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.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

There are three motions in amendment standing on the notice paper for the report stage of Bill C-42. Motion No. 2 has been withdrawn by its sponsor. Motions Nos. 1 and 3 will be grouped for debate and voted upon according to the voting pattern available at the table.

I will now put Motions Nos. 1 and 3 to the House.

Motions in amendment

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

moved:

Motion No, 1

That Bill C-42, in Clause 2, be amended by replacing lines 7 to 15 on page 2 with the following:

“(4) The Committee of the House of Commons responsible for transport matters must,

(a) within three years after the day on which this subsection comes into force and every five years thereafter, commence a comprehensive review of the provisions and operation of this section, and complete the review within two years; and

(b) within three months after the day on which the review is completed, submit a report to the House of Commons setting out its findings.”

Motion No. 3

That Bill C-42, in Clause 2, be amended by replacing line 12 on page 2 with the following:

“the provisions and operation of this section; and”

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am glad that the government has finally brought this bill back to the House for report stage debate. During the second reading debate and during committee stage, the government made it clear that the bill was a matter of national urgency. That is why I was dismayed that the government waited until the final sitting day before the recess last summer to table this legislation.

Last fall when the House returned, the government waited until October 19 to bring the bill forward for debate and again waited until October 26 to complete debate at second reading. The transport committee held six days of hearings on the bill and then amended and passed the bill on December 7, and it was reported to the House on December 8. Again, instead of taking up this important matter, the government let it sit idle. Now, here we are in February finally discussing the bill again in the House.

I lay out this timetable in some detail for a specific reason. The element of the U.S. secure flight program which would require the transfer of data for flights flying over the U.S. was set to become live at the end of 2010. There was significant pressure from both the government and the U.S. to ensure that our airlines were legally able to perform this data transfer. However, it is clear from the government's lack of action that this was never truly a priority.

The secure flight program, which was rolled out in three stages, has put Canada in a tough spot. Our government has always strived to protect the privacy of Canadians, but the U.S. has the sovereign right to control its airspace. That is why committee members heard from a wide range of witnesses.

We heard from many witnesses, including the governments of the United States and Canada, the aviation industry, the Privacy Commissioner and many civil rights groups. It became rather clear that we really had no choice: we had to allow this information to be transferred.

It also became clear that the bill was woefully inadequate in providing protections to the privacy of Canadians. The members of the transport committee worked to build protections into the law. Now, as amended, the law will require airlines to notify passengers before they purchase their tickets that their personal information will be transferred to the United States.

The second change is that the committee reduced the scope of these provisions. Previously the governor in council had the power, without parliamentary approval, to add other countries to the list of those authorized to receive this information. Thanks to amendments made at committee, this authorization has been limited in legislation to the United States. This means that should another country request this passenger information, the government will have to return to Parliament, and members of both the House and the Senate will have the power to review and approve their addition.

The third amendment is also important. It requires that the House of Commons committee charged with transport issues must periodically review the provisions of this act and report to the House on their findings. This will give parliamentarians the opportunity to bring back witnesses, like the Privacy Commissioner, before the transport committee so that they can follow up on how the privacy of Canadians is being respected or not.

As will be seen in the notice paper, it is this provision of the bill that is subject to report stage amendments. I will touch on these amendments in due course, but first I want to comment on the committee hearings themselves.

I think it is fair to say that all the opposition parties shared the concern about the U.S. government's request to receive this information. However, I was dismayed by the tone that some of the government members took. Some Conservative members of the committee did not seem to take this seriously. They asked, rhetorically of course, if Canadians' right to privacy “trumped” the Americans' right to security and safety.

As the Privacy Commissioner indicated, this is a serious issue for Canadians. She raised the case of Maher Arar, who was rendered to Syria and tortured on the basis of information transferred by the Canadian government to the U.S. This is a serious issue. I want to emphasize that for the members opposite.

Now I will turn to the amendments currently before the House.

Motion No. 3, under the name of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport, is a previously agreed to technical amendment that will restrict the committee's review to the provisions of the bill rather than the entire Aeronautics Act. This was the original intention of the committee.

The other amendment, also standing in the name of the parliamentary secretary, is more contentious. Currently, Bill C-42 requires that the transport committee must commence a review of the bill within two years of its coming into force and every five years thereafter. The committee must report its findings to the House within three months of completing the report. The government's amendment would allow the committee an extra year to begin the study, but would require the study to be completed within two years. That means the government would require the review to be completed within five years of the passage of the bill.

I do not believe the government's amendment fully appreciates the seriousness of the issue. The first review should be completed in less than five years. I will be proposing an amendment to government Motion No. 1, the effect of which will be to say that the review of this legislation should be complete within three years of the passage of the legislation rather than five years.

I know, having spoken to my colleague in the NDP, the member for Western Arctic, that he agrees with me to reduce the length of time from five years to three years.

I have not yet had a chance to talk to my colleague from the Bloc about this, but I will do so as soon as possible.

I also spoke to the parliamentary secretary and he indicated he was not sure whether or not the government would support that. We shall find out. It may be a friendly amendment having the support of all parties, or it may not be. That remains to be seen.

Let me conclude by reading the text of the Liberal amendment to government Motion No. 1. I move:

That Motion No. 1 be amended by deleting all the words in subsection (a) and replacing them with “within two years after the day on which this subsection comes into force and every five years thereafter, commence a comprehensive review of the provisions and operation of this section, and complete the review within one year; and”

It is a very simple matter. We on this side believe that these privacy concerns are very important and that we need not wait five years before reviewing the bill to make sure that Canadians' privacy rights have been respected. The government is proposing five years. The effect of our amendment is that this review be complete within three years of passage of the bill.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

This motion proposed by the member for Markham—Unionville is receivable.

Questions and comments.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Madam Speaker, this issue and the bill which had such urgency for the government before Christmas have since changed somewhat in direction.

My colleague mentioned that the U.S. government presented evidence to us. While we did have a letter from the ambassador to clarify certain points, we never had a real opportunity in the committee to actually question the Government of the United States on this particular issue.

We did have the Liberty Coalition, a U.S.-based civil liberties group, speak to us. Michael Chertoff is on public record saying that he believed that no-fly decisions should not be subject to judicial review. Within the United States, those who are impacted by no-fly regulations are not subject to judicial review.

Where does that leave Canadian citizens who may find themselves, under U.S. law, prohibited from flying over the U.S. and on a list that they have no judicial ability to access?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, as I said in my remarks, this is a difficult situation for us because we do not want to risk Canadians' privacy by requiring them to give this information to the United States. However, it is indisputable that the United States has jurisdiction over its own airspace. Unless we want our flights not to go over the United States, which would be devastating for the airlines and for travellers, we really have no option but to agree to give this information.

As I said in my remarks, we made several amendments to mitigate the negatives out of this bill. In direct answer to my colleague, I do not think we can expect that Canadian citizens would have stronger rights than American citizens, vis-à-vis the U.S. government. I think the Americans with whom I spoke said that Canadians would have the same rights as American citizens.

This is one reason that a review is needed. We have received certain engagements from the U.S. government. One reason we would need a review, and sooner rather than later, not waiting a whole five years, is so that we can bring witnesses before the committee to hear how this bill has operated and whether, indeed, there have been infringements of Canadians' privacy rights or other issues.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend across the way for his comments and insightful work on the committee. It certainly took all members of all parties on the committee to get the job done in order for Canadians to be able to fly across the United States, even to fly from one Canadian city to another.

I wonder if the member could make it more clear and concise in relation to the amendments he is proposing. I understand there are two particular issues to shorten the timeframe. I am wondering if he has taken into account the long period of time it has taken to get bills passed through this place and to get studies done. Of course we are in a minority government and the Liberals continuously hold us up, and if it is not them, it is the Bloc or the NDP.

I am just wondering if the member has considered all of that, or does this mean the Liberals are going to take a new step forward and actually work co-operatively with the government to get the best interests of Canadians to the forefront?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, perhaps it means this is not a friendly amendment, although I would like clarification from my colleague.

The dates I gave in my speech indicate it was not the opposition that was responsible for delays in the bill. It was that the government brought the bill forward on the very last day of the summer sitting. The other dates indicate that if anyone is responsible for the delay, it is the government.

I do not think, even in a minority Parliament, it is too much to ask that within two years of the passage of the bill, which is quite a long time, the government begins a review of the bill and that it is given a whole year, 12 months, to complete that review. The review is not super complicated. It might take five or six days of hearings, much like in the lead-up to the bill. The Conservatives may have trouble fitting in five two-hour committee meetings in the space of 12 months, but for the Liberals and opposition parties in general that should not be a problem.

