This bill was last introduced in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session, which ended in September 2008.
Rob Nicholson Conservative
In committee (House), as of Jan. 30, 2008
(This bill did not become law.)
This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.
This enactment amends the Criminal Code to create a new offence of identity theft, of trafficking in identity information and of unlawful possession or trafficking in certain government-issued identity documents, to clarify and expand certain offences related to identity theft and identity fraud, to exempt certain persons from liability for certain forgery offences, and to allow for an order that the offender make restitution to a victim of identity theft or identity fraud for the expenses associated with rehabilitating their identity.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
The Acting Speaker Conservative Royal Galipeau
The member for Brome—Missisquoi has the floor.
He should know that there are two minutes left for both the question and the reply.
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Mr. Speaker, I would like to put a question to the hon. member for Jeanne-Le Ber. My question is primarily about facts that he may have observed.
In my opinion, an act like this one can really be improved on by relying on actual facts, on cases of abuse. We can then ask ourselves if, in this or that particular case, the act will protect us.
I agree with the hon. member that the act must absolutely be complemented by other things, including, probably, a very good team that can follow-up on the legislation.
I wonder if my colleague could tell us about actual cases in his riding. He must surely have had some, because I did. We have all had such cases. In the riding of Jeanne-Le Ber, as is in my riding, the illiteracy rate is quite high, and there are also fairly old people.
Therefore, perhaps the hon. member for Jeanne-Le Ber could give us examples and, later on, share those with the committee.
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
Mr. Speaker, indeed, there is no doubt that seniors, among others, are often the victims of fraud involving the use of credit cards. This type of situation is rather frequent. I have heard about such cases in my riding office.
About a year and a half ago, I bought a house in my constituency. During the open house visits, I often discussed this issue with other future voters. Mortgage fraud is also a major concern for many people. The idea that one can own a house and not know that someone else may have taken a mortgage on that house, withdrawn the money and vanished, leaving the actual owner forced to repay that mortgage or else lose his house, scared a lot of people—
The Acting Speaker Conservative Royal Galipeau
Order, please.
It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Gatineau, Federal Government Research Centres; the hon. member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, Charter of the French Language; the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River, Agriculture.
The hon. member for Newton—North Delta has the floor.
Sukh Dhaliwal Liberal Newton—North Delta, BC
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to one of the fastest growing criminal threats to Canadians: identity theft.
My constituents in Newton—North Delta and all Canadians have good reason to worry about identity theft. The cost of losing personal information can be crippling and can affect victims for years to come.
People can be repeatedly victimized before they know. They might not know they are a victim until they apply for credit or start receiving calls from debt collectors. However, by then it is often too late. Their credit has been destroyed and it is hard to restore it. Victims encounter many difficulties restoring their reputation and recovering their losses. Many are left traumatized.
Identity theft has many victims. When a person's identity is stolen, commercial and financial institutions may cover the losses and governments may be tricked into providing documents or benefits.
Identity theft can take many forms, from credit card abuse to fraudulent real estate transactions, even impersonating someone to commit a crime. Thieves can take over bank accounts, obtain loans, transfer land titles and more. They can gather personal information in many ways, from mail theft to high tech computer hacks. It is not hard to find websites offering credit card data for sale or even hard drives with personal information for sale on eBay.
Identity theft often leads to even worse crimes. Our police have seen a growing trend of identity theft being used to further other types of crime, from fraud to organized crime. Gangs like identity theft because of the low risk of detection and the chance of high rewards. New technology has made it even easier to collect personal information and for criminals to cover their tracks.
Identity theft affects more and more Canadians. Seventy-three per cent of Canadians are concerned about becoming victims of identity theft. Twenty-eight per cent say that they were or someone they know was a victim. Last year almost 8,000 victims reported losses of $16 million and even more cases go unreported every day. Identity theft is estimated to cost Canadian consumers and businesses more than $2 billion a year.
The Liberal Party is proud that it created cutting edge laws to protect consumers' privacy eight years ago. The member for Calgary Centre-North wrote that this legislation “continues to merit its long-standing reputation as a world-class model for the protection of personal information in the private sector”.
The idea is simple: criminals cannot steal from people what they do not have. By making companies collect only the information they need, their data is less valuable to thieves. We also required companies to adopt safeguards for sensitive information.
