Bill C-42 (Historical)

Strengthening Aviation Security Act

An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act

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

Strengthening Aviation Security Act

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, that will give me a chance to tell the story of my visit to Russia in 1981.

I met an individual who that very day had been interviewed by the KGB because she had been seen in a place where foreigners would visit. I asked her what the consequences of being interviewed by the KGB were. Her answer was very interesting. She said, “One never knows”.

What we do know is that they wrote down the fact that there was a meeting, why there was an interview, everything that was said, and they put it in a file somewhere. That information could affect one's future when applying for a job, or trying to travel to a foreign country. This was 1981, before the wall came down.

Her answer stuck with me ever since, “One never knows”. One never knows what the consequences are of information that a secret agency might have on a person. That is why people like me and other Canadians value our privacy, freedom, and our own security. We consider it wrong that foreign government agencies have information that they have no need for without any protection, safeguard, or any ability to correct that information.

That's the essential reason why this legislation ought to be opposed. The agreements are not transparent, the information is not protected, and there are no safeguards as to what the information may be used for. These are the concerns we have and continue to have. This is why we oppose this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, the government has bamboozled the Bloc and the Liberals into supporting this bill on the basis that it was needed for security and that the Americans demanded it by December 31 or the 100 flights a day from Canada would stop.

I always thought that the reason for the Canadian and the American no-fly lists was to keep the people who were a potential security risk off the planes. With all the security and screening processes we have at the airports, and the fact that we have a no-fly list, which is supposed to keep all the bad guys off, this would mean that we are giving information about the good guys. That is what we are doing here. We are providing information about the good guys.

The fact that this was so important that we were going to shut down Canadian aviation if we did not pass this bill has all proved to be nothing but an apparition. Today is March 1 and nobody is talking about shutting down flights.

It is time the Canadian government went back to the Americans to say, “If we are going to give you information on 100 flights a day, then we want reciprocity with information on your 2,000 flights a day that are flying over Canada”, and then see what they have to say about that.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I had hoped that we had passed the high-water mark of paranoia. Understandably, the Americans were concerned about what happened September 11, 2001, but that was not a result of problems that this agreement is designed to solve. The people who did this nasty business in the United States in 2001 at the World Trade Centre did not fly from other countries, they were inside America. They were not coming from foreign states to do this nor over-flying the country. I think an awful lot of work has been done since then to be more vigilant, there is no question about that.

I hope that we are at the high-water mark and that the invasion of privacy envisaged by both this agreement and by the perimeter agreement are not going to be implemented. We oppose them. We think they are going too far and we will vote accordingly when the time comes.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of our party, proud to speak against Bill C-42 and what it would mean to Canadians right across this country.

I may or may not be the only member of Parliament who worked 18.5 years in the airline industry, but I can assure members that if they think for a second, with regard to flights from Canada down south, to Mexico, the Caribbean, or elsewhere, that fly over American airspace or American waters, that those flights would have been cancelled if we did not give the United States credit card numbers, health records, or what hotels we were staying at, they are delusional.

Would tit for tat mean that we are going to stop all those flights from the U.S. to Europe that fly over Canadian airspace as of December 31? That would be utter nonsense. It would hurt both economies. It is something both countries do not want to do.

It is nonsense for the Liberals and the Bloc to fall into this delusional state that if we do not give them all this information, it is going to hurt our airline industry. It is false; it is a great big lie. I would hope that the Liberals, the Bloc, and the Conservative Party of Canada would use their ten percenters or householders in their individual ridings to let Canadians, their constituents, know what they are about to do with the Bill C-42.

I was recently on vacation in a place where I met many Americans. I spoke with many Americans about this, over dinner and over a few drinks. They were surprised that the United States government is actually asking the Canadian government for this type of information. These folks were from Iowa, Kentucky, L.A., Florida, and New York.

Not one of them, whether they be admitted Republicans or Democrats, or have no interest in politics at all, wanted to know if I flew from Halifax to, say, Cuba or Jamaica. Not one of them wanted to know what hotel I was staying at. Not one of them wanted to know my health records. Not one of them wanted to know my credit card information. Not one of them wanted to know anything else. They could not care less. What they care about is people getting into their country who want to do bad things to them. That is what they care about. And we would agree with them.

Bill C-42 is the capitulation to our friends, the Americans. Friends should tell friends when they are doing something wrong. Instead of capitulating and agreeing, and fast-tracking Bill C-42, we should take a step back, go back to the negotiation table and tell the Americans they are wrong. We would be wrong in this country if we accepted the parameters of this particular negotiation.

