large private businesses to make profits with as few restrictions as possible. This is unacceptable. The federal government must go back to the drawing board as soon as possible. It must introduce a bill that really deals with the protection of privacy.

If it is not yet convinced of the urgency of the situation, it should contact the president of the Quebec Commission d'accès à l'information, Paul-André Comeau. It will see that the Quebec government receives 2,000 calls each month from people concerned with the protection of their privacy.

The Liberal Party is fuelling the cynicism against politicians by using this empty and confused initiative to try to convince our fellow citizens that it is concerned with the protection of privacy. But it does not say it introduced a bill that is simply in favour of commerce, a bill that is only based on voluntary compliance by businesses as far as protection of privacy is concerned.

This bill is full of loopholes. It leaves many sectors without any protection. This bill is filled with ifs and whens and shoulds. This means the government says to large businesses they should, if possible, be concerned with the privacy of their clients. I insist on the word should because this is exactly what we have in this bill.

This situation is unacceptable. First of all, I would like to stress the fundamental nature of the right to privacy. Others have spoken of this before me, but I am returning to it because, with this bill, the Liberal Party is putting the right to make a profit before the right to privacy.

The experts equate the right to privacy with other human rights such as the right to equality and justice. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations 50 years ago and to which Canada was a signatory, states that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. It also states as follows:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.

In Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms also impacts on the protection of privacy, even though this is not specifically in the charter. In Quebec, as members are aware, this right to privacy is explicitly recognized in the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, which was enacted in 1975. There is nothing ambiguous about section 5, which says, and I quote:

1. Every person has a right to the respect of his or her privacy.

This right is also recognized in Quebec's Civil Code, and my colleague from Beauharnois—Salaberry, who is very knowledgeable in the law, can tell us that I am right. This right is indeed recognized in chapter III of Quebec's Civil Code entitled “Respect of Reputation and Privacy”, and I quote:

1. Every person has a right to the respect of his reputation and privacy. No one may invade the privacy of a person without the consent of the person or his heirs unless authorized by law.

It is crystal clear: respect of privacy is a fundamental right that is recognized internationally, as well as in Canada and in Quebec. It is wrong for the federal government to introduce a bill that does not protect this fundamental right.

As mentioned in the article published this morning in Le Devoir , the situation in Quebec in this regard is particularly exemplary. The Government of Quebec is the only government in North America that has passed legislation protecting personal information in the public and private sectors.

Furthermore, many experts say that Quebec's law, which applies to the private sector, is one of the best in the world. It is a lot better than the federal bill that applies to the public sector only.

It is surprising in this context that the government did not draw on Quebec's legislation. It would have achieved two objectives at once. First of all it would have ensured consumers would have top-notch protection. It would also have avoided all the inevitable loopholes and pitfalls of unharmonized federal and provincial legislation.

This leads us to believe that the real objective of this bill is not the protection of privacy, but a vague exercise in public relations. The government would like to use this bill to show that it responds to the public's concerns. This, however, is totally false.

The bill does not meet the expectations of the people of Quebec who want their privacy protected. Instead, it serves commercial interests.

Even Canada's privacy commissioner notes that the working document proposed by Industry Canada and the Department of Justice focuses more on commerce than on protecting privacy.

In conclusion, one simply needs to compare the titles of the two acts. Quebec's act is entitled “An Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector”, whereas the convoluted title of the federal act reads as follows:

An Act to support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances—

The Quebec act is clearly more strict and more comprehensive, in terms of its format, definitions, clarity and because of the power of order given to the commissioner. It is for these reasons that we categorically reject Bill C-54.

The federal government refused to follow the example of the Quebec act, even though it is recognized as a model in this area. This does not come as a surprise, because Quebec's act is aimed primarily at protecting citizens, whereas the federal government's bill is essentially intended to please big corporations.

[Jean-Paul Marchand, Bloc, Québec East, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today especially as I have not seen you in a while.