Unfortunately, companies do not always comply. There are too many stories of the over-collection of personal information and inexcusable security breaches. Worse, companies do not have to inform consumers if their data is compromised. Canadians may not find out that their personal information has been stolen until it is used for a theft.
As the representative of my constituents in Newton—North Delta, I am committed to fighting crime and the causes of crime. We have to both encourage people to obey the law and punish them if they do not.
I have spoken with seniors in my riding and they tell me that it is not enough to punish crime. They say that we need to stop crime before it happens. They have a better plan to fight crime than the government.
Crime is a complicated problem and simplistic solutions do not get the job done. We need a comprehensive and effective approach to every aspect of fighting crime: prevention, catching criminals, convicting them and then rehabilitating them. We must put more police officers on our streets, more prosecutors in the courts , and more tools in the hands of the police.
I have been imploring the government to do more. The City of Vancouver has put more police on the streets of Vancouver than the Conservative government has put across this whole country. That is not enough.
To prevent identity theft, we must change private sector privacy laws to force companies to notify consumers when their personal information gets stolen. Breach notification will empower consumers. If a person's social insurance number gets into the wrong hands, the person deserve to find out about it so the person can avoid becoming a victim. This would also cause businesses to take the security of their customer's information more seriously. National breach notification would put Canada ahead of the United States where over half of all states have these laws.
Canada also needs to implement the recommendations of the federal task force on spam, recommendations that have been ignored by the present government. Spam clutters the mailbox of every Canadian and can trick people into revealing personal information. Canada has fallen behind. We are the only G-8 country without anti-spam legislation. Of the top 10 worst countries for originating spam, Canada is number six.
Bill C-27 would make it an offence to obtain, possess or traffic in other people's identity information if it is to be used in a crime. While there are already offences in the Criminal Code that cover the misuse of someone else's personal identity information, there are no offences to cover the steps that lead up to identity fraud: the collecting, possession and trafficking in identity information. Bill C-27 addresses this gap and I support this.
However, Bill C-27 does not do enough. It does not require data breach notification. It does not help the victims recover their reputations. It does not fight the growth of spam. It does not fix the rules on the collection of personal information by the government and private enterprise. It does not criminalize pretexting when a fraudster tries to obtain personal information about an individual by posing as him or her or someone authorized to have this information.
Experts agree that the government has not done enough. Philippa Lawson, the director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, said, “if the government is serious about this issue, we expect to see much more in the way of law and policy reform The Privacy Commissioner said that “the federal government must develop a broad-based strategy for tackling this type of fraud”.
The government has not shown Canadians that it believes its own rhetoric and introduced better accountability and stronger systems to protect their personal information.
The way forward is clear. The police need more resources to investigate identity theft and capture criminals. We need more police devoted to white collar crime. Our police need more training to keep up with criminals. We need to fix the lack of coordination between different government departments, the provinces, law enforcement and the private sector. We need basic education to teach Canadians about identity theft and how to avoid it.
Bill C-27 is a useful first step but if the government is serious about fighting identity theft it will need to do a lot more for Canadians.
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today on behalf of the Bloc Québécois and speak to Bill C-27. I remind the House that the Bloc supports this bill in principle.
Identity theft is a very serious issue to us. The Criminal Code must be modernized—we are in favour of that—in order to take this reality into account. I am often obliged, as an MP, to wrestle with these painful cases that land in our offices. Often they involve people who do not know much about accounting, people who do not have the knowledge to detect the dangers lurking in a text or people who simply have difficulty reading.
Unfortunately, in my riding—and I assume in many others—there are a certain number of people who are illiterate. The government should put more emphasis on this issue so that these people have a chance to understand texts. Identity theft cannot possibly be completely prevented if we do not work on these other things, on society as a whole, and especially on illiteracy.
In fighting identity theft, it is imperative to establish a good working relationship with other governments at various levels. We need agreements with foreign governments, especially the U.S. and the Government of Mexico.
A case was reported to me in my riding of someone who had his identity stolen nearly a year and a half ago. It happened in the United States. This Canadian still has not got his papers back. It is a very complex case that leads me as well to say that it is imperative for the government to have some agreement procedures. We need places where these people can go and tell their story, be heard, and taken in hand by people who know how to help them.
