Debates of Feb. 3rd, 2011

Libby Davies 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.

John Rafferty Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Vancouver East brings up the point that no person may know what information is on the list. Even more egregious is the fact that it cannot be changed. There is no way to correct mistakes on the list.

I wonder if my hon. colleague would like to comment further on that.

Libby Davies 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.

Jim Maloway Elmwood—Transcona, MB

Mr. Speaker, the government really has not been up front about this whole issue. It introduced the bill on the last day of the session in June. Then it told us that it had to be passed by the end of December or the overflights would have to stop. We are into February already and the flights are still continuing uninterrupted.

Let us look at other countries. The member for Western Arctic indicated to me that there is no stoppage of flights from Mexico. We should be looking at how the Americans are treating other countries. There are many other countries which have flights overflying the United States. What have those countries been doing?

It appears the government does not want to provide full information on this or any other topic for that matter. Conservatives are a very secretive group and also poor negotiators. They had the opportunity to ask for reciprocity. The Americans have 2,000 flights a day flying over Canadian airspace and we only have 100 flying south. Yet the government has not asked for reciprocity from the Americans. That would have shut this operation down as the U.S. would not want to provide passenger information on that many flights.

Libby Davies Vancouver East, BC

Mr. Speaker, there are more and more questions about the bill. I agree with the member that it has been shrouded in secrecy. When we were here in December we were under this cloud that the bill had to go through. There was a deadline and a lot of pressure on all the parties to rush it through. That has been a very familiar story. I remember the original anti-terrorism bill, Bill C-36, which had to be rushed through, it had to be done. Here we are years later and we still see this kind of legislation come forward without transparency.

My understanding is that the Government of Mexico at this point has not approved the legislation that flows from these secret agreements and secret negotiations.

I think it begs the question, if we were told that this was essential and everything would come to a screeching halt if it did not go through, which obviously did not happen, what really is going on here? Are these agreements necessary? Why are they not transparent? Why does the bill have to come forward at this time?

Again, there is no evidence that shows anything to compel us to do this. On the contrary, the evidence is that the bill is going to create enormous problems in our society and would have a long, far-reaching impact on civil society. Therefore, we should be saying no.

Pat Martin Winnipeg Centre, MB

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the constituents of my riding of Winnipeg Centre, I am very pleased to take up the baton, as it were, as NDP speakers rise one after another to sound the alarm on this intrusion into our Canadian sovereignty.

I would life to preface my remarks by reminding the members present that the right to privacy is a fundamental cornerstone of any western democracy. We have this debate completely upside down today. We should be pointing out that the people of Canada have a right to know what their government is doing at all times, and that door should be wide open and transparent. But the Government of Canada does not have a right to know what its people are doing at all times, and that right to privacy should be protected as one of those fundamental cornerstones that we rely on in a progressive western democracy.

Why then would the government be willing to compromise and sacrifice in any way that fundamental right to privacy, or watch its erosion, by virtue of this bill? Why would it be prioritizing this over all the issues facing the Government of Canada and the people of Canada today, all the challenges that we face in an economic downturn where there is work to be done? Why is our Parliament occupied today with a bill that does nothing to advance the rights and freedoms of Canadians, but fundamentally erodes, threatens and chips away at those fundamental rights and freedoms? It annoys me that we are seized of this issue and not the many pressing issues that face our government and our country.

This is a pressing issue, though, in one sense in that we are under attack in this regard. I can only speak to the report stage amendments, but I will preface those remarks by saying that I have been a personal victim of some of these erosions to our Canadian right to privacy. It has been referenced before by previous speakers, for example, the member for Western Arctic, who has been perhaps the singular champion of Canadians' rights in the process of this debate, and also my colleague from Vancouver East, who approached the same subject.

I am talking about a graphic, local, current and topical example of the erosion of the right to privacy with the do not fly list. If there has ever been a more egregious and graphic illustration of an erosion of our Canadian national sovereignty and an intrusion by the long arm of the American national security program across our borders and into our sovereignty, it is the do not fly list.

I was on that do not fly list. I am still on that do not fly list. The only way I can get on an airplane in Canada, even to fly within our country, is to deliberately misspell my name. That was the solution they came up with because we cannot fix it. It is resident in Washington, D.C. or somewhere in the United States. Believe me, our Department of Foreign Affairs, our Minister of Foreign Affairs, everybody I could go to tried to get my name off this do not fly list. Nobody could because it is not our list. It is an American list. An American list is stopping a Canadian member of Parliament from boarding a plane in Winnipeg and flying to Ottawa without ever going out of Canadian airspace. That list blocks me from doing so.

When I try to get my boarding pass, airline staff at the counter who know me by my first name say, “Sorry, Pat, the red light is up here. I can't issue a boarding pass for you”. Why? Because the do not fly list has kicked in, and 45 minutes later, they phone these numbers in the United States and get the clearance to get permission for me, a Canadian member of Parliament, to fly within Canada. It is absolutely absurd. This is the road we are going down, and the contrast that exists here should be glaring to most Canadians.

We have a federal government that is so obsessed with the right to privacy in some capacity that it is actually doing away with the long form census, because somehow it is an intolerable invasion of one's privacy to ask how many people are living in one's home so that the government can design social service programs that are proportionate to the need and demand of the population.