For those watching us on TV, I am the member for Québec East. My riding is close to Quebec City. One of the most beautiful ridings in Quebec, it encompasses L'Ancienne-Lorette, Duberger, Les Saules, Vanier, Saint-Odile, Lebourgneuf, Neufchâtel, Les Méandres, Loretteville and the Huron village. I invite anyone following this debate and recognizing me as the member for Quebec East to write to or even call me if they have any comment regarding what is being said in the House today on Bill C-54.

As my colleagues said repeatedly, this bill is weak and does not meet the population's needs. I have grave concerns regarding this bill because times are changing. We are living at a time when communications are very quick. My old communications professor, Marshall McLuhan, coined the phrase “the global village” to stress the extent to which we are increasingly close to one another.

This is not the only problem. Today, in the late 1990s, on the eve of the 21st century, there are significant changes in the way trade is being conducted around the world. This morning in the Quebec daily Le Soleil , I read that there was less competition among Canadian firms. For instance, Loblaws is in the process of buying Provigo, a Quebec company. There are also the proposed bank mergers. Several of these developments are a sign of things to come that might not necessarily be good as mergers reduce competition and choice, often resulting in more expensive services and products.

Moreover, when companies such as banks and multinationals become very powerful in today's electronic era, they might use personal information in a way that might be harmful to individuals. This is a real danger and the thrust of the debate surrounding Bill C-54.

We wish the federal government were aware of its responsibilities. Unfortunately, such is not the case, as the labour minister and members across the way readily acknowledge. The way Mr. Chrétien has been behaving during the “Peppergate” events in Vancouver, showing a total lack of respect for the most basic democratic principles, is a case in point.

It is not surprising that the current government is putting forward a personal information protection bill that is, for all intents and purposes, weak, inefficient and contrary to another right which has become fundamental these days, the protection of personal information.

This is in fact becoming an urgent and important right given the changing world economy. It has also been recognized by the privacy commissioner, Bruce Phillips, who used to be a reporter for CTV, if I am not mistaken.

Let me quote what he had to say about some of the elements of personal information:

<“The myriad of transactions that involve personal information about identifiable individuals that take place without their informed consent constitute the disregard and destruction of a treasured human right on a massive scale. These are good descriptions”.

What he is describing in rather complex terms is the right to the protection of personal information.

<“In the new information age we will respect each other as individual human beings”.

This is what the commissioner had to say. Basically, he wants the government to respect the individual. This is elementary, but we found nothing comforting in Bill C-54 as introduced by the Liberal government.

In fact, this is a bill Jean Charest, in Quebec, could very well support, because it puts corporate interests before the public interest. Jean Charest has recommended to Quebeckers changes that would give priority to corporate interests over public interest, that would destroy much of the work done by the current government at the expense of individuals. Bill C-54 is the kind of legislation Mr. Charest would support.

The Liberal government's Bill C-54 even undermines Quebec's existing legislation. It must be recognized that Quebec has been a leader in a number of areas. For instance, our elections act is among the best in the world. We have passed farming legislation.

We have even carried out an enviable reform in the health sector that is a tribute to the courage of the present provincial government. Well I remember watching Marc-Yvan Côté, the health minister in 1990, as he introduced his proposed health reform on television. The bill for this reform would have been $650,000. Ultimately, nothing was done, for the other government took over.

The present provincial government has passed a number of laws, including one on the protection of personal information. Quebec passed this law in 1994. It is just one of many examples.

It proves that the present government in Quebec, with its open-minded and progressive bills, is on top of things. This particular law is one of the best, if not the only one, of its kind in North America, requiring that personal information be protected in the private sector. The federal government's Bill C-54 would be a step backward from the legislation passed by Quebec in 1994.

In other words, Bill C-54 is, once again, a step backward. One of many. The Prime Minister and this backward-looking Liberal government really lack the strength to bring in any forward-looking bills.

Perhaps we should support those who are calling for the Prime Minister's head. For instance, this week, La Presse wrote that it was time for the Prime Minister to make his exit. The Toronto Star has also called for his resignation, as have the Globe and Mail the Gazette and the Edmonton Journal .