Once Canadians find out, if this goes through the way that the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc want it to go through, many Canadians may wake up the next day and find themselves on no-fly lists. They may find themselves on all kinds of lists somewhere that they know nothing about. They will show up at an airport and be told they cannot go somewhere because somebody, somewhere, in the United States, either through error or through deliberate action, may have put them on the list and made sure that they could not fly, for whatever reason, even if they have no intention of going anywhere near the United States.

I know that the United States these days, in some circles, is called the excited states. There is a reason for that. The U.S. is very nervous about a variety of things. But when a country is nervous or when it makes laws without really thinking about the clear decisions of what it is about to do, it is up to its closest friends to advise that country to sit down and tell it what it is doing is wrong.

There are ways of protecting the United States and Canada and, for that matter, the entire North American continent, without intruding into the private lives of Canadian citizens and, for that matter, American citizens as well. I worked in the airline industry for over 18.5 years and I can tell members that many of our customers came from the United States and points beyond. Without them, many of the airlines that we worked for back in those days probably could not have survived. The same applies to the United States.

Can members imagine all those winter vacationers from Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, for example, who go to Florida on a regular basis? If we did not succumb to this and we just told the Americans, “We're not going to do what you want us to do”, are they telling me that the State of Florida is going to accept the fact that thousands upon thousands of Canadians would no longer be able to visit the State of Florida during snowbird season? Is that what the Government of Canada is telling us? Of course not. The reality is, it is simply wrong.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I will stop the member there. He will have five minutes left to conclude his remarks after question period. Right now we will move on to statements by members.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act, be read the third time and passed, and of the motion that this question be now put.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-42. This is an important bill. The member for Western Arctic has done a terrific job in bringing some of our issues and our concerns to the forefront.

I will spend a bit of my time talking about Canada-U.S. relations and what has happened in a general sense, because it is connected to the bill.

The bill would allow the private information of Canadians to be given to the Americans when they fly through U.S. airspace. We see this as an erosion of civil liberties. The use of this kind of information over the last several years has shown a lack of accountability.

The first case I witnessed was when I was in Washington, D.C. in 2003. The U.S. decided it would unilaterally bring in the NSEERS program, a program that tiered Canadian citizenship. Despite being a Canadian citizenship, if an individual originally came from one of five destinations, that individual would be fingerprinted and photographed. This program later turned into U.S. visits.

I asked the Liberal government at that time if it was going to object to this tiering of Canadian citizens because it was going to create complications, like the ones we are now seeing at the border. The government did not even challenge that, which was very disappointing. We have not yet had a prime minister who will challenge that.

The U.S. patriot act jeopardizes the privacy of Canadians. I fought a campaign a number of years ago when the Paul Martin administration decided to outsource the census to Lockheed Martin, an arms manufacturer. Lo and behold its data assembly was in the United States, so under the U.S. patriot act all Canadian information was accessible.

Under the patriot act, a law enforcement agency in the United States, primarily the FBI or the CIA, can demand private information from any company about its employees. It is interesting to note that, under the act, the company is not allowed to inform the individual concerned or the other companies from which the agency gets the information.

All of our census information would have been exposed and at risk. Thankfully, after a good strong campaign, we were able to get the government to amend the contract to ensure that data assembly stayed in Canada. Lockheed Martin won the contract, but the data assembly and maintenance had to be done in Canada, and it was for that time period.

Why is this important? The private information that we give up, such as our credit card numbers, our phone numbers, a whole series of things that we give up when a trip is booked with a travel agent, will be exposed if Bill C-42 is passed.

The government has not pushed back on these issues. It has just rolled over for the Americans. The Conservatives assume that if we push back on this issue, that will affect trade and commerce at the border. The reality is, as we have succumbed to more of these elements, the problems at the border have become worse.

The Conservative government's policies have been atrocious when dealing with the image that Americans have about our Canadian system. The government's position on immigration and its cracking down on crime agenda, as well as a whole series of other things, hyperactivates those elements for its political stock base, basically the mediators in the Conservative Party. This blends in with the American rhetoric we have heard out of Washington from American politicians about the northern border not being safe and being more dangerous than the Mexican border.

We have fed into that negativity. Programs and greater barriers have not necessarily improved things. In my opinion, the data we will provide will create other administrative barriers.

The Conservatives tell us that they are working closely with the United States. We know they have been having private secret meetings. They have signed other protocols that have not worked and they have fed into the American way of thinking that our border is not safe.