Turning to the police is not an ideal solution for these people. The police do not necessarily believe them and may think that they are hallucinating. At times, the stories are so incredible that we believe the individuals are making them up and have fantastic ideas. However, this is not the case. These are real situations. Something particular may have happened. It may not have been theft but it could be how the theft starts. The individual's identity is in another city where someone else is passing themselves off as that person. There are some fantastic stories and these people have to be able to turn to a public agency, set up by the government, that will listen to them and look after their cases.
In general, it is questionable whether the current Conservative government will enter into agreements with other governments. That is too bad because we need such agreements. Now that people travel a great deal and often own property in other countries—I am referring to the United States in particular—, we cannot just pass a law that applies to our country and say that it protects our fellow citizens. We know very well that many of our seniors spend winters in the United States. When they spend six months down there, they run the risk of being cheated, of losing their identity and returning here to try to recover it. The Canadian government says that it does not have an agreement with the United States and that it cannot enter into one.
If we truly wish a law such as this one to protect all citizens it must provide for reciprocal agreements, particularly with the United States, and, in my opinion, also with Mexico. I wonder how this government will do that.
We absolutely have to have diplomatic meetings involving government officials—these things can be arranged—we have to bring in harmonized legislation and we need international cooperation between public entities.
In addition, we will have to inform—some people say “educate”, but I prefer the word “inform”—the people so that we can reduce the number of victims who are not even aware of the theft going on. We have to inform them of their rights and the dangers involved in signing papers, in their work habits and in buying things on the Internet. We know that more and more people are buying things on the Internet. I should add that this phenomenon is increasing greenhouse gas emissions because goods bought on the Internet are always shipped by air.
We also need to draft regulations that provide a better framework for how companies manage, store and use information. We have to ask companies to cooperate with us. Even if we come up with a very nice piece of legislation to deal with this criminal activity, without the cooperation of private enterprise, we will not be able to enforce it.
We will also have to come up with measures that enhance the uniformity and security of the processes involved in issuing and verifying identification. In other words, we should stop issuing identification left, right and centre. We really need secure identification that proves the actual identity of the holder and is very difficult for others to use. None of that is in the legislation. However, officials from the various departments should think of ways to do this, or else the legislation will be useless.
The creation of a single organization to deal with cases of identity theft could help people who need it. Such an organization should be created because it does not yet exist.
With respect to the bill, of course, one could point out that the federal government does not have a very good track record when it comes to managing its own personal data. That could do with significant improvement.
I would like to provide an overview of identity theft. Identity theft is the deliberate substitution of one person's identity for another's. It can also mean the sale of something that does not belong to the seller.
A moment ago, my colleague from Jeanne-Le Ber gave the example of houses, homes. In fact, the scope of the law should be broader, because we could also talk about selling cars or any kind of vehicle that does not belong to the vendor. This is even more common in the case of motor homes or recreational vehicles. We are not talking about small amounts here, we are talking about $150,000, $200,000, $500,000 or even a million dollars, that will be handed over to someone who drives away in a vehicle on wheels that the person who sold it did not even own. In other cases, the vehicle may be lumbered with debts, but that detail is not known because the papers do not disclose it.
I have lived in England. Over there, the ownership history of a vehicle follows it for its whole life. In other words, I bought a 10-year-old vehicle and I knew who all the previous owners were, and I was going to know all its future owners until the end of the vehicle’s life. That way, all of the owners were going to know that I had owned it for a period of time.
These kinds of things could and should be included in a bill like the one being proposed. When this one is studied by the committee, we will have to assess it from all these perspectives. And this is my opportunity to say that it will be important to examine what is done elsewhere.
I just gave an example that relates to England.
I know this, because last week I spoke with some parliamentarians from Japan when I was taking part in an Asia-Pacific parliamentary meeting in New Zealand. Japan has its own unique laws, precisely because that country has protected itself against crime, against petty crime. The Japanese have laws that we should take an interest in and that offer examples for us. They have worked on those laws.
Why would we not do a broader survey to observe what is done in the major countries in this area? All countries are currently asking themselves questions. We cannot say that Canada is in the vanguard in this kind of law. We might therefore look elsewhere instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, obviously, before saying that we will write our own law in our own little corner.
Earlier, my colleague was talking about the American legal framework. I do not think that the Americans have the best laws, but you will note that they have laws that contain excessively harsh penalties. Imposing heavy penalties is an idea worth considering. I believe that the first offence is $7,500 and the second rises to $75,000.