Last week, there was a chorus from numerous English-language dailies—not known for their separatist views—all after the Prime Minister's head because he does not respect fundamental rights in this country. One good example of this lack of respect is Peppergate, but there was also the Somalia scandal and the ensuing attempted cover-up.

It is not therefore surprising that Bill C-54 is so wishy-washy, weak and contrary to the interests of Canadians.

[Nelson Riis, NDP, Kamloops, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate very much having the opportunity to say a few words regarding Bill C-54, which I suppose is a serious attempt by the government to modernize legislation in recognition of the fact that Canada is entering the digital age. It is an effort by the government of the day to provide a regulatory environment that will enhance electronic commerce and ensure that electronic commerce flourishes in our country.

I want to acknowledge that when we look at the advances countries have made in electronic commerce, Canada has in fact played a leadership role in this respect, certainly as far as public policy is concerned. I noticed with interest just in the last six months the number of new publications that have come into being regarding various areas of this phenomenon called e-commerce.

If one was to identify the specific purpose of Bill C-54 it would be to create a legal and regulatory framework for electronic commerce by introducing measures to protect personal information in the private sector, by creating an electronic alternative for doing business with the federal government and by clarifying how the courts assess the reliability of electronic records used as evidence.

There are a number of important issues that are attached to this legislation. Let us first look at the implications of electronic commerce itself. I suspect that most Canadians are unaware at this point of the effect that e-commerce will have on their lives in the very near future. The growth of electronic commerce is expanding arithmetically in such a fashion that it will be doubling, tripling and quadrupling in the weeks and months ahead.

Let us look at some of the larger Canadian firms. I will not mention any specifically because I suspect that at this point this is relatively privileged information. However, we have been told by a number of the larger firms in Canada that now a significant amount of their purchasing is done using e-commerce. That has done away with a whole number of what we would normally refer to as middlemen: the wholesalers, the retailers, the shippers and all sorts of others who would normally be part of a commercial arrangement between, let us say, a manufacturer and the eventual purchaser of goods.

Some of the larger firms have indicated that they now purchase over 85% of their annual goods using this type of method which, I guess if we were to extrapolate this in the long term, means that we will see, as the result of e-commerce, hundreds of thousands of jobs disappear.

They will not disappear over the next 10 to 20 years, they will disappear over the next 10 to 20 months as firms introduce electronic commerce as a way of purchasing their supplies and realize the financial benefits attached to using e-commerce. I suspect a lot of people are going to make a lot of money by simply introducing this to individuals firms. A lot of firms will save a lot of money directly, but the fallout will be that hundreds of thousands of existing jobs will no longer exist because they will be made redundant as a result of electronic commerce.

In my previous comments to the House regarding Bill C-54 I detailed how this process would work. I will not repeat that, but I will say that since I made those comments I have spoken with a number of individuals who are presently involved in setting up electronic commerce facilities in various businesses. They tell me that this is going to—and I use the term advisedly—revolutionize the retail sector. That is actually a euphemism for wiping it out. Modernize, revolutionize and major change are other ways of saying that whole sectors of the retail sector of our economy will be eliminated. This will take place very quickly.

We could consider, for example, a business such as a travel agency. Travel agents should probably start looking at college and university courses for a new career because electronic commerce is pretty well going to make them redundant. People who are in the brokerage business advising clients, particularly low and middle income clients, with respect to their stock portfolio should probably look at another career option because this type of electronic networking will simply do away with the need for these folks in our society.

One can lament that, but I think it is fair to say that we are not Luddites by definition. We acknowledge that e-commerce is with us. What is crucial is that we understand the incredible impact it will have on our society economically, particularly when it comes to jobs, in the next little while.

Normally many of us think that in another decade or two we will see major changes. I wish we were talking about a decade or two, but we are probably talking about a year or two. This will result in huge and major changes to the way business is conducted in our country. I do not think that we appreciate the impact which electronic commerce will have.

I know this is a modest effort by the government to move in the direction of ensuring privacy.

