Bill C-42 (Historical)

Strengthening Aviation Security Act

An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act

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

Strengthening Aviation Security Act

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the concern about privacy issues, whether it be under the Privacy Act or under PIPEDA, is of importance to the House. The Privacy Commissioner has opined that this is a reasonable accommodation, taking into account the nature of the concerns between Canada and the U.S. and with regard to public safety and security.

Is the member aware of the position of the Privacy Commissioner? Does he believe she erred in her assessment?

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me answer the last part of the question first. I think the Privacy Commissioner did err.

The bottom line is there will always be a different point of view when it comes to the need for security, and I do not think anyone would argue with that. We have always had security.

I lived in a border town nearly all my life. Years ago it was good enough for me to tell border security on both the U.S. side and the Canadian side that I was from Welland and I was going to Pete's Pizza in Niagara Falls, New York. The security officers would tell me to have a good night. When I came back later in the evening with a car full of young people, and we know young people can be quite energetic, I told border security that I had been at Pete's Pizza. When an officer asked me if I had anything to declare, I said no. The officer told me to have a good night.

We have gone from that to the point where an individual needs a passport to get across because of some erroneous, fictitious folks in some countries who believe terrorists came from here when in fact they did not. The folks who destroyed the Twin Towers did not come from here, yet the Homeland Security chairperson still believes that.

Canada has been identified as a hotbed of terrorism in relationship to Mexico. How in heaven's name did that happen? Yet the Conservative government wants to share information on our citizens with senior U.S. officials who still deny history. It is astounding to me that would be the case. If senior leaders of the U.S. government cannot get it right, then surely to goodness we ought to pull back and tell them we will not share information on our citizens with their government.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will quote a couple of things said by a witness who was before the committee talking about this bill. The witness stated:

[Bill] C-42 raises important sovereignty issues. ...the Canadian government has a duty to protect the privacy and civil rights of its citizens.

Who was that witness? Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The Privacy Commissioner has said that the government has a duty to protect the privacy of Canadians. Since this is a sovereign nation, and I know I certainly agree with that statement, does my colleague agree with it too.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am sure my colleague thinks that asking a rhetorical question means that he has set a trap from which I cannot escape. However, he will probably already know that I invited a colleague from his caucus to join with me. When the government thought it was so important to prorogue Parliament, destroy the democratic rights of an open parliamentary system last spring, I invited the NDP colleague from northern Arctic to co-chair with me a round table on security issues where the Privacy Commissioner did come to present her views that we sought, that we elicited and that we absorbed, not only her views but also those who are experts in security issues.

Did we frame an appropriate approach to this? Of course we did. When we get expert opinion that is not tinged by partisanship, it is valid and it is valuable and we operate on valid and valuable information.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been looking at this matter and I am not sure whose interests it would serve for the bill to be defeated and for Canada not to be able to comply with the U.S. security requests. I am not sure whose interests it would serve for Canadian flights not to be able to enter the United States or even to overfly the United States. However, the one thing I am sure about is that it would not be in the interests of those Canadians whose jobs depend on commerce with the United States and it would not be in the interests of those Canadians who want to visit the United States or to fly over the United States for this bill to be defeated.

As to privacy concerns, my learned colleague across the way is obviously familiar with the great rules regarding privacy that Canada has instituted. I wonder if my friend would care to comment on whether or not Canada's Privacy Commissioner will in fact be following the progress of this bill and the implementation of this bill and will alert Canadians if she has any concerns.

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

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

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

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

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

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we find ourselves in a rather difficult position because although we have significant concerns about the privacy of Canadian travellers, the government, through its failure to do anything to protect those interests, has allowed us to get to the point where we have, in effect, become hostage to demands from the United States.

Canadians obviously now are faced with concerns about commerce and the challenges to travel, but where on earth was the government when this issue first came up? This is not the first time, either. The Conservative government seems to be far more interested in placating or pleasing the United States than in even listening to Canadians' concerns.

A number of my colleagues have proposed some significant amendments, which I am very pleased about. My hon. colleague from Eglinton—Lawrence was extraordinarily eloquent in describing the concerns about Canadian privacy. I have a much larger concern, which is how we got here in the first place.

When the Conservative government was first asked to agree to this, it did not even ask for reciprocity. How is the government acting on behalf of Canadians when it will not even ask for fair and equal treatment for Canadians? I find it appalling. This is another example of the government's apparent desire to please the Americans rather than listen to Canadians.

Another example is the fact that the Prime Minister is in the process of negotiating a security perimeter agreement with the United States. He is doing it in the United States. He is doing it with the Americans. He is not speaking with Canadians about this. He is not answering any questions about what this might mean. Once again, it is all in the guise of security.

At some point Canadians are going to have to take a stand and say that using the word “security” and spreading fear that somehow we are under attack at all times is simply not true in Canada. It is wrong to make the people of this country fearful all the time. It is just not right. It is also particularly offensive to me to use the word “security” and fearmongering as a foil to hide the failures of the government to do so much more with the United States.

Although the bill deals with aeronautics and air travel, it is more of the same in what the Conservative government has not done in terms of trade. For example, the security perimeter is being billed as the answer to the thickening of the Canada-U.S. border and that this is something we should agree to, even though we have no idea what is in it as we were not part of the discussions. That is reserved for the Prime Minister and the Americans.