I remember when we had the longest border in the world without a military presence. Now the Coast Guard is patrolling the Great Lakes in gun boats. Coast Guard members use the Browning machine gun that fires hundreds of bullets per minute. This reinforces the image of hordes of Canadians scooting into the United States for illegal activities. We agreed to that program. I fought a campaign in the U.S. to raise awareness of the fact that we did not need those guns. Now they are sometimes stored.

Then we saw most recently, and this is a good example of how we feed into their system, how they try to spin these programs as being successes. The one that I am going to talk about a bit is the shiprider program. This is a program where an American pursuing a Canadian can enter Canadian waters and arrest that person; and, likewise, we can do the same.

Interestingly enough, when we signed this agreement, we allowed U.S. federal, state, municipal and coast guard persons to make that arrest in the U.S. However, on the Canadian side, we just have the RCMP. We have basically told the United States, and this is from the comments I get back from Americans, that because our CBSA officers cannot make similar arrests to its American counterparts, we have just admitted that we have a weaker system, that the weaker system needs more attention, and that weaker system has more problems than is being admitted.

Then we see these Americans, like the one from North Carolina, talking about how once again Canada's border is more dangerous than the Mexican border. Meanwhile on the Mexican border, they have lost control in certain jurisdictions because of the drug lords and they have a serious problem where thousands of people are entering and exiting per day. Now we have Canada being considered similar to that element. That is what is fundamentally wrong with not pushing back on these matters.

Not pushing back on this one is really critical, as well, because it gives up our privacy and it adds more barriers and more administrative problems than there have ever been before. That is going to lead to less trade, that is going to lead to more problems, and that is going to lead to a series of other administrative problems.

What is interesting is that when the Americans introduce legislation, and we agree to legislation like this, they will have the opportunity to change it for other data in the regulations. They will have the opportunity to open it up to other types of information. That is one of the reasons we oppose this. There is no set of based rules that people will know for sure.

As with the patriot act, we do not have any details. Is the information going to be shared further? Is it going to be scrubbed? When we have different information and it is wrong, how is it going to be used? One only has to bring up the case of Maher Arar where we saw the Canadian RCMP provide misinformation about a Canadian citizen who was in the United States, who was then sent abroad to Syria and tortured, and we then had to have a public inquiry.

So these things are real. They are not fantasy. These are actual cases that have taken place and are going to continue to be possible because we are giving up this type of a system without having the proper accountability. We have not even written in the measures to be able to change this. That is one of the things that gives us a disturbing sense of the government and its handling of U.S.-Canada relations and its secret meetings.

We do not have a playbook. All we hear from the government on the Canadian side is that our immigration system is problematic and our laws in this country are not tough enough on people. Then when we negotiate with the Americans, they know the type of rhetoric that has been used here and they fuel it for their own purpose.

When we are talking to the United States, are we looking at our immigration system being changed? It has often been said that some of the 9/11 terrorists came from Canada. We have heard those statements from Hillary Clinton. We have heard them from Janet Napolitano. Even if they were to retract them after much attention because they are not fact based, it still would not matter. The impression has been left that we are weak and that we do not stand up for ourselves.

When we have an issue like this bill, Bill C-42, that is not exact, it again proves and reinforces that we just roll over immediately. That is a real difficulty that we have with regard to our approach with the United States. It has to be tougher. We must have more expectations and measurables.

When we talk to industry and other types of organizations, they tell us the border is getting thicker, and it is getting thicker because of the government's policy. When we look at places like Windsor, Ontario, which is the busiest border and we are adding capacity, where the CBSA is being moved out of for crass political reasons, again, that shows the U.S. that we are going to be weak. This is going to lead to more problems, not solutions.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for his presentation on Bill C-42.

We have not heard any representations from the government on this during the last couple of days. I would be very interested to see a government member stand and speak to this bill, so that we could actually ask some questions.

I believe it was the lone Liberal who spoke to the bill who spoke about how some amendments were made, and one of them was a two-year review. I had to ask her a question about what we were going to find out from a two-year review when we are the ones giving the information to the Americans. What we want to know is, if they are going to review it, what are they going to do with the information?

All our review is going to show is that we gave them X amount of data. However, we will have no idea what they did with that data. If members think for one moment that the Americans are going to answer the questions and tell us what they did with the data, and what the result was of turning it over, they have to be dreaming.

I think this review is basically dead in the water. It is just a way for the Liberals to roll over and support the government, and at least have some explanation for their support base as to why they did it.

I do not know why the Liberals are not asking more questions. I do not know why the Bloc is not asking more questions. There are a lot of questions that should be answered before we pass this legislation.

I wonder if the member has any further comments about this issue.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. It is like grabbing a cloud. It is just going to slip away from us.