Just the other day I walked into a store in the city of Ottawa. I made a purchase and they asked me to sign a little screen. I asked why I was signing the screen. They said that once they had my signature I would not have to sign anything any more when I made purchases. I did not think that sounded like a good idea. I would just as soon be on record as having made a conscious decision every time I made a purchase. I refused to sign the screen, but the reality is that presumably people are signing these screens and their signatures are on record. Once a signature is on record in one place, I suppose it could be moved very quickly to other locales. I use this as a practical example of how privacy will be affected as a result of these moves toward a digitalized economy.

It is fair to say that in our society there are a number of organizations which have attempted to protect human rights in our country. The right to privacy, for example, is a human right just like the right to equality and justice. The United Nations universal declaration of human rights, which is celebrating its 50th year this year and to which Canada is a signatory, specifies that everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person and that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy—family, home or correspondence—nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.

Obviously our concern about privacy is very serious.

I could go on and on to make the point. However, what I am going to say in closing is that I do not believe our privacy is adequately protected by this legislation. When this bill moves to committee this will be a crucial part of the inquiry that needs to take place. We will need to have a sufficient number of witnesses come forward to convince the parliamentary committee that privacy has, in fact, been dealt with adequately in the legislation.

I want to indicate that a number of individuals representing groups have come forward in support of the general thrust of the legislation in principle, but, on the other hand, they have gone out of their way to point out a potential flaw, and that is the right to protect privacy, not only in the legislation, but in the attached regulations as well.

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure you will allow me, first of all, to greet the great many people from my riding of Repentigny who are watching us.

Yesterday, a very important event took place in the riding of Repentigny in this busy and eventful month of November we are having in Quebec this year. This event was the convention to reconfirm our current MNA for L'Assomption, Jean-Claude St-André, as the official PQ candidate.

I can see that I have the unanimous consent of the House to extend our congratulations to him. Even the hon. member from northern Ontario agrees. There is therefore consent to allow me to extend our congratulations to the current and future member for the riding of L'Assomption.

Having said this, it is my pleasure to now turn to Bill C-54, that members of the Bloc Quebecois and others eloquently criticized, to show why the bill, as it stands, should be opposed.

As an introduction, I shall discuss the origin of the bill and why we must debate it today. I can see there are members who want to hear the rest of my speech and hear why Bill C-54 is before us today.

Let me read the title of the bill, which, as the hon. member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve pointed out, is quite convoluted. It reads as follows:

An act to support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances, by providing for the use of electronic means to communicate or record information or transactions and by amending the Canada Evidence Act, the Statutory Instruments Act and the Statute Revision Act.

This is all one sentence: I did not omit anything. This is how the title of the bill reads. The title says it all: we are definitely facing a very convoluted bill, as I said.

But where does it come from? It is the government's response to requests from several groups across Canada. It is a commitment the federal government made to introduce legislation on the protection of personal information in the private sector. This commitment was first made by the Minister of Justice in 1996; he then promised a bill to protect privacy.

The Minister of Industry made that commitment his own—as they often do things twice over—when he responded to the recommendations of the information highway advisory committee.

Following these two commitments, documents were drafted. And last January, both ministers released a joint working paper entitled “The Protection of Personal Information: Building Canada's Information Economy and Society”.

In total, the working group created to examine the issue received 90 briefs. Almost all of these agreed that legislation was needed to protect privacy in the private sector. Thus, we were expecting good new when Bill C-54 was introduced.

Almost everybody stressed that the protection of personal information voluntary code developed by the Canadian Standards Association was a good start, but that it was a minimum and should be reinforced.

The protection of privacy is recognised as a fundamental right. Sections 7 and 8 of the Canadian Constitution refer to it indirectly. Section 7 deals with the right of everyone to life, liberty and security of the person. Section 8 protects Canadians against unreasonable search.

As for the Quebec Charter for Human Rights and Freedoms enacted in 1975, it is very clear. Its references are not indirect. The Quebec 1975 Charter reads as follows: “Every person has a right to respect for his private life”. So, from a legal point of view, there are not too many problems with its interpretation. I repeat: “Every person has a right to respect for his private life”.