We are being asked to support this. We are going to be asked to support an idea of a North American security perimeter because it will enhance trade and help reduce the thickening of the Canada-U.S. border from a trade perspective.

There has absolutely been a thickening of the border. Liberals do not disagree with that at all. For many Canadian businesses, whether in the agriculture or agrifood sectors, all sorts of other businesses, as well as Canadians travelling back and forth, there has been a significant thickening of the border, which has created lots of problems and, indeed, many jobs lost in this country. To say it is entirely due to security is completely false.

Onerous country of origin labelling rules have absolutely nothing to do with security. Buy American legislation has nothing to do with security. The proposed legislation in the United States to deal with foreign trade representatives is extraordinarily protectionist and has nothing to do with security.

Increased fees to simply get across the border have nothing to do with security. There are all sorts of examples of how the border has been thickened, not because of security, but because of protectionist sentiment in the United States which, thanks to the most recent elections, has only increased.

A number of people think that the Tea Partiers are somehow more Republican in the sense of being more open to free trade. On the contrary, I am afraid a significant number of the Tea Partiers, and a significant number of the new congressmen and women, are more against trade than their predecessors which is of real concern to us here in Canada. The government simply seems to let it go.

We have done very little, we being Canada, and I put the blame squarely on the Conservative government. The government has not been on the ground in Washington. The current ambassador has been doing yeoman's work, but he is one person. We have not been on the ground nearly enough, negotiating and lobbying. Yes, lobbying, because that is how the American government works. We have to be on the ground to protect Canadian interests. We have to be on the ground in Washington. We cannot just respond and at the last minute expect to accomplish something. We have to be on the ground. We have to be working with the Americans. We have to explain why Canadian interests are important to them and how that affects their interests in return.

We have to be working at the state level. It is simply not enough to do a photo op in Washington. We need to have Canadian representatives working on the ground at the state level with the governors, with the congressmen and congresswomen in Washington, but we need to be on the ground doing far, far more.

I will bring that back to the question at issue today. Has anyone been doing that? Has there been any effort in the United States to protect Canadians' interests? Has anyone said that we do not think the United States should have all that information about Canadians, simply because they are flying over the United States, that we have some real concerns about that?

As my colleague described, we worked very hard to establish legislation to protect the privacy of Canadians and we are very proud of that legislation. In one fell swoop we ended up being held hostage in such a way that we have to exempt this particular situation from the protection of privacy of Canadians.

The government seems far too interested in pleasing the Americans, listening to the Americans and adhering to American interests. I have nothing against the Americans, but in this situation we are sacrificing the interests of Canadians in order to please the interests of the United States. That is simply not acceptable.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my learned colleague opposite whether in their 13 long lost years of government the Liberals ever proposed that the Americans should not have control over their airspace? That is my first question.

Second, does my learned colleague opposite have some inside information to back up her accusation that Canadian diplomats, skilled lifelong career civil servants, did not negotiate as hard as they could for the best treaty they could get on this issue? Does she have some inside information that she would like to table with the House? Although she may think that Canada can dictate terms to the United States, our career diplomats would tell her differently.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the proof is in the pudding. We would not have a buy America act if we had enough people representing Canadian interests on the ground before it happened. The buy America act and the response, by the way, that only includes 37 of the states, so even then is incomplete, was a reaction after the fact. People were scrambling.

The fact that we have had such difficulty with protectionist sentiment and protectionist legislation in the United States is the problem, and if we have that problem, we know we are not doing enough.

It is not a commentary on the diplomats who are there. The ones who are there are very capable, but we simply do not have nearly enough resources or the will on the part of the government to do it.

Second, in terms of the Liberal government, I would assure the hon. member that if, in a Liberal government, we had been asked to sacrifice the privacy of Canadians in this way in terms of control over airspace, the Americans have control over airspace, just as we have control over our airspace. This goes further and we are now being held hostage. If a Liberal government had been asked to do this, we would have asked how we could work this out so we did not accede to this and sacrifice the privacy of Canadians.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, what the member said was well known at the committee.

I put forward an amendment to the bill which would have been a three-year drop-dead clause to ensure that after three years the government would have to renegotiate this and that we would not be tying Canadians' privacy to a bad bill for eternity. Why did the Liberal critic at the transport committee refuse to go along with the drop-dead clause?

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question and the effort of my hon. colleague in dealing with this issue.

I will not speak for the critic in that regard. My preference in this now, because we have reached a stage given the concerns about commerce and air traffic, where we are being held hostage. We have arrived at this point too late.

Having said that, my hope is that over the next little while, and hopefully after a change of government whenever that might happen, there will be a much greater effort to work out a solution with the United States to address these concerns in a much more effective way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, some of the assertions from members who have spoken to this bill could be summarized by saying that the U.S. has the sovereign right to control its airspace.

The committee heard from many witnesses, including the governments of the U.S. and Canada, the aviation industry, the Privacy Commissioner, and many civil rights groups. The list is very long. Their conclusion was very clear, that we had no choice but to allow the information to be transferred.

[An hon. member]

That is not true.