A two-year review will be meaningless because we do not have the power in the act as it stands now and we do not have the capability to demand the answers about how that information will be used, when it was used, where it was dispersed, and all those things. It is not included in the act. We will have that problem.

It is unfortunate that there is not a greater debate in the House of Commons about this. Later on, if there are situations where citizens are going to be affected, potentially having an interruption of travel or of their lives, as with the extreme case with Maher Arar, there is not going to be any accountability. There will be no recourse and no expectation.

This is what is truly unfortunate about this debate, that we are not even putting that on the record. It is sad that nobody else is engaging on this. I think airline travellers across Canada should be alarmed that both the government and the Liberal Party are allowing this to pass through the House of Commons, basically without any type of oversight whatsoever. The oversight will come from those in the U.S. who want to use Canadians' personal information for whatever benefit they want. That will be the result.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his remarks.

The part of his speech that intrigued me most was the reference to American gunboats in the Great Lakes. It would seem to me that that very act would endanger Canadian citizens. The fact that our government seems to have put up no resistance, just simply rolled over and played dead, in light of this American decision leaves me amazed.

I wonder if the member would expand on that situation. I would be very interested to know the circumstances and the end result of his interventions.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for the question because it is an important aspect.

The government amended a treaty that went back to the War of 1812. When it did that, it shredded the great knowledge that our undefended border with the United States was well managed but was also a signal to the world about how that can actually be done in a modern age.

What is interesting is that even though we lost that battle, the Americans wanted to create 40 gun ranges for these training exercises to take place. The bass fishermen are lower in the water, so the radar would not picked them up.

They were literally going to use lead casing bullets, by the thousands, and dump them into the Great Lakes. Only the New Democratic Party made a submission against that proposal in the United States and we were able to stop that. The U.S. decided not to do it.

The government actually made a submission two days late, so it was not even considered in the discovery and analysis. It did not make it on time for that. Allowing 40 gun ranges on the Great Lakes would have been a terrible idea for the environment and safety.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, I deeply regret that the government has brought forward such a draconian piece of legislation as Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act.

As I indicated in previous remarks, Bill C-42 quite simply should be defeated. It is nothing more than data mining by foreign security services, primarily the United States, and is an unwarranted invasion of the privacy of Canadians.

Bill C-42 would amend the Aeronautics Act to allow for an exemption for airlines from the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, thereby permitting them to transmit to the United States department of homeland security personal information about airline passengers.

The U.S. department of airline security could then run this information through a number of databases to determine if the travellers should be prevented from entering U.S. airspace. If the U.S. department of homeland security determines a person may be allowed into the United States airspace, then the airline is given permission to issue a boarding pass.

This is a process set up under the United States secure flight program, and it mandates that only those the United States department of homeland security allows may enter into U.S. airspace, regardless if those individuals are landing in the United States or not.

While the Conservatives like to point to name, gender and birth date as the only items of information required, the secure flight final rules state that airlines must forward information that includes the passenger name record, which is a file that a travel agent creates when a customer books a vacation. It can include: credit card information, names of companions travelling with the individual, hotel and other booking information such as tours, rental cars, and any serious medical conditions of the passenger if the airline possess that information.

Unfortunately, it is sufficient information to allow the department of homeland security to data mine the travel reservation systems used by all airlines because these databases are physically located in the United States.

Previous to Bill C-42, this information was passed to the U.S. department of homeland security only for passengers travelling to the United States. There was an exemption for domestic Canadian flights. However, almost all flights within and to and from Canada pass through United States airspace. Bill C-42 would essentially allow the United States department of homeland security to determine who may enter and leave Canada by air.

Bill C-42 would also allow airlines to send personal information of passengers to foreign security services. What information would be forwarded is determined by requirements laid out in secret agreements with other countries. Details of these agreements have not even been released. However, it is known that Canada has signed or is negotiating agreements with the European Union, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Panama, the Dominican Republic and the United States.

Details of the agreement between the European Union and the U.S., for the same information transfer, allows the information collected to be retained by the Americans for up to 40 years. As I have already indicated, this information may be forwarded to the security service of a third nation without the consent or even notification of the signatory, meaning the passenger.

The secure flight final rule also stipulates that 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. In essence, the U.S. already has such an agreement with the EU that all such documents will not be publicly released for 10 years.

That means for an airline passenger seeking recourse in regard to a prohibition to travel, this would preclude any access to information requests. In essence, Bill C-42 gives the government agencies too much access to private information without protection for our citizens. It is also being spun by the government as necessary in our fight against terrorism.

There is no example of how this data mining has caught a single terrorist or any other criminal. Bill C-42 is an unacceptable invasion of privacy of Canadians by foreign security forces.