As you can see, Quebec has been a pioneer with regards to the protection of private life in this sector. It is the only jurisdiction in North America that has passed legislation to protect the private life of its people. For four years now, this legislation has been covering all aspects of human activities, commercial as well as others.

I want to remind you of an act protecting private life that was enacted in 1982, and of an act amending it that was passed in 1994. In 1982, an act for the protection of personal information in the public sector was introduced. The federal government and all provinces all passed legislation in this regard. Then, in 1994, an act extended the protection of personal information to the private sector. It already exists. In Quebec, we have been dealing with this protection of private life process for several years.

The Bloc believes the federal government should have used Quebec's experience as a model not only because it is recognized internationally, but also because it is essential that all laws passed in Canada and in the other provinces be compatible with one another for the greatest benefit of the citizens of Quebec and Canada.

Compatibility of federal and provincial legislation, or their harmonization, does not seem to be a priority for our friends across the way. One has only to look at the Young Offenders Act, at the Tobacco Act, and now at the Privacy Act. Compatibility of federal and provincial legislation probably comes in tenth place in the order of priority of our Liberal colleagues in the government.

Why harmonize legislation when one has the big end of the stick, as the Prime Minister of Canada would say? All we have to do is wave the stick, and the others will have to respect our opinion.

This bill, which was eagerly awaited by everybody, is too weak and too soft for us to accept as it now stands. What are theses weaknesses? I will mention a few.

Most of the measures concerning the protection of personal information are not in the bill itself, but in the schedule, where the Minister for Industry has decided to introduce word for word the standard personal information protection code developed by the Canadian Standards Association. This code was judged to be utterly inadequate by the federal and provincial personal information protection commissioners and by all consumers groups.

The Minister of Industry could have used the Quebec Act Respecting the Protection of Personal Information in the Private Sector as a model. I am sure that he could have followed the exact wording of that legislation without fear that Mrs. Louise Beaudoin, Quebec's minister of culture, would ever claim copyrights for the use of that sensible and reasonable act.

By choosing to apply without change the CSA standard, the government revealed that it was opting for permissiveness instead of the full protection of Quebeckers' and Canadians' privacy. Among this bill's several loopholes is the fact that the annex contains eight clauses using the conditional tense.

Clause 4.2.3, for example, reads: “The identified purposes should be specified at or before the time of collection to the individual from whom the personal information is collected—”

Clause 4.2.5 reads:

Persons collecting personal information should able to explain—

Clause 4.5.2 reads:

Organizations should develop—

Clause 4.5.3 reads:

Personal information that is no longer required to fulfil the identified purposes should be destroyed, erased, or made anonymous—

The worse is the default consent. In the area of personal information, informed consent is a basic principle where there should be no ambiguity. However, the voluntary code says that that consent can be obtained by default.

That means that if someone does not check the box indicating that he or she does not want his or her personal information to be transmitted, it will automatically be. That is what is called default consent.

In concluding, I will say that for these two reasons and all the others that my colleagues discussed so eloquently, we must oppose Bill C-54 as it was introduced in this House.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to join my colleagues in addressing the bill before the House.

Protection of privacy has always been a major concern of mine. I was involved in the labour movement for many years before going into politics. I remember that when I was a member of the CSN, the organization's offices were searched by police. I saw police officers open books and carelessly search everywhere. To me it was a breach of privacy, of the collective life of our union. They searched our offices, our work spaces.

I have always been very much concerned by this question of privacy and this is why I have decided to rise today to address this bill. In my view, there are in fact a lot of enforcement problems.

As my colleagues have already mentioned, it is very important to recognize that there is a difference between the situation in Quebec and what goes on in the House of Commons.

There is a tremendous difference just in the titles of the two acts. The Quebec act is entitled “An Act Respecting the Protection of Personal Information in the Private Sector”.

The title of the federal act is:

An Act to support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances—

The difference is quite apparent just in the two titles. The title of the provincial act emphasizes the importance of protecting personal information in the private sector. We are debating a bill whose purpose is to promote electronic commerce and allow for its greatest possible extension and, incidentally, to protect personal information and privacy.