But we still have to catch the fraud artists. We cannot get carried away with the size of the fines, without knowing whether we will find the resources or will have the support needed to actually identify the people committing the frauds.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is well-equipped. Sometimes it takes hours to find a person who has committed identity theft. Sometimes it takes years. It is not easy to catch these people. There should be organizations that can track them down more efficiently.
Like my colleague, I recognize that we should not rely solely on a law—that would be very narrow-minded.
We need to revamp the entire Criminal Code because the offences it covers were mostly defined back when people had a more traditional notion of right and wrong. As you know, several years ago, when a person's honour was at stake, people did not conduct dishonest transactions. It was also a matter of honour to keep one's word, which is not necessarily the case today.
Everything that has been done to make it easier for people to complete payment transactions has also made it easier for some to steal people's money and identity.
In France, people used to use cheques all the time. People used them a lot because they were difficult to forge. Here, people hardly ever use cheques anymore because they are not secure. Yet we know that credit cards have caused so many problems around the world. The law should force companies to make their credit cards secure because they have the means to do so. It would mean extra fees, but society as a whole would benefit tremendously. Credit card holders who are prepared to pay the price could demand secure credit cards. That would really help the market.
The legislation should be broadened so that we can really see the big picture and not rely solely on educating people, even though that is very important.
The government must also ensure that this legislation, if passed, creates agencies and rules that would require private enterprise to do something about truly minimizing this plague. The word “plague” is quite appropriate here to describe something spreading at a phenomenal rate. People are no longer sure how to use their identification. It has become too dangerous.
There are agencies that could help educate people. They may not be able to help in terms of detection, but they can help in terms of education. These agencies should receive help to educate the public. The target population consists of older persons and the illiterate. Certain groups of people are isolated and somewhat gullible. They could be reached through the community groups that represent them. This education should be available all across the society, not just in the schools. That is how we can fight back against this plague.
As I said, it is important for the measures to focus on enhanced security and standardization in the card-issuing process everywhere. And the number of identification cards in circulation could possibly be reduced. Every person carries around roughly 10, 15 or 20 cards with their name on them. If we want to halt this plague, then a card holder should be using no more than one or two multipurpose cards. That is something to consider for this legislation. We must not look at this legislation based on the past and on simple plastic identification cards. We have to think about the future. What is on the horizon for identification? We have to listen to people. There are experts who work in this field. If we do not know the whole story, we will not have legislation that is still current in five years.
This is very important because the rate at which secure identification cards are being developed makes us think that if we pass a law based on the present and the past, we will not have a law that will prevent future identity thieves from running rampant.
This will be very interesting legislation to review in committee because it is quite broad and applies to so many things, so many individuals and so many types of fraud. This is something that should provide a great deal of relief to the public.
We cannot rely on legislation and congratulate ourselves by saying now that we have good legislation the problem is solved. It is a rare case, but clearly one where legislation alone will not solve anything.
Mario Silva Liberal Davenport, ON
Mr. Speaker, let me first of all thank my dear colleague for his comments. I am sure that all members of the House are very much concerned about identity theft. This bill to amend the Criminal Code is certainly important.
However, we, in the Liberal Party, want to support real efforts against identity theft. We are very much concerned about the quality of the bill, which does nothing to prevent identity theft. My dear colleague spoke with eloquence about this problem in our society. The loss of a person's identity is very serious.
Perhaps my colleague could comment on this bill. Perhaps we could amend it. I am very worried—and I am sure that my colleague is as well—because this bill does not include any preventive measures. Yet, it would be very important to have a bill which brings important remedies to the identity theft problem.
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent question. It gives me the opportunity to say how convinced we are that the bill, in its present form, is very primitive. This is just a sketchy bill. I am not sure that we will be able to add enough substance to it. As we know, the committee cannot change the essence of the bill. It can only improve it.
To answer my colleague, I do not have any particular amendment to propose at this time. In my view, the bill requires a wide assessment. One cannot imagine that a few amendments will suffice to make it perfect. It is a very complicated bill. It should be clear, although it cannot be simple. In fact, it will need to be developed much more.
Dawn Black NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague across the floor for his presentation today. I listened to everything he had to say and agree with most of what he presented here.
Identity theft is a very serious issue. I have had my identity stolen and had credit card bills run up in my name which were not my bills. I understand what a personal affront this could be, and I am probably not alone in the House in having been through this experience.
We will also support the bill, but we agree that it needs to be strengthened, and hope that the committee will have the opportunity to do that.