I do not understand why the government is refusing to go along with the three-year review period, which is ample time to get the work done. Is it because it is downplaying the importance of the risk to the privacy of Canadians and for that reason it is going all the way out to five years before it even considers it necessary to have a review?

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is certainly a pleasure for me to rise in support of Bill C-42 and against the subamendment that has been put before the House.

Bill C-42 would amend the Aeronautics Act to ensure that Canadian air carriers comply with the United States' secure flight program and maintain Canadians' access to southern destinations via continental U.S. airspace. The legislation before us today would also strengthen the North American air transportation system against terrorist attacks and enhance the protection of all air travellers.

All hon. members understand the importance of achieving both goals, which will be easier if we are all clear on what Bill C-42 will and will not do. Some comments I have heard during debate and have seen in newspaper editorials would suggest that if Bill C-42 is passed then all domestic flights will have to comply with the secure flight program. That is absolutely false.

The truth of the matter is that our government has worked very hard with the U.S. administration to gain an exemption to the secure flight rules for domestic flights between Canadian cities which overfly U.S. airspace. That is an important distinction and an important exemption since many flights between Canadian cities do in fact travel through U.S. airspace.

Such flights under the provisions of Bill C-42 and the secure flight rule will not, and I repeat will not, be subject to the secure flight requirements. Neither U.S. law nor Bill C-42 will require that information related to passengers on those flights be shared with the U.S. government.

I have heard it said that the secure flight rule will apply to all Canadian domestic flights, which I previously mentioned is completely and absolutely wrong. I have also heard testimony at committee hearings implying that Bill C-42 might require that passenger information be sent to countries such as Russia or China for flights between Vancouver and Hong Kong, for example, or to Latin American countries for flights to Colombia or Brazil originating in Canada, and to European and Middle Eastern countries for flights from Canada to Dubai.

I want all members in the House to be absolutely clear on this point. Bill C-42 amends section 4.83 of the Aeronautics Act so that Canadian airline companies can only provide the United States government with passenger information for all flights which overfly continental U.S. airspace.

I also want to highlight measures taken by the government to address concerns raised by opposition members and by the Privacy Commissioner, Ms. Jennifer Stoddart, when the bill was before the transport committee. There were some concerns related to what Canadians were being told in relation to the secure flight regulations and whether they would be made fully aware of what information would be shared and with whom.

To address these concerns, we introduced a government amendment at committee stage that will require an operator of an aircraft that is due to fly over but not land in the U.S. to notify all persons who are on board or expected to be on board that information relating to them may be provided to a competent authority in the United States. This measure will ensure that Canadians are aware that their information will be shared with the U.S. government for flights overflying U.S. airspace to a third country. The amendment addresses concerns raised by the opposition and other witnesses during committee testimony and it does significantly improve the bill.

I would now like to shift gears and talk about some of the testimony that was heard at committee from the airline companies as well as from the tourism industry in general.

What was said at committee is relevant and very important, that is that the economic costs of not passing Bill C-42 would be severe.

The Canadian Tourism Industry Association noted, “Use of alternative routes will mean longer travel times, higher costs, and increased environmental impact” for flights not in compliance with the final rule of U.S. security plans. It went on to add, “Consequently, these travellers are likely to choose other destinations that would not require them to make stopovers or long flyovers”. That would undoubtedly have a negative and severe impact on the tourism association's 8,000 direct and affiliate members across the country who in turn represent some 1.6 million Canadians whose jobs depend on the economic impact of tourism in Canada.

The airline industry has been absolutely clear with the government in that it supports and requires Bill C-42 to be passed to remain competitive in the North American aviation industry. The Canadian Tourism Association similarly is clear and unequivocal in its support of Bill C-42.

Bill C-42 will ensure that Canadians can access travel destinations in a safe, quick and cost-effective manner while also protecting their privacy and individual rights. Amendments to the Aeronautics Act will enable Canadian air carriers to provide limited passenger information to the U.S. Transportation Security Administration 72 hours prior to departure for destinations requiring entry into U.S. airspace, such as Caribbean and Latin American destinations. Passenger data will be collected by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration for the purpose of passenger watch list matching.

Canadian air carriers are currently required to match passenger information against the U.S. no-fly and selectee terrorist watch list for flights destined for the U.S. Privacy concerns and false matches have been raised and our government is acutely aware of the importance of protecting privacy and individual rights.

By transferring responsibility for watch list matching from air carriers to the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, secure flight is expected to reduce false matches. Only information necessary to conduct watch list matching will be gathered. All personal data will be collected, used, distributed, stored and disposed of in accordance with U.S. guidelines and applicable U.S. privacy laws and regulations. In fact, the vast majority of travel records collected by the secure flight program will be destroyed shortly after the completion of the individual's travel.

The Canadian government is focused on ensuring that the privacy of Canadians is protected and has expressed this concern to the U.S. In compliance with its secure flight program, Canadian air carriers will transmit each passenger's full name, date of birth and gender. If available, the passenger's redress number, passport information and itinerary details will also be transmitted. Passenger data will only be compared against the U.S. no-fly and selectee lists unless specific security considerations warrant further action.

By amending the Aeronautics Act, the Government of Canada is taking the necessary steps to ensure that Canadian air carriers can comply with the U.S. secure flight program, which requires U.S. and international air carriers to share passenger information with the U.S. government for flights that fly into and overfly the continental U.S. en route to a third country.

The Convention on International Civil Aviation, also known as the 1944 Chicago Convention, stipulates that all air carriers are obliged to operate under the legislation of another country once they enter its airspace. There is no alternative in meeting U.S. secure flight requirements. As I have mentioned, non-compliance by Canadian air carriers would result in lengthy and costly delays, as the U.S. has the legal right under international law to determine who enters its airspace and could legally deny overflight rights to Canadian air carriers destined for third country destinations.

Canadians flying from, for example, Winnipeg to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, would have to travel around the continental U.S. rather than take a direct route across U.S. airspace if the information is not shared and provided to U.S. authorities. This detour would result in additional expense incurred by Canadian travellers in addition to unnecessary inconvenience and added travel time. The effects on Canadian tourists and airline industries would be significant and negative.

Canadian air carriers would be faced with significant additional operational costs that would reduce their competitiveness in an already competitive market.

As the minister has said, Bill C-42 is not a long or complicated piece of legislation, but it is an important piece of legislation. It is vitally important for the Canadian public who wish to continue accessing southern destinations in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible. It is vitally important for our airline and tourism industries which directly and indirectly provide over one million jobs to Canadian workers. It is also vitally important to our safety and security interests which require that we continue to work with all of our international partners to improve and enhance aviation security.

Therefore, I will be voting to support the passage of Bill C-42 and against the subamendment recently put on the floor of the House. I urge all hon. members to do likewise.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague for his speech. I heard him say many times how important this was, so my question is the following: if the bill is so important and urgent to the government, and since the government has known for years the schedule on which these changes in the U.S. requirements would be introduced, why did it introduce the bill at the very last minute, on the last day of summer, when it could have introduced it many months or even a year earlier?

I do not understand why the urgency coincides with the very slow speed of introducing the bill. Is it simply incompetence, or did the government have some other motive for waiting until the last minute?

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it was neither. Certainly the government has many priorities. The hon. member listened to my comments, and I believe he sits on the transport committee, so he will know that important negotiations were made and ultimately consummated with the U.S. authorities on a very important exemption regarding flights originating in Canada and also landing in Canada that might happen to fly over U.S. airspace between those two destinations. Some time and some significant negotiations were involved in negotiating that exemption. There were a number of issues that contributed to the timing of the introduction of this piece of legislation. They had nothing to do with what the hon. member might suggest, and they were certainly in conformity with the importance that the government places on this legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, my information is that there are approximately 100 flights from Canada going over United States territory per day, but there are approximately 2,000 American flights going over Canadian territory per day.

I would like to ask the member whether the government made any attempt at reciprocity here. If the Americans are asking us for information, did we say that we would provide them with the information provided that they would provide us with the information on all of their passengers? If that is the case, I would like to see the effect that demand would have on the American carriers, because it would not be long before there would be a lot of pressure on United States legislators from American airlines and American passengers who might be equally upset about this issue.

I would like to ask the member if the government made any effort to get any--

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I am just going to stop the member there to allow the hon. member for Edmonton—St. Albert a chance to respond.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am not exactly sure what the relevance of reciprocity is.

What is relevant about this piece of legislation and what this piece of legislation attempts to remedy is the problem--or the reality, let me say--that Canadian carriers would have to circumvent the entirety of U.S. airspace if they were travelling to a third country such as Mexico or Cuba or any of the Caribbean countries. They would have to take an indirect flight route so that they could avoid the entirety of American air space, because the tenets of international law make it quite clear that the U.S. authorities can require this information or prevent Canadian airlines from entering that space.