I have heard from many of my constituents who are most concerned that such an intrusion is an unacceptable invasion of their privacy and it undermines their personal security.

Maher Arar, who has already been mentioned, is an example of how this type of misinformation can be misused. In September 2006, in New York at the JFK Airport on his way home, Mr. Arar was detained by American officials. He was interrogated about alleged al-Qaeda links and 12 days later he was chained, shackled and flown to Syria. During his captivity he was beaten, tortured and forced to make false confessions. Despite a commission of inquiry, an apology and financial settlement from the Government of Canada, the United States authorities refuse to accept Mr. Arar's innocence and he remains on the American no-fly list. Clearly this is a terrifying example of how information can be skewed, misinterpreted and abused.

Many people have commented on the agreement being considered by the Government of Canada in regard to the proposed amendments to the Aeronautics Act. In May 2010, Dr. Mark Salter, who is an associate professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, told the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities that governments want this information so that they can build profiles not just of 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.

What worries the experts about this particular legislation, Bill C-42, is the widespread distribution of the data. Flights that use polar routes from Vancouver to Hong Kong would have to go over Russia and China. Are we suggesting that they are reasonable destinations for the passenger data of Canadian citizens? Is the Government of Canada confident that the destination for this data can provide adequate protection?

What worries many of us on this side of the House is that neither the government nor other agencies have put protection in place for data that will now go abroad. It is dangerous to sacrifice our privacy and 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.

Quite simply, this bill makes Canadians more vulnerable to the security services of other nations. Canadian data should never be hostage to any regime that an air company chooses to fly over. The proposed change to these data protection regulations to include overflight states dramatically increases the vulnerability of Canadians' data while offering no means of redress or appeal.

The proposed changes to the Aeronautics Act are dangerous and without any clear benefit to Canadians. Dr. Salter is not the only expert in Canada warning that Bill C-42 sets out a dangerous path, one that we should not follow. Over and over we have heard the warnings from reputable experts and indeed the voices of concerned Canadians. Surely the government will listen to these warnings.

We need to defeat Bill C-42. Canadians deserve better than questionable leadership and an absence of due diligence from the government. How can anyone trust a government, its ministers and a Prime Minister so willing to jeopardize their privacy and security?

In the words of our Privacy Commissioner: “However, the Canadian government has a duty to protect the privacy and civil rights of its citizens.”

It is time the government understood that duty. It is time that it exercised due diligence for the sake of Canadians.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think the member's speech and arguments were quite well presented, but we do have a situation. The U.S. government and Canada have an agreement that is already in place which is directly related to the sovereign right to control their own airspace in the U.S. As the member knows, the thrust of the bill is to permit the request of the U.S. government for certain information, which, she is quite right, is still being discussed. The alternative is that the U.S. can say that flights would not be able to fly over U.S. airspace if they do not comply.

Given that the Privacy Commissioner before our committee on November 10 laid out some suggestions on how the security of the information could be safeguarded, she did not conclude it was an invasion of privacy and inappropriate disclosure. I wonder what the member's solution would be if Bill C-42 does not pass.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, I find it interesting that there have been references made to previous agreements. I am not entirely sure that there was any wisdom in some of these agreements. It feels very much like the government is simply rolling over and playing dead.

What about the sovereign rights of Canadian citizens? What about our right to privacy and security?

This whole issue seems to revolve around threats from the United States. No matter how paranoid the Americans may be, it makes absolutely no sense to shut down the border or to preclude air flights from Canada. Yet that seems to be what is in Bill C-42. The American government is saying that even if we are not landing but simply flying over its airspace it has an issue with that.

In terms of safeguards, there has been a great deal of secrecy around these discussions. I have seen those safeguards and that is not acceptable.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my hon. colleague on a very well-reasoned speech and one of profound importance to Canadians. I believe we need to get right down to the nub of the matter.

The bill would force Canadian airlines to send personal information to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Canadian travellers who are not even touching U.S. soil, but fly over U.S. airspace.

We know that the passenger name record has very detailed information, such as credit card numbers, where one is staying, who one is flying with and potential health concerns. We also have no way of knowing what third countries will get that information because this agreement permits the United States to send that information to third countries.

I am wondering about the question of reciprocity. Canadians want their government to defend their interests. Did the Conservatives, at the same time that they were selling out information on Canadians' privacy rights to the Americans, get reciprocal treatment so that American passengers who are flying over Canadian airspace have to let our security personnel know the passenger name record information on American travellers? I wonder if the government ensured that we would get reciprocal treatment in this regard.