The situation now is that the police can find individuals with multiple identifications in their possession and they are powerless to act. That is just ludicrous and is long overdue to be changed.
One of the issues I want to raise however is the fact that the government brought forward a voter ID act in the last session. In that bill the government insisted that the voters list would have personalized information published that would include a person's birth date and their residence. I believe this could be another avenue that the criminal element could use to steal identities and commit more fraud.
I would ask my colleague for his opinion on the voter ID act and whether or not I am correct that it would give criminal elements another opportunity or another avenue to pursue fraud, and whether or not that will be part of the committee's deliberation as well.
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for this excellent question.
We do agree that providing information for the purpose of voting only expands the chain of information within the general public, and that this is dangerous. We are nevertheless of the opinion that voting ought to be made safer through the use of identification documents that cannot be copied. We are thinking ahead. That is precisely the example I gave earlier. Legislation is being developed based on past or current experience, but without thinking ahead. ID cards could be thought up that would not be subject to identity theft. It has to be stated in regulations that such cards will be required, because fraudsters will continue to be increasingly inventive in finding ways to steal people's identity.
I totally agree with what the hon. member has said. She is supporting my position about the need for legislation to be forward-looking, without creating new ways of spreading information.
I also appreciated the hon. member's remark about having herself been the victim of identity theft, because I have as well. Identity theft involving credit cards can be dealt with relatively easily. In my case, someone used my name to make a large purchase of truck tires. I never made such a purchase; I did not even own a truck. This black mark on my credit report stuck to me for at least seven or eight years. I did everything in my power to have this debt erased from my report, but nothing could be done about it. Throughout America, the assumption was that I had bought ten or so very large tires and that I was responsible for that debt. We know that these are expensive tires. I was really stuck with that. It has taken a prolonged effort on my part to straighten things out, and it was a case of identity theft.
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Mr. Speaker, I have some concern about this very important issue of identity theft and what it might mean for people in my own riding. I did have a case that I dealt with early on in my career here.
It certainly was a concern how the theft happened in the first place, but it was how it was fixed in the end, how we got somebody to respond to the fact that there had been an identity theft, and that it should be taken seriously so that it would be acted upon quickly, so that the person whose identity had been stolen could feel comfortable in moving forward with her business.
I would ask the member whether the bill deals with the after-the-fact of the theft as much as it does with the before-the-fact?
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Mr. Speaker, my hon. NDP colleague has asked an excellent question.
Indeed, this piece of legislation must involve taking action before the deed is done. In other words, it must not be repressive legislation, since we know how hard that would be to enforce. The legislation should indicate how we must proceed and set out regulations to ensure that the private sector and other governments establish secure identification measures. Opportunities for stealing other people's identity must be limited as much as possible. It would be most unfortunate to create a piece of legislation based entirely on repression, one that simply says that anyone caught possessing the identification of five or six people will be fined. That is not the answer. We must be proactive and set out what is needed to reduce the instances of identity theft.
It would truly be a progressive, forward thinking piece of legislation. It would be to the government's credit to go beyond current practices for once and really move things forward.
Alan Tonks Liberal York South—Weston, ON
Mr. Speaker, when I listen to the discussion which has gone on with respect to this bill, one thing occurs to me. We have all had experiences. My colleague from the Bloc talked about his experience with the truck and the tires. He found that he was totally accountable and, beyond belief, had a blot on his credit rating and a number of other implications.
If were about that, in terms of protecting Canadians against that kind of impingement on their rights, it would be serious enough. However, I draw the attention of members to something that is far more serious than that.
In the last number of years, we have become profoundly aware of how criminal intent preys upon the vulnerable, such as the elderly in our societies. No more is it made graphically clear that criminal intent is accelerated by the complexities of establishing identities. In particular, if it is a stolen identity, it can even go so far as taking a person's residence, having it transferred into another name and selling that residence from beneath the feet of the persons who have lived in that home for probably 20 or 30 years.
Very recently there was a court case. An elderly citizen's spouse had passed away. He had lived in his home for over 50 years. He woke up one day to find the home was no longer his. All the history associated with his home, his relationship with his neighbours, his long-time commitment to the community meant nothing.
The court case drew out the deviousness of those who had victimized that elderly man. They were so skilful in intercepting his mail and occupying his being. They knew the bank he dealt with and his bank account numbers. They knew the assessment office to which he paid his property taxes. They knew every single aspect of his life, which allowed them to walk into a bank and transfer title to this property. They were able to satisfy the manager and those who handled the account, a bank that he had done business for tens of years, that he had transferred the property to them.