So the purpose of this legislation is to correct that and to provide the Canadian travelling public with a safe but also cost-effective and direct route to its ultimate destination and to comply with the requirements of the U.S. secure flight program.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the member for Edmonton—St. Albert mention the exemption for flights originating and ending in Canada. However, my constituents of Newton—North Delta and I are deeply disappointed that the current Conservative government was unable to secure an exemption for all Canadian flights in its negotiations with the Americans.

Through you, Mr. Speaker, why could the government not convince them that Canadian security clearance standards already ensure the safety of our flights?

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am not privy to the reasons that the U.S. transportation department was not satisfied. What I do know is that this is what it required. I also understand the realities of international law. International law says that the U.S. can ask for these lists.

The reality is quite simple. If this bill is not passed, Canadian carriers flying to, for example, Caribbean destinations will have to circumvent U.S. air space, at great cost, at great inconvenience and at a huge waste of fuel. Nobody wants to see that, and there is no reason to do it.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased to have a chance to speak to Bill C-42, which was portrayed by the government with such urgency to us on the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the fall when we had witnesses in front of the committee with many unanswered questions about it.

On the face of it, this bill seems pretty simple. It seems it is just changing a couple of lines in the Aeronautics Act. However, this bill has many more ramifications. What we have seen from the government is a failure to address the ramifications prior to putting the bill forward. I am glad we have managed to insert a review clause into the bill for this legislation, because we are entering completely uncharted territory with the release of this information to the United States in the form we are taking. We are asking Canadians who are not visiting the United States, who are not setting foot on United States soil, to give up their information to a foreign country. That is what we are doing with this bill.

Canadians will give up their information, but they will give up more than their information. They will give up the opportunity for the United States to take on more information about them.

How does that work? We heard testimony about the passenger name record. Most of the information accessible to Canadians will be transferred. It will not simply be names and passport numbers and dates of birth; we will be giving the United States the opportunity to examine the full passenger name record. This is a very serious business, because it brings in much more information. We have heard many examples in the media over the past months of individuals whose information has been used in a manner that has caused them to have difficulty when trying to enter the United States. We have set up a system that can create much discord among passengers who are travelling over the United States.

I am not going to speak a lot about the human rights issues. I will leave that to my colleagues, who are pretty confident and pleased to take on that task, because all Canadians should understand what has happened. However, I would like to speak to some of the aspects of the bill that we dealt with at committee in trying to mitigate the issues that have surrounded this bill.

My colleague from Edmonton—St. Albert talked about the great exemption that was given to Canadians over the issue of domestic-to-domestic flights. It is an exemption that on the face of it seems rather odd: the U.S., very concerned about its airspace, is allowing an exemption for passengers who are going to undergo fewer security proceedings than they would on an international flight. A Canadian getting on a flight in Halifax is certainly subject to a lot less scrutiny and procedure under aviation regulations than one flying from Halifax to Puerto Vallarta. Why would the U.S. give this exemption?

I think we heard the answer later on, towards Christmas, when it was revealed that the government is planning a perimeter security deal with the United States. If we have a perimeter security deal with the United States such that we are passing all information at all times to the United States, it does not matter to the U.S. whether the information is collected for domestic-to-domestic flights, because with the perimeter security deal we can be sure the U.S. will get all the information it requires on all the flights in Canada. That is something that I think was not very well laid out, but we are still waiting for the results of it.

We see that the Prime Minister is heading off to the United States at the end of this week to speak with President Obama about the perimeter security arrangements, so I am sure that some of these aspects will come to light. Is it an exemption? No, it is part of the U.S. plan to extend the perimeter security arrangement.

Even with the perimeter security arrangement, the U.S. needs to have the information on international flights coming into Canada because they are flights coming across a common perimeter between the two countries. If we follow the logic of the United States, it still needs this deal.

What is the aspect of perimeter security that we are supposed to deal with in this particular bill? It is pretty straightforward: if a plane is flying into Canada or the U.S. from another country, information is going to be given to the U.S. government.

What does the U.S. government do with that information? We heard testimony in committee that the U.S. is not stopped from sharing that information with any other country. When that information is given to the U.S., it is its business to deal with as it sees fit. There is no indication from the Conservative government that it put any restrictions on that information.

When the NDP tried to move an amendment as a last-ditch effort, it was ruled out of order. The amendment was to try to understand how we could save information on passenger name records so that information that is really no one's business would be kept in Canada. Because most of the servers that contain the information are in the United States, once the U.S. has the passenger name records, it will have full access to all of that information under its laws.

Regardless of what Canada gives the U.S., as long as the passenger name records are provided, all the information is open. That was given in testimony. Once again, the government did nothing to limit access by the United States to information about Canadians.

My colleagues on the government side talk about the time restriction of seven days for the U.S. to have the information. In this modern computer age, seven days is quite a long time to deal with information. It can do with it as it sees fit. If it destroys the particular information that comes from the Canadian source within the United States, that information will certainly be recorded in other fashions over that time, and within the seven days it could be shared with every other country in the world. Once again, because Canada did not put restrictions on the sharing of information, once this information is let out of the bag, it is gone. It is out there and available to everyone if the United States so chooses.

Why did the European Union stand up on this particular issue? Why did the European Union say it had trouble with these arrangements made for overflights? Why did it say that? Did it say that for no apparent reason? No. It was because the EU does not suffer the overflight issue as much as we do. It is not as big an issue to the EU because the EU does not have as many flights. However, it certainly has concerns in terms of the information, personal liberty and privacy rules in those countries, and we should have the same in Canada.

Because the bill was presented in such a simple and naive form in the committee, the number of issues not dealt with in this bill is astounding. The government negotiated for years and years on this issue; could it not come up with a better bill than this? It is disgraceful. It is disgraceful that the government could put that much effort into its negotiations and come up with a bill like this, with no protection for Canadians and no limitations on any of the issues. The issues were quite clear and should have been very clear to anyone involved in any negotiation with any other country on this type of issue, and they were.

The government's plan for a perimeter security arrangement with the United States is going to open up more information than perhaps any Canadian would want. Canada is still a sovereign country. After any more years of Conservative government, I hope that we will remain as sovereign as we are, that Canadians will have some redress and that they will be respected by the government.

NDP members are supporting this amendment because there will be a review of this bill, but supporting this bill goes against the very nature of my party's desire to protect the rights of Canadians.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there are still some significant concerns about this bill that can only be addressed through diplomacy.

The passenger data transferred will be subject to the United States patriot act. This has been confirmed by the Privacy Commissioner. This means that this information can be used and shared for purposes other than aviation security, such as immigration law enforcement authorities at home and abroad.

Does the hon. member or his constituents have concerns about this issue?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question raises another point that was debated quite a bit in committee. The government and the Minister of Public Safety, who presented in front of us, said, quite dramatically, that this information would be used for no other purpose. Then we get letters and information from the United States itself saying that it will use it for whatever purposes it deems necessary.

This bill would do nothing to protect the privacy rights of Canadians. It would do nothing to limit the use of this information in another country. It would do nothing at all in that regard. The government has failed in its mission and in its responsibility to protect the rights of Canadians.

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

Mr. Speaker, when I asked the government why it did not try to negotiate with the United States and demand reciprocity given that 2,000 American flights fly over Canadian airspace per day and only 100 Canadian flights fly over American airspace, the answer I received was that the Americans would take the information from our 100 flights a day and store it all in a multi-million dollar computer system. However, for us to take the information from the Americans on 2,000 flights a day would create a huge cost to our government for a similar computer system.

It sounds to me as though the government has decided that the cost is the issue here. The government is prepared to give the Americans the information because they are prepared to pay for the computer system but we do not think the information is important enough for us to fund a computer system to handle the information.

It seems to me that we just have very poor negotiators on the government side. They seem to simply be rolling over for the Americans in this situation. All they had to do was try for reciprocity and the Americans would have conceded issues because there would be a lot of pressure coming from American passengers, American airline workers and American airlines themselves. If they had to provide all of this information to Canadians there would be a revolt going on in the United States right now and a lot of pressure would be put on elected officials down there to back off on this demand. The government is clearly not negotiating in a very effective way.

I wonder if the member would like to comment on that.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, the government's negotiation tactics were remiss because it went into this without taking that stand.

The government had the opportunity as well, under the U.S. legislation, to stand up to the U.S. and tell it that we were doing a good enough job with security on those flights and that we were doing enough analysis of the passengers that we are able match up to what it is doing, and, within the U.S. legislation, if that were the case, an exemption would be granted.