However, somehow it is okay for the Government of the United States to know not only that someone is flying on a particular day but also to know the person's credit card information, with whom the person is travelling, the hotel he or she will be staying at, other booking information such as tours or rental cars, and the person's personal health information, one of the things that nobody has a right to know except the person and his or her doctor.

Even though the Conservatives are so offended by the long form census that might ask how many washrooms one has in one's house, they think it is okay for the United States not only to have this information but to hold it for 40 years without the individual having any access to it. There is no avenue of recourse. There is no grievance procedure if the list happens to be erroneous. If errors have been made, an individual will never know and there is no ability to correct the errors.

Perhaps most egregious is that this information can be forwarded to the security service of a third nation without the consent or notification of the other signatory and certainly without the consent of the individual Canadian. This is a compromise of our national sovereignty the likes of which we have never seen. With the globalization of capital, we must be ever more vigilant that Canadian sovereignty is not eroded. We do have a border and Canada is distinct and different from the United States. We have a right to control our own destiny without intrusion and interference from the behemoth south of the border. It makes me mad even as I speak about it.

There should be a new era of Canadian nationalism and sovereignty, not the reverse. We have watched the Conservative government make strong noises about our Arctic sovereignty, even the sovereignty of the seabed below the Arctic Ocean. It is taking great steps to protect that.

We have heard the Conservatives talk about protecting the sovereignty of our airspace. One of the justifications for their exorbitant investment in 65 new F-35 jet fighters is that they will be able to patrol the sovereignty of our airspace, et cetera, yet they are willing to compromise the most fundamental principle of Canadian sovereignty by allowing another nation-state to interfere with the free movement of not only goods and services but people of this country. It is appalling. Canadians should be shocked that we are wasting the time of Parliament debating this particular bill.

There is no evidence that these draconian measures being proposed by the United States and other nations that wish access to this information will make the world more secure or help fight terrorism. There is no evidence partly because if there has been any interception of terrorism by virtue of this sharing of lists, we would never know anyway because it is all done behind closed doors.

But there is evidence of how disastrous the consequences can be when mistakes are made. Without the oversight and the scrutiny of any regulatory body, we will never know, I suppose, the number of mistakes, but we do know mistakes could be made and we will never be able to monitor or correct those. The most egregious example, I suppose, in recent Canadian history is the case of Maher Arar as a graphic illustration of the rights of Canadians being undermined by an over-zealous American national security initiative.

The NDP is opposed to this bill. We sought to make amendments at committee stage. We are seeking to make amendments at report stage. The bill in its current form should be rejected by Canadians and those people who are charged with the responsibility of representing Canadians, the members of Parliament in this chamber. This bill should go no further than the vote at the current stage.

Peter Stoffer Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for being in the House of Commons today because he would have had to fly here, obviously with the permission of someone in the United States. I would like to thank the United States administration.

Recently we had a debate about senators being able to trash members of Parliament through their ten-percenters across the country. Conservative members are famous for sending a tremendous amount of mail-outs to their ridings.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague from Winnipeg Centre if he knows of any Conservative member in the House or the Senate who has sent a ten-percenter to his or her constituents telling them that the government is going to give their credit card information, health information, hotel information, everything about them to the United States of America and through a secret firm the United States will transfer that information to who knows where? I am wondering how many Conservatives in the House or the Senate have actually sent that information to their constituents.

Pat Martin 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.

Martha Hall Findlay Willowdale, ON

Mr. Speaker, is my colleague aware of whether the government at any point in time in these negotiations with the United States even bothered to ask for reciprocity? Not to say that I necessarily agree with that or would even agree with the deal if there were reciprocity, but I find it rather extraordinary that the government would bend over backward and offer something to the United States that I think significantly affects Canadian privacy and would not even ask for the same thing in return.

Again, I stress I am not suggesting that even that would be a good thing, but just in terms of process, I would like to know if the hon. member is aware of any effort in that regard on the part of the government.

Pat Martin Winnipeg Centre, MB

Mr. Speaker, to our knowledge the Government of Canada did not demand reciprocity. At least that would have softened the impact in some sense. We believe there are far more Americans travelling through Canadian airspace than there are Canadians travelling through American airspace. If there was any reason, logic or demonstrable need for this information to be shared, surely what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

To our knowledge the government went into those negotiations essentially taking direction from the United States as to what needed to be done. The Conservatives sold the farm. They sold us out. They sold out on the privacy rights of Canadians for very little in return.

The last thing I will mention is that in this list of things that we have forfeited, the United States may in fact unilaterally amend the agreement as long as it advises the European Union of the change. There has already been one amendment. We would be bound by those amendments made without our involvement or participation whatsoever.

We have signed on to a pig in a poke here. It remains to be seen just how badly our privacy rights have been compromised.

Claude Gravelle 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.

Carol Hughes 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 Nickel Belt, ON

Mr. Speaker, my colleague refers to private information in her interesting question. When mistakes are made when governments are collecting private information, as I stated a while ago, this information cannot be corrected.

The bill will therefore prevent a lot of people from travelling outside of Canada. That is not correct and it is something that we have to correct.

As I stated a while ago, the government claims to be the protector of private information. We witnessed that claim with the cancellation of the long form census, but now it is willing to give all types of information to foreign countries, and that has to be stopped.