This is an effort on my part, not to be overly dramatic about what we are involved in here, to give a very small indication of how clever and devious those who wish to victimize can be if they apply themselves and what harm they can do, given the complexities of the way that business is done today.
I had not seen how the bill implicated to this case until I listened to some of the members talk in the House. I started to wonder if we really were totally aware of those machinations of a criminal mind and how they could victimize Canadians.
The point has been made that the bill is reactive in the sense it deals with crimes that relate to the kind of circumstances I have given in my example, the obtaining and possessing identity information, the intent to commit certain crimes, as in stealing identity so one could take over the ownership of a person's home without them even knowing.
Incidentally in this case, the people who did that left the country and it was difficult for the court to bring them back to establish the facts of the case.
The intent to commit a crime is enumerated in the bill with respect to one of those three new offences, which would be subject to a five year maximum sentence. I do not think anyone in the House should disagree with that.
The intent to traffic in identity information and to use that knowledge recklessly in the commission of a crime will now be one of those three new offences as will possessing unlawfully government-issued identity documents. In the case I referred to the information used was municipal, but by the same token, the result of using that information caused irreparable harm.
To finish on the example, as I understand it, the court declared that the bank, which was the holder of the mortgage and had benefited from many decades of business with that elderly citizen, had certain responsibilities, in a business sense, to do due diligence with respect to entitlement under ownership and so on.
That also brings us to the questions with respect to not just a responsive and reactive Criminal Code adjustment, but also to the tools that are required in today's very complex society. I point out that we have private member's Bill C-416, the modernization of investigative techniques act. The bill would give direction with respect to providing law enforcement agencies with the tools necessary to combat and prevent identity theft.
I do not know whether it has been cited before, but the reaction with respect to society's repugnance with what has happened has reflected very well by Nancy Hughes Anthony of the Canadian Bankers' Association. She said, “The fact that millions of Canadians must use and rely on personal identity information daily represents a gold mine for criminals”. That is why it is so imperative we try to support our investigative agencies through the criminal justice system. Therefore, we will support the bill.
We also have made it clear, and I hope the government will take it as a serious notice of intent, that the subject of the private member's bill is equally deserving support.
As I indicated in my example of the elderly citizen who lost his home, it is not only the law enforcement agencies that need the support. It is a systemic problem that needs an institutional response to empower the municipal agencies, the post office, those involved in court proceedings in an attempt to protect those who have been violated by this kind of criminal activity. We need to put a very clear message out that we, as representatives of our public, know the extent to which people can have their identities violated and the implications of that. We need to let them know we will not stand idly by and allow this to happen, that we will implement the countermeasures that are equally up to the task.
The illustration I used is one of several that have happened across the country. They happen to Canadians who may not be as fluent in the letter of the law or the language. They happen to people who are elderly, as in the case that I related. However, the end result is always the same. We shake our heads and wonder how those things could happen. We ask if they would have happened 30 years ago when the community was much tighter, when we had a lower population and when we had a knowledge of each other. As many have said, we used to leave our doors unlocked and we knew exactly who was in our community. If someone looked suspicious for any reason, our neighbourhood vigilance was equal to assisting our neighbours and so on. Unfortunately, that is not the way in many communities today. We need to be very proactive.
I am very pleased to see this legislation. The government has acted in a responsible and responsive way. However, I only hope, when the private member's bill comes up, we give an equal degree of treatment, either through committee or through the bill itself when it is presented, to the kind of example I have used. The implications are so serious and the lives of so many people are affected at a time when they should be able to look with confidence to their retirement and to the equity they have in their homes. The example I have used is one where an elderly man was completely and inhumanely treated, with no compassion or empathy for his needs. He had his identity stolen and lost everything for which he, his wife and his family had worked for their whole lives. We must not let that kind of thing happen. The bill is a good step toward meeting that kind of challenge.
Penny Priddy NDP Surrey North, BC
Mr. Speaker, could the member comment on the fact that within the legislation there is nothing about compelling government or businesses to notify people when there has been identity theft through a chain store or when government information has been lost or somehow misplaced or stolen, and we have seen a number of examples? That is not included in the legislation and I am interested in the member's comments about whether businesses and government should be as compelled as anybody else.