We heard various comments from government members at committee that this would cost billions of dollars. I rejected that. What we are doing with aviation security now can match up to the United States and can provide it with the surety that what we are doing is adequate.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak to Bill C-42, Strengthening Aviation Security Act. I worked on this bill as a member of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities last fall.

Everyone recognizes that the world changed forever on September 11, 2001. Security procedures across the board have tightened from an unprecedented commitment to prevent such terrorism from ever happening again. Yet we must not sacrifice our freedom or our privacy in this battle. The previous Liberal government ensured that we maintained this balance as we must today.

One response in the United States was the secure flight program, which requires airlines to submit passenger information to the U.S. government prior to boarding. The information could include: name, date of birth and gender, passport data and flight information. It is then run against a watch list and passengers are approved or rejected for boarding or receive additional screening.

Secure flight has been in effect for all U.S. bound flights for some time now and the American government is now seeking to extend it to overflights, such as when a flight goes from Vancouver to Mexico by flying over the U.S. Bill C-42 would allow airlines to transmit the information required to comply with secure flight to the United States government.

I am deeply disappointed that the Conservative government was unable to secure an exemption for Canadian flights in its negotiations with the Americans. Why could the government not convince them that the Canadian security screening standards already ensure the safety of our flights? It is not as if we are a lawless nation that is unknown to our American cousins.

Nevertheless, there is a hard truth about this debate. The crux of the issue is that the American government has jurisdiction over its own airspace. If it requests this information, it is within its rights under international law.

However, that does not mean that we roll over. Our duty as Canadian parliamentarians is to ensure that Canadian interests are protected. In committee, we did just that and introduced key amendments to defend Canadian travellers.

First, we required that travellers be notified that their personal information will be transmitted to the U.S. government. Strangely, the only thing requiring passenger notification in the first draft of the bill was an American law. That simply was not good enough for Canadians.

Second, we required that this bill be reviewed in two years and every five years thereafter. Times change and priorities change. We should not lock in these rules without recourse. Perhaps a different government will be better able to give the Americans confidence in our own security screening procedures.

Third, we have restricted the transmission of passenger data to the United States alone. The Conservatives wanted to open the doors willy-nilly for any other country to receive Canadians' private data in the first draft of this bill. We will not give legislative consent to sharing of our personal information to third world despots.

Those amendments would ensure that the legislation is able to secure Canadians' privacy, at least within Canadian legislation.

The real challenge is not in our laws but in the practices of the American government. There are still significant concerns that can only be addressed to diplomacy.

Earlier, the hon. member for Western Arctic said that this bill would do nothing to protect the privacy of Canadian passengers. First, the passenger data transmitted will be subject to the United States patriot act. This has been confirmed by our Privacy Commissioner. This means that this information can be used and shared for other purposes than the aviation security, such as immigration and law enforcement authorities at home and abroad. That was a key concern for some of the witnesses who came before the committee.

The Privacy Commissioner also confirmed that non-residents would have very little protection or recourse with respect to their personal information. In other words, it is American rules and policies that remain a serious cause for concern. In particular, they must strengthen the procedures for the management of passengers and improve the redress program for passengers who wrongly end up on the no-fly list.

The Conservative government rode into power five years ago claiming that it would bring our relationship with the Americans--

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I will inform the hon. member that he will have three minutes left to conclude his speech the next time the bill is before the House.

It being 5:30 p.m., the House will proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from February 1 consideration of Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Strengthening Aviation Security Act

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say it gives me pleasure to speak to this bill, but that would not be accurate. There are few bills that have come before the House in the time I have been here that are more misguided, represent a more serious threat to the fundamental interests of Canadians and are so unworthy of any member's support in the House of Commons. This is Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act.

The bill would amend the Aeronautics Act to require Canadian airlines to send personal information of passengers to foreign security services. What information would be forwarded is determined by requirements laid out, and it is fair to say, in hitherto secret agreements with other countries. Details of those agreements have not 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 United States for the same information transfer are troubling. That agreement, which we have seen, allows the following.

It requires airlines to provide information forwarded in what's known as the passenger name record, which is the file that is created either by a travel agent or airline when a person books a vacation. The passenger name record can include the following information: a person's credit card information; who the person is travelling with; the hotel; other booking information such as tours or rental cars; any serious medical conditions of the passenger; any dietary preferences; an email address; employer information; telephone information; baggage information; and any medical conditions that may be noted on the file.

The information collected can be retained by the United States for up to 40 years. The information may be forwarded to the security service of a third nation without the consent or even notification of the other signatory. No person may know what information is being held about him or her by the United States and may not correct that information if there are errors. The United States may unilaterally amend the agreement as long as it advises the EU of the change. There has already been one amendment whereby all documents held by the EU concerning the agreement shall not be publicly released for 10 years. Therefore, we would be left in the dark as to what documents those may be.

These are the kinds of concerns that are raised by the present bill. In essence, the bill is to allow data mining of Canadians' personal information by foreign security services. There is a danger that unless this bill is agreed to, the United States could close its airspace to Canadian aircraft. While this threat may result in pressure to pass the bill, it is unlikely the United States would actually carry through with this threat.

We have a number of concerns about the bill and I believe it is supposed to apply to any Canadian airline that would fly over America airspace.

We know that when Canadians choose to enter the United States, they will voluntarily relinquish a certain amount of their privacy rights. This is because they make a deliberate decision that when they enter into the sovereign area of another country, they can fully expect to comply with that country's laws. The bill would force Canadian airlines to deliver that information to U.S. homeland security when a Canadian aircraft would not even be going to the United States but may simply touch U.S. airspace.

Given Canada's geography, this means that, in real practice, every flight from Canada to Central America, South America, Cuba, Mexico would affect the privacy rights of Canadians. Every time a Canadian wants to fly to one of those places, his or her personal information is sent to the United States homeland security, even though that Canadian has made the deliberate choice not to fly to the U.S., but simply over American airspace.

I have heard the Conservatives stand in the House and say they cannot do anything about that, because it is American airspace and there has been an act in place for decades saying that every country can control its airspace. Let us seriously look at the validity of that argument.

The Canadian government sought and obtained an exemption from the act for domestic Canadian flights that would pass over U.S. airspace. A flight that originates in Vancouver and may go to Toronto and which may fly over the northern states of Minnesota, the Dakotas, et cetera, are excluded from the bill.

If one is flying from Vancouver to Mexico and it is needed for safety and security, then why is it not an equal concern when one is flying from Vancouver to Toronto, because in both cases the planes are flying over U.S. airspace? The fact that the U.S. government is willing to give an exemption to Canadian flights that fly over U.S. airspace, in some cases, proves there is no serious, legitimate argument to be made that there is any security threat by those aircraft.

Second, what has happened for decades? The act the Conservatives quote, which allows the U.S. to control its airspace, has been in force for many decades. Have we had any problems? We have had none.

The government, which threw over the long form census because the Canadian government had no business asking a Canadian citizen how many bedrooms they have in their home, will sign into law a bill that forces the private information of Canadians to be sent to a foreign government security service. I am talking about things like their medical condition, email addresses, credit card information. The government, which made such a big deal in the summer of sticking up for the privacy rights of Canadians, is selling their privacy rights down the river in the bill.

What mechanism would Canadians have to correct any errors? U.S. homeland security, by the mechanism contemplated in the bill, would send a message back to the Canadian airline, indicating whether the Canadian person named should be issued a boarding pass or not. The bill would allow U.S. homeland security the authority to determine whether a Canadian airline would issue a boarding pass to a Canadian citizen getting on a Canadian airline to fly to another country, yet that plane would not even land in the United States.

Talk about a fundamental violation of the mobility rights of Canadians. Talk about a fundamental violation of the privacy rights of Canadians. This is absolutely a shocking abdication of the Canadian government's responsibility to protect the privacy and sovereign and mobility rights of its Canadian citizens.

What about our sovereignty? It has been suggested that the bill may work in such a way that diplomats from a country like Cuba who are coming to Canada at the invitation of the Canadian government may not be allowed to fly over U.S. airspace.

Canada has charted an independent policy when it comes to Cuba. It is different than the United States, which does not even allow its businesses to trade with Cuba. Whereas Canada has enjoyed a long and mutually beneficial trading and cultural relationship with that country. Are we going to turn over to the United States the decision whether the Canadian government, elected by the Canadian people, can even meet with representatives of a government that we may choose? This violates the principles of democracy.

The principles of democracy are no taxation without representation and no valid law-making without representation. By turning over to a foreign government like the United States the authority to determine whether a Canadian can choose to take his or her family to Mexico without any democratic redress of that Canadian citizen is a violation of democratic rights. To whom can that Canadian complain? That Canadian cannot complain to any democratic representative of the United States. U.S. homeland security has no administrative or democratic obligation or responsibility to a Canadian citizen. That is a fundamental violation of the democratic rights of Canadians.