As we can see, the federal government is not seeting exactly the same goal as the Government of Quebec, which was primarily to protect personal information.

If we talk about protection of individual rights and respect for privacy in relation to the economy, since this is the true title and the true purpose of the bill, we have to wonder how the Liberal Party is protecting privacy in relation to economic liberty.

For instance, if we examine the behaviour of this government on the international scene, we realize that human rights often come a distant second behind economic expansion. I remind the House of what happened recently with the APEC. It has been in the news a lot, lately. Which was given greater priority, respect for democratic rights truly or the unreasonable demands of Suharto, a dictator?

A bill like this one does nothing to calm our concerns. The government says that it will promote electronic commerce but, since there may be some problems, that it will also try to protect privacy. It is not easy to trust this government about the issue of privacy in relation to the economy.

As my colleagues before me pointed out, this bill is flawed. Furthermore, the schedule will, in my opinion, be a source of problems in terms of application. Too much is written in the conditional. In my opinion, lawyers will have a field day with this bill because of the use of the conditional.

Lawyers are very happy with this kind of bill, as they are most of the time with federal bills, because this government's issues and federal bills are put completely within the realm of the courts. Very often, lawyers are the first ones praising this approach.

With all due respect, we should understand that this is the way lawyers earn a living. They prefer the adversarial approach, because they can go in court and defend their clients as effectively as they can. I do not deny this.

We should ponder over bills such as this one and others that have been put before the House and who involve a greater role for the courts. It is inappropriate for the government. It seems to be saying: “Listen, if you are not satisfied with this bill or the existing law, just challenge it before the court”.

People then have to pay huge legal costs, whereas the government has its own army of lawyers in the justice department and elsewhere. The government also has the money to pay lawyers to refute the arguments of any Canadian citizen who is seeking justice.

If private confidential information is disclosed in an electronic business deal and the whole legislation, in particular the schedule, is in the conditional it will be difficult for someone to say: “My private life has been exposed by this electronic commerce with which I disagree, and I would like you to protect me”.

We can see on which side the government will be. It will simply say: “Dear sir or madam, we are sorry, but your point of view is not in keeping with ours, and if you're not satisfied just sue us”. And then we start a legal saga which, too often, requires the taxpayer to pay sums of money he cannot afford, which means the government wins by default.

Let us take, for example, the Henry VIII section which in my opinion is absolutely terrible. You will remember that Henry VIII could, by decree, order that anyone in England be beheaded. Fortunately Henry VIII no longer rules because if he did it is quite likely that 45 heads of Bloc Quebecois members would be rolling on the floor of the House.

But it is the same system because these people will be able to change the rules simply by Governor in Council decision, which means cabinet decision, and this in my opinion is a huge problem. Who is lobbying the government? Associations for the protection of private life? Consumer associations? I think not. Then, who is lobbying the federal government? It is the huge corporations, the big banks, all the people who have money and make billions in profit.

If they think that some aspects of the schedule or the legislation do not suit their purpose, they will tell the government: “We are financing your party—we know how it works—our big corporation is financing your party so we do not want any interference with our electronic commerce”. Then they will ask the government to change the regulations. And we know what will happen.

The Bloc Quebecois is quite secure because we are funded by the people. We get $10 or $15 in rural areas, in small towns. Our hands are not tied unlike the government in front of us.

Government members have some obligations, because any major corporation that contributed $25,000, $30,000 or $40,000 to their party and now wants to engage in electronic commerce will say to the minister “Look, Sir, can you talk cabinet and the governor in council into making changes to the regulations, because I have a small problem here that is costing me approximately $100,000 or $200,000 a year?”

What will the government do? Once again, it will bow down before big business, and those who defend private rights and the right to privacy will end up empty-handed, as they usually do under this government.

Members will understand that it is very hard to support such a bill. I urge government members who still have some conscience left to vote with the Bloc Quebecois and to ensure that priority is given to privacy over all-out economic expansion, total freedom for big business.

I urge all members to vote with the Bloc Quebecois, in other words to defeat this bill.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.