I want to talk for a moment about a disturbing trend that has happened with the government as it completely sells out Canada's sovereignty to the United States.

This week the Prime Minister will go to Washington and he will start discussing what I call SPP 2, which we all thought was dead, an idea so flawed that Canadians rejoiced when they thought the this mechanism was over.

The SPP 2 would not only further the obligation of Canada to send private information on Canadian citizens to the United States, but also would call on Canada to harmonize its regulations with the United States on everything from cereal to fighter jets. We may face the prospect where a decision over whether a drug or a prescription medicine is allowed in Canada is determined by whether it meets the conditions of the food and drug administration in the United States.

The Liberals are trying to fool Canadians that they oppose this deal when it was the Liberal government of Paul Martin that started negotiations into the security and prosperity partnership.

I see an interesting trend in that the Liberals are taking all of the good of ideas that the New Democrats have championed over the last five years: opposing corporate tax cuts; opposing the SPP; proposing a cap and trade system. These are all ideas proposed by the New Democrats that the Liberals and the Liberal leader have opposed. Of course hypocrisy and sensitivity to contradictions are not exactly points for which the Liberal Party is known.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, in terms of the key principles that should be involved in one of these deals, members of the European Commission talked about the purpose limitation principle.

At transport committee the Minister of Public Safety strongly indicated this information would be used only for security purposes.

However, in a subsequent document from the U.S. ambassador, it became clear that this information could be used for whatever purpose the U.S. government chooses. The information about the passengers on the aircraft could be used for criminal purposes, for security purposes, for any purpose that the U.S. government deemed important.

How could the government go ahead without putting some safeguards against the cross-purpose use of this information?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the hon. member for Western Arctic on his fine and tireless work. He has brought an intelligent and reasoned approach to all issues concerning transportation policy and has often been a lone voice at committee to stand up for the privacy rights of Canadians. The member has raised a very astute observation along that very avenue.

The Canadian government should be ensuring, first, that no private information of Canadians is sent to any foreign government. We should remain in control of that information. We are a mature democracy. We can retain control of the information and take care of security threats. We have just as much ability as any foreign country does, instead of ceding our sovereignty and turning over, like some colony, the obligation to control the security of our citizens.

To turn over that information at all is bad, but to turn it over and then not stay in control of what that information will be used for is a double insult.

A feature of the previous Liberal government and a continuing feature of the current Conservative government is to negotiate these very important and profound changes to Canadians' privacy rights in secret. If the Conservatives believe that these laws and these agreements are proper, they should show parliamentarians what the details of those are so that Canadians can see what is being negotiated. We will let the Canadian people pass judgment on who really protects privacy in this country. It is New Democrats time and time again.

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

Mr. Speaker, the government has a pretty bad group of negotiators because under this agreement the Americans could potentially hold information for up to 40 years. Under the European agreement the information is only to be kept for a matter of days. I believe the member for Western Arctic could verify that for me. There is a limitation as to the amount of time that the information can be kept. In addition, some of the information is blotted out so it cannot be tied to individual people. Authorities could work on an aggregate basis with the information but it would not violate privacy issues.

Would the member agree that the government has a very poor record of negotiating on this point and basically sold us down the drain? It could have negotiated reciprocity with the United States and made the United States give information on 2,000 flights a day as opposed to the hundred and --

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. The hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this points out the poor negotiating skills of the Conservatives. We did not obtain reciprocity in this deal. We did not require the American authorities to require American airlines to send passenger names and record information to Canada when American aircraft fly over Canadian airspace. Why not?

I am also told that the European Union has rejected these kinds of demands by the Americans. Why Canada cannot stand up like the EU does is beyond me.

In conclusion, information that is sent and kept for a matter of days is a violation of Canadians' privacy. In the digital world when information is sent, we have no control over where that information goes. We cannot even have guarantees that it is destroyed.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-42. I have some concerns regarding issues of privacy as well as the fact that the government introduced this bill on the last day of sitting, June 17.

We are all concerned about security issues and balancing that with privacy issues. On the issue of providing information to a foreign government, it would be done when a plane lands in foreign territory. If a Canadian were to fly from Toronto to New York, information would be provided.

However, what is being proposed is that if, for example, a flight from Toronto to Vancouver went over American territory, personal information, the name and details of the passengers, would be given to American authorities. This is not only outrageous, but a violation of Canadian sovereignty and the rights of Canadians.

The question raised in the House on a number of occasions regarding Bill C-42 is as to why we negotiated such a bad arrangement. The Americans would basically have a free hand to know who is going to be travelling over American territory without the flight even landing there. In fact, the Americans can keep this information for up to 99 years, depending on the situation. This is an obvious concern.

To divulge this information is unprecedented and would certainly weaken Canadian sovereignty. It would mean that the information of people on flights anywhere in this country that go over American territory would be disclosed to American authorities.

At the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in May, the Assistant Privacy Commissioner noted her concern that the information could be kept from 7 days to 99 years. This seems highly excessive. The information may not be used just for the issue of security, but could be used for other purposes. That is the big question: What other purposes would it be used for? For example, it could be used for law enforcement or immigration issues and not necessarily for the purpose for which it is intended. That is where many Canadians have concerns.

In the Aeronautics Act we also have the legislative authority to create a no-fly list. I have never understood this. We are saying people cannot fly, but they can board a passenger ship, train, or use an automobile. Apparently they are only a threat in the air and not a threat on a ship or train. If a person is not allowed to fly, why would he or she be able to take other modes of transportation? The government must think that only people who fly are potential terrorists.

Canadian airlines disclose information when going to another country, but the fly-over issue is the crux of the matter.

Canadians value their privacy. We tend to be asked for a lot of private information. When people go to a store they might be asked for their social insurance number. The social insurance number is only given for government programs and not because someone wants to buy a piece of furniture, yet my constituents have been asked for their social insurance number. People are asked for information that is not germane to the issue at hand. With regard to the fly-over situation, a number of my constituents have voiced concern.

At committee the Liberal Party made three amendments.

First, the House of Commons should be required to conduct a review of these measures two years after the date of coming into force and then every five years. That oversight provision is important. It has been done in other legislation and is something that should be included.

Second, this data transfer would be limited to the U.S. in legislation. The original version said it could be forwarded to any government. It is going to be only to the United States.

Third, the airlines and travel agents would be required by Canadian law to inform passengers of this impending data transfer before a ticket was purchased. That is important. Canadians need to know that if they board an airplane which will be flying over a particular territory in the United States that their information is going to be given away. The Privacy Commissioner has pointed out concerns with regard to this.

This bill amends the Aeronautics Act to allow an operator of an aircraft that is going over, in this case, the United States to provide information. The amount of information to be given to the United States is clearly of concern.

I would hope when the Prime Minister is in Washington at the end of the week that this issue will be raised with the President of the United States. Unfortunately, the Americans have the impression that terrorism has somehow emanated from this country.

We all remember then-senator Hillary Clinton's comments about 9/11, the porous border and the terrorists who had crossed the border from Canada, which of course was not true. We have to be concerned about the comments yesterday by Senator Lieberman of Connecticut that the northern border of the United States is more porous than the southern border. This impression continues. We seem to be playing into this by suggesting that we have to provide information to the Americans.

When we deal with aviation regulations, we usually are talking about domestic regulations. In this case it is actually a security program dealing with another country. The collection of information is paramount. Again, this is unusual because it is not for domestic purposes. It is dealing with a foreign country.

Sovereignty is important. In international law, sovereignty of a country extends into airspace. We are abrogating that by allowing information to be given. There may be a change in weather and the route would have to change. The passenger would not know that in advance, obviously. Privacy and citizen rights, et cetera, are at stake.

There is the whole issue of balance between security and privacy. It would appear the government has simply caved in when it comes to this. Had it not been for my Liberal colleagues on the transport committee, we would have had a pretty wide open situation for turning over information to the United States. That is a concern.

There are issues about security at airports. I do not know if people feel any safer because they go through scanners at the airports. In Narita International Airport in Japan, the security initially is done before people get to the airport. Passports are checked outside the airport and metal detectors are used on vehicles. All that is done in advance. In Canada we wait until people are in the airport. Then we shake down some elderly individual or some 15-year-old kid, instead of dealing with the practical needs for security.

This legislation is flawed. Although the amendments enhance the legislation, I still have concerns with regard to the issue of turning over any personal information to a foreign government, and in this case when people are simply flying over a country. We all understand if the flight is landing in the country but when it is just flying over it, it seems to be questionable at best, particularly if the information is not being used strictly for that purpose. It could be used for other purposes, and Canadians would not necessarily know what it is being used for. That raises concerns. Why would the information be kept for up to 99 years? That is a concern.

The legislation has received some improvements because of these amendments, but again there is still the issue of whether we should be caving in to the United States and giving out personal information which is not done elsewhere.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague in the Liberal Party is a man who has grave concerns about privacy issues. I want to thank him for speaking to this bill. Although he is not on the transport committee, in his role he would understand some of the issues surrounding this bill very well.

In June 2007, the European Union data protection supervisor wrote a letter giving four concerns about the developments of these data transfers. One of them was the use of the letter by the U.S. to avoid binding treaties. Canada's overflight exemption is based on a diplomatic letter of understanding.

My colleague has had a fair amount of experience in foreign affairs. Does he think we should be turning over Canadians' private information on the basis of a diplomatic letter of understanding? Is this not a situation that is fraught with hazard for Canadians?

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the pleasure to work with my colleague for many years not only in the House but also in municipal government in the past. He raises a very important point with regard to the European Union.

There is no question that basing it on a diplomatic note not knowing the purpose other than information is given but that it could be used for law enforcement or immigration purposes is far too broad. As my hon. colleague well knows, a diplomatic note alone is not sufficient in terms of the security we need as Canadians and in balancing this privacy issue. That is something that would have been helpful had we been able to get that into the bill.

I know legislation is never perfect, but it is better to have a bill which addresses these concerns. This bill was introduced on the last sitting day in June and here we are at the beginning of February rushing it through. I wonder whose agenda this is. Is this the government's agenda or someone else's in this case?

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

Mr. Speaker, it appears as though the Conservatives gave away the store when negotiating with the United States on this agreement.

In the committee hearings, when Mark Salter, a professor at the University of Ottawa, made a presentation, he complimented Canada for having set a high global standard for the use of the PNR in particular with the Canada-EU agreement in relation to PNR matters. He said, “This agreement is praised by both Canadian and European data protection authorities because it has specific time periods for the disposal of data”, not the 40 years that this other agreement with the Americans has. He went on to say:

[I]t limits the data's use, and it limits in particular the individualization of that data. The information is rendered anonymous, which allows the security services to build up the profile without attaching it to any one individual. This has become one of the global standards for international treaties on PNR agreements, and we are moving away from that high standard with the passage of this legislation.

I would ask the member whether he agrees with Professor Mark Salter of the University of Ottawa who presented to the committee and gave a very good argument as to why Canadians should be looking at what they signed with the Europeans as opposed to what they are now proposing with the Americans, where they just rolled over?

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had an opportunity to review some of the testimony and Professor Salter's comments and they certainly jibe very much with the Privacy Commissioner's concerns. It is even worse than the member said because in fact the information would be held from seven days to 99 years. What the member pointed out and what the professor indicated very strongly is that is more of what we should be looking at rather than giving the store away.

I say again, when the Prime Minister is in Washington on Friday, this should be one of the priorities because we keep giving away information for purposes other than what it should be used for.

I agree with the hon. member that had that testimony been implemented as one of the amendments to the legislation, it would have been most helpful in providing the kind of security and privacy that Canadians would expect from their government.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak to Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act. I have heard concerns raised daily by members in this House that make one wonder how on earth we can even move forward to vote on this bill. We are hearing about countless concerns that were raised in committee and countless additional concerns raised by other nations about such proposals where there were better negotiations.

What would Bill C-42 provide? Even if we choose a flight that does not land in the United States as we prefer to fly direct to another nation, if we are flying over the United States of America, the airline still has to provide private information about us to the United States of America.

We have heard in the House today that not only is this information being freely given with no strings attached, but the United States of America will hold the information for 40 years, despite the fact that we may be on a flight travelling to another country for a couple of days or even a couple of months. It is absolutely reprehensible.

It is very important, as some of my colleagues have pointed out, to consider Bill C-42 in the overall context of the additional U.S.-Canada border security initiatives under discussion, for example, a proposed common perimeter, with implications for greater sovereignty intrusions. Perhaps that is the reason the United States is not demanding the same information if we are flying from Edmonton to Ottawa over U.S. airspace. It is only if we choose to take a holiday in Cuba and fly over the United States that it wants the information.

We must keep in perspective who would be doing the border checks and interrogations. It would be U.S. officials, not Canadians.

Today it has been revealed that in discussions between our Prime Minister and the President of the United States, one of the matters being raised by the U.S. is the potential demand for visas for Canadians who visit the United States of America.

It is very important to hold back on voting on the bill and to have the overall review that is being proposed by some members without delay. Why wait several years? It sounds as though we are getting a raw deal compared with the negotiations reached by other nations.

The very intent of Bill C-42 to provide the free and ready uncontrolled access and use by the United States government to private information about Canadians, as has been argued by a number of expert witnesses before committee, violates our constitutional rights set forth in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

We must also keep front of mind that the information provided is intended to allow the U.S. to add Canadian names to the controversial no-fly list. We have heard case after case of Canadians being added to the list and all their rights removed, including even the ability to earn an income or people to assist them.

Witnesses who testified at committee advised that in considering such intrusive measures, it is absolutely incumbent on the government to seek limits, so far as possible, on the erosion of charter rights. At a minimum it should call for safeguards on the use and sharing of the information.

What does the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provide? First and foremost, the charter specifies that Canada is founded on the principles that recognize the rule of law.

What does the rule of law mean? That is the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy. Under the rule of law, we are governed by Canadian laws, not foreign laws. Under the rule of law, the rules that govern our nation are made by duly elected officials, the majority of whom choose those rules, and decisions are based on those rules.

The charter provides the right to security of the person, including the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

The charter provides the right to notification that a person's rights are to be interfered with.

The charter provides the right to be heard.

The charter provides to Canadians the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.

The charter provides the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.

All of these rights are being impinged on in a major way by this fly-over rule and list.

The charter provides the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned, and if detained, the right to be promptly informed without unreasonable delay of the reason.

The charter provides the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Clearly, this is being violated by the fact we are all deemed guilty and the U.S. needs the information about every traveller, whether an 82 year old or a 15 year old.

The right to mobility is something that we forget, which is very important to a fair and effective economy in Canada. The rights to mobility include the right to enter, remain and leave Canada.

The provisions of Bill C-42 would allow information about Canadians to be shared with U.S. officials without notice and without consent, including the U.S. right to pass on that information to other nations. There would be no right of appeal, no right to access one's file held by the airline or by the U.S. government in order to verify and ensure the correctness of that information. Clearly, the information may be false or based on hearsay, and we have already seen examples of Canadians being added to the no-fly list where, clearly, the information was garnered under torture, with no right to access privacy rights accorded to citizens of the United States under U.S. law.

This bill, as mentioned, would expand the duties of operators to provide additional information in their control for a flyover of a foreign country en route to another. Regardless of Canadians' efforts to avoid the imposition of U.S. security measures or delays on their holidays to Mexico or Cuba, or a business trip to another nation, this new law would require airlines to provide personal information and any other information they may hold. Absolutely no provision is made requiring the airline to make that information available to travellers, nor does it provide any procedures to access that information. These and other issues were raised by witnesses appearing at committee and, clearly, ignored.

As was pointed out in testimony before the committee reviewing Bill C-42, the constitutionality of the no-fly list is currently being challenged in U.S. courts and it may be wise to await the outcome of these proceedings. As other members of the House have pointed out, the bill has been delayed already, so what is the rush? Should we not stand back and consider the ramifications for Canadians' personal security?

In my previous positions working with border security and enforcement personnel in discussions on shared intelligence as being a useful opportunity to detect violators where we have trans-boundary illegal activity, those measures to share intelligence were pursued in the context of clear constraints on sharing access and storage of the information, even among duly appointed enforcement officials. Given the consequence of the no-fly list, similar conditions seem all the more critical to ensure the protection of Canadians from unnecessary intrusion in their constitutional rights.

So many yet unresolved concerns with this bill have been raised in committee and in the House over the last few days, one wonders how it could proceed through Parliament without the basic safeguards that have been granted to other nations.

In the very least, given these issues and concerns, I call upon the members of the House to support the amendment providing for a timely review, particularly in the context of the ongoing discussions on security measures.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my colleague for her excellent presentation on some of the legal issues surrounding this.

Just recently I had to deal with a case where a resident of the Northwest Territories was denied admission to the United States with his family because of a minor drug offence that occurred when he was quite young. He could not go with his family on a holiday to the United States when he tried to cross the Alberta-Montana border.

Testimony in committee indicated that the information the U.S. would be getting from us could be applied for any purpose that it may choose or deem. Within the United States there is zero tolerance for drug offences, which weighs heavily on many Canadians.

How does this sit with Canadian law when we have a Canadian person on a Canadian plane, under the rule of law of Canada, being taken off that plane, perhaps for laws that are in force in the United States and have nothing to do with Canadian justice?

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, as one of my colleagues expressed, the member for Western Arctic has been an incredible proponent for the rights of Canadians and improved and safe transportation. I appreciate his efforts and he is a great neighbour to the north.

It is an important question. As I mentioned at the beginning of my comments, we are proud that we are democratic country and operate by the rule of law. What that means is that Canadians are governed by the rules enacted by the House, and not by any other nation. It becomes particularly critical when we choose to travel to another nation. For example, a lot of Canadians choose to travel to Cuba, a nation to which the United States restricts the travel of its own citizens.

I know a lot of people who have been looking into contracts to assist Cuba develop its economy. Could reprimands be issued or problems arise for those citizens in their dealings with U.S. contractors because of the information passed on?

Clearly, this could result in significant violations of the basic rights afforded to Canadians, and we really should be looking to the types of conditions that were imposed by the European Commission.

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

Mr. Speaker, clearly what the Americans are up to is data mining. In fact, that is probably what is going on too with the Canada-U.S. agreement, but there is a big difference between what Canada negotiated with the European Union and what we are dealing with in the United States.

To the United States, they are giving over all of the PNR information, and it is attached to names. Moreover, the Americans can keep the data for up to 40 years. Yet with the European Union, the agreement has time periods for the disposal of data, not 40 years but a matter of days. It also limits the data's use and it limits, in particular, the individualization of the data. The information to the Europeans is rendered anonymous, allowing the security services to build up a profile without attaching it to any one individual. Therefore, they are maintaining the individual's privacy in the European agreement. That is—

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I will have to stop the hon. member there to make sure the member for Edmonton—Strathcona has a chance to reply.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very important issue. Even more important than the time limitation on the information is the very demand for the information with no limitations.

What I am finding profoundly hypocritical is that in one breath the government is saying it needs to open up the borders for trade and to moving goods across it more quickly and, at the same time, it is trying to restrict the movement of ordinary Canadians across those borders.

When I was the head of law and enforcement for the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, I had the privilege to work with officers who were trying to share intelligence and better track the illegal movement of hazardous goods across our borders and the trade in endangered species. I am sad to say that important intelligence work is being made a sidebar by this threat of terrorists. We seem to be overly preoccupied with it and are now imposing unreasonable rules on ordinary citizens.

We need to take a breath and stand back and take a closer look at the direction we are going in.

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as tourism critic for the New Democratic Party and, even more importantly, as a Canadian citizen concerned about Canadian privacy rights and Canadian sovereignty, I feel it is my duty today to speak about the serious implications that Bill C-42 would have for Canadian travellers taking international flights. It is disturbing but not surprising, unfortunately, that the Conservative government would even think about introducing such a bill.

It might be reasonable to assume that foreign governments would want carriers to provide the names and personal details of airline passengers arriving on their soil. That information is already given by airlines, including for stopovers and passengers in transit.

However, Bill C-42 would go much further. Bill C-42 would have airlines give over the personal information of all passengers to a foreign country, the U.S.A., in which they are not even landing. Just flying over the U.S.A. would be enough.

Let us explore some of the implications of the bill.

Apparently, passengers leaving Canada on a vacation to Cuba, for example, could have their name, birthdate and over 30 other pieces of personal information subject to screening by Homeland Security in the U.S., which would involve running that information through various U.S.A. government databases, including the infamous and notorious U.S. no-fly list. If one's name is not on one of these American lists, U.S. Homeland Security will tell the Canadian airline that one may be issued a boarding pass.

However, we have all heard the horror stories of people with a similar name to someone on that million-name list, or who have been put there by mistake, never to be taken off, especially if they have the same birthday as someone with the same name on that list.

If one is caught up in this mess, one might be questioned, delayed or barred from the flight or, effectively, banned from all flights leaving Canada, if they go over U.S. territory, from then on.

There are already examples of significant misuse.

The standing committee heard the story of Hernando Ospina, a journalist with Le Monde Diplomatique, whose Air France flight from Paris to Mexico was diverted to Martinique just because he wrote an article critical of U.S. foreign policy. And there is the story of Paul-Émile Dupret, a Belgian researcher with the European Parliament whose flight from Europe to the World Social Forum in Brazil was diverted, not because he was a security threat but because he campaigned against the transfer of European travellers' information to U.S. authorities.

Will I be on the no-fly list after this speech?

How can the government assure Canadians that this type of political misuse will not happen if Bill C-42 is passed?

Apparently, the U.S. told the government it needs everyone's personal information so it can check it with the various lists of people it does not want flying, so there will be fewer false matches and problems.

Apparently the U.S. told our government, “Let us clear your passengers for you”, which is what the U.S. seems to be saying, and our government is going along with it.

Is it laziness? Just let someone else take control of our security and give over control in the process. In losing control of our own air security, we would have no idea why particular passengers were barred from going on vacation to Cancun. We would simply have to accept that they would not get to fly internationally any more, because we have given a foreign government a veto over Canadians travelling abroad.

I know members of the government have been arguing that we have to give up some of our sovereignty if we want to have security, that the cost of our safety, just this time, is the freedom of movement of our citizens.

It reminds me of Benjamin Franklin's famous saying:

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

That is ironic, because this bill will not improve the security of Canadians an ounce. It does not have our security interests in mind at all. If it did, there might be some clause for sharing of information instead of it all being one way. U.S. carriers could be giving us their passenger lists, too, so we could make decisions about our security. However, reciprocity is nowhere to be found in this piece of bad Canadian negotiation.

This is ridiculously one-sided. Only Canadian passenger information is being sent to the U.S.A. All it does is send our personal passenger information abroad for governments to do with as they may. They could keep that information forever or pass it along to other groups or governments or use it to prosecute Canadians for their own purposes.

We will not have any control over it. It is yet another significant erosion of Canadian autonomy by the Conservative government.

Why should members in the House, representing Canadians, support the legislation if it will not even improve the security of Canadians? We are not elected to represent the interests of foreign governments, at least not the members in my party and not this member from Thunder Bay—Superior North.

Gutting the privacy rights of Canadians for no improvement in our safety is a foolish bargain. It is no wonder the Canadian Civil Liberties Association called the bill:

—a complete abdication to a 'foreign government' of Canada's duty to protect the privacy of Canadians, and a cessation of existing Canadian legal safeguards. This abdication and cessation of privacy protection is unacceptable and dangerous.

This was what it said at the transport committee in November 2010.

The legislation rolls back, and it rolls over, Canada's privacy laws in order to get airlines to pass along the names and personal information of air travellers to a foreign government. It gives a foreign government the ability to tell our air carriers who can and cannot fly on flights that do not land in its country.

We in my party are very supportive of thoughtful efforts that genuinely increase safety and security for Canadians, but the bill does neither. Bill C-42 is an egregious invasion of the personal privacy of Canadian air passengers and an abdication of Canadian sovereignty by the government.

Our very own chief justice said, in 2009, that,

One of the most destructive effects of terrorism is its ability to provoke responses that undermine the fundamental democratic values upon which democratic nations are built.

This faulty legislation undermines both the sovereignty of Canada and the privacy rights of Canadians. There is no evidence that it will even increase security. I invite all members of the House to keep the interests of our constituents and all Canadians in mind and vote against Bill C-42.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, it is not simply Canadian citizens who will be impacted by this, but it could also be Canadian foreign policy and it could be those people who seek refuge in Canada.

Mr. Edward Hasbrouck of the Liberty Coalition, a U.S.-based civil liberties group, who gave testimony in our committee, said:

You should be very clear that the enactment of Bill C-42 would grant to the U.S. government de facto veto power over the ability of virtually anyone to obtain sanctuary in Canada, since in most cases it's impossible to get to Canada to make a claim for political asylum or refugee status without overflying the U.S., and that power of the U.S. would be exercised at the worst possible point: while a refugee is still on the soil of and subject to the persecution of the regime they are trying to flee.

If we have a situation where, such as in many of the countries in South America or Central America, people head to the airport to escape a tyrannical regime or unfair treatment in that country, they could be turned down by the U.S. government regardless of what the Canadian government wanted in this instance.

Once again, not only is this an abrogation of the personal rights Canadians, but is it not quite clearly an abrogation of our right as an independent country to set our own foreign policy?

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly have to agree with the hon. member for Western Arctic. He has done a lot of work on this file. He knows it well and I trust his judgment and opinion.

However, adding my own subjective observation of our Prime Minister's behaviour over the last five years, whether it is protecting Canadian rights in any area, it is clear that his loyalties lie more with the wishes of our neighbour to the south than they do with Canadian autonomy, Canadian privacy and even the right to our own natural resources.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have looked at what the bill entails and I have looked at what is happening with other bills, namely the potential agreement of border security. This is just another nail in the coffin of Canadian sovereignty and Canadian independence.

In my long lifetime, we have seen an erosion of what I call our independence and our ability to act and think for ourselves as a nation. There used to be a time when the leaders of all parties stood up for the rights of Canadians. We can think back to John Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, Tommy Douglas. Those people understood the concept that we were a sovereign nation.

During those times, our farmers were protected. The lumber industry was thriving. We had well-paying jobs in manufacturing, protected by various agreements with other countries.

Then we saw progressively, in the 1980s under the Mulroney regime, a deterioration of this. We saw the tremendous pressure that the corporate elite had been exercising finally bear fruition when we saw the free trade agreement which resulted in NAFTA.

We see absurd situations today in which, for example, we have fruit growers in my area who have a hard time making a living because of all the produce being dumped from the United States. We see absurd situations in which Canadian governments have been sued by foreign corporations because they have decided to be a little stringent on environmental laws.

Then we have seen the buy American policy over the last couple of years, with the Americans tightening up trying to protect their municipal governments and their industry. Our reaction is to allow them more access to our contracts. For the first time in history, we have seen what we call the subnational governments subjected to trade agreements. We are seeing this with the proposed Canada-European trade agreement, the fact that municipalities will be in danger. In other words, municipal contracts will have to come under the scrutiny of big multinational corporations from Europe and we will lose our autonomy.

Many of us spent time speaking out against the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the SPP, and we thought it was put to an end. Now we are seeing a border agreement. The Prime Minister will be going to talk to the President of the United States on Friday to fine tune it.

Our Canada is not what it used to be and this bill, as I said earlier in my speech, is just another nail in the coffin of our sovereignty.

It used to be when we would talk about borders, especially with the Americans, that we would go across in a friendly manner. There were friendly border guards. We would go back and forth. Sometimes we would have to provide ID and sometimes we would not. It worked and our countries were relatively safe.

Now we see a tightening up. I am hearing cases in my riding of people subjected to unnecessary abuse by American border guards. Whereas before they used to go across for business or pleasure, now there is racial stereotyping, verbal abuse and interrogation. At the same time, the Americans want us to co-operate and have a free border.

Many companies cannot ship in a timely manner to the United States. Supposedly, an agreement would stop this. However, at the same time, the Americans do not seem to have a will to work with us.

I would like to submit that this whole fiasco of the F-35 purchase, this tremendous pressure on us, is almost like blackmail, that if we buy these airplanes, they will give us freer access to their borders. That is how it is appearing. We are being told we have to buy into this airplane that is not suited for our Arctic patrol, has one engine, cannot land on short runways, and is not even proven.

Let us move on now to this bill.

As we know, our Aeronautics Act currently exempts the operators of aircraft from restrictions on disclosing personal information without consent when the laws of a foreign state require disclosure of information about anyone on board a flight that is landing in that state.

Accordingly, passenger information for any Canadian flight that will land in a foreign state can be disclosed to a foreign government without restriction by the air carrier. The important part of that is “that will land in a foreign state”.

Bill C-42 amends this section to expand its application. As we are currently discussing, it would now apply not only with respect to foreign states in which the flight is landing, but also to any foreign states that the flight would travel over. I find that ridiculous. For example, if I, or someone here in the House, went to Mexico, Latin America or Cuba, our names would be subject to American security measures. That makes no sense. How is that logical if the flight will not be landing in the United States? Why should we have to give Canadians' personal and secret information to the Americans?

As we have already learned during this debate tonight, this does not apply to flights arriving in Canada that fly over the United States. There is something wrong there. If a flight from Vancouver to Toronto flies over the United States, that is okay, there is no problem. We do not have to provide the United States with the information.

However, according to this bill, if the flight goes to Cuba, that will be the rule. I find it shocking, and wrong, to force us to provide personal information on Canadians to a foreign government.

None of this really seems to make any sense.

Some people have been quoting witnesses who appeared at committee. I would like to thank my colleague from Western Arctic, who is responsible for transport, for providing information. Although I was not at committee, the national coordinator, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, who said:

After running a risk assessment for each passenger using data mining technology, Homeland Security in turn issues a boarding pass result back to the airline. The result instructs the airline to issue a boarding pass, deny permission to travel, or issue an enhanced screening requirement. These regulations give the U.S. access to a whole subset of information on air passengers who are not entering the U.S. but merely overflying its airspace. Furthermore, this information can be shared among at least 16 U.S. agencies and with foreign governments. The program gives the government of a foreign country a de facto right to decide who gets to travel to and from Canada, since the vast majority of Canadian flights to and from Europe, the Caribbean, and South America overfly American airspace.

My colleague from Thunder Bay said something in a humorous manner, but we have to understand that there are implications here. What if someone from homeland security does not like what we are saying here today? What homeland security does not like what my colleague said, or it does not like the fact that I am criticizing the U.S. government? What is to stop it from putting my name or anybody's name on that list? How can we get off that list? The next time I board an airplane for Mexico will I be banned from going?

The bill does not make any sense. There is no reciprocity. We should all give our heads a shake before we support a measure like this.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise as transport critic for the Bloc Québécois to speak about Bill C-42. To begin with, I would like to mention that, in order to facilitate the passage of this bill, the Bloc Québécois will support the subamendment introduced by the Liberals even though our party had already proposed an amendment in committee.

As the hon. member just said, I too found that it was difficult to examine this bill in the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities because there are two opposing philosophies or approaches. We heard from human rights and freedoms advocacy groups and from the Privacy Commissioner, Ms. Stoddart. Ms. Stoddart had serious reservations about this bill with regard to respect for civil liberties and privacy.

Previously, a similar provision referred to any aircraft making a stop at the end of a flight or making a stopover en route to another country. Now, Bill C-42 stipulates that certain personal information must be provided about the passengers on board any aircraft passing through U.S. air space. We do not see this as being a problem, if the Americans can guarantee that the information will be destroyed after a certain number of days and that it will be not be shared with other organizations that are indirectly involved.

But civil rights groups told us that up to 16 organizations could receive the information transferred to the Americans. That is why the Bloc Québécois called for reciprocity. If that is what the Americans want, then any American flight that is flying over Canadian territory should also provide a list of its passengers. Unfortunately, that suggestion was rejected by the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. As democrats, the members of the Bloc Québécois accept that decision. But it would have made sense. It could apply to a number of American flights originating in Europe, headed for New York, Washington or Dallas, that fly over the Queen Charlotte Islands, Greenland or Iceland. We had concerns; we heard them. That was our first concern.

The second had to do with the Americans' exclusive right to impose this measure. The typical American approach is based on a fear that the events of September 11, 2001, would happen again. That is an editorial comment. I am not sure that terrorists would follow the same pattern. The planes that hit the towers were American. The terrorist pilots who committed this terrible act were trained at flight schools in Miami, in the United States. Thousands of people died.

The administrative assistant working for Xerox Corporation on the 48th floor of Tower 1 of the World Trade Center, who was busy typing up a report, did not deserve to get hit by a plane. What happened was unspeakable, indescribable.

In other words, the Americans seem to think that if terrorists want to strike, they will use exactly the same pattern.

What is more, Americans are driven by fear. Nevertheless, a sovereign nation can impose any rules it wants to on its land. That is why we in the Bloc Québécois are sovereignists and we want a sovereign Quebec.

That was our second concern. We met with people from Air Transat, the largest charter airline in Canada and the pride of Quebec. Air Transat received help from the QFL Solidarity Fund to start up. I am not sure, but I think that is the case. Air Transat has its head office in Quebec. It provides thousands of jobs in Quebec. It is currently ranked first in the charter travel industry. We should talk about holiday travel, as opposed to business travel. Its current charters go south, but it also has flights to Europe, mostly during summer and fall. Air Transat is number one, and the people at Air Transat told us in committee that if we did not agree to comply with this American requirement to provide lists, Air Transat would be doomed to bankruptcy.

Allow me to explain. I want to address the members from central Canada. Air Transat would no longer be able to offer direct flights from Edmonton to Cancun or from Calgary to Mexico, to the islands, to Jamaica. These provinces are in central Canada. If we refuse to provide the list, we cannot use American airspace. A plane leaving Edmonton would have to go to Vancouver, a lateral flight, in order to take the Pacific route to then go south. This would run up incredible costs and increase the duration of the flight. I imagine that it currently takes three and a half or four hours to get from Calgary to Cancun. The other route would take eight hours. Air Transat could no longer continue to operate.

Air Transat flights that leave from Montreal, Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver can use the air corridors. However, there is another problem that was explained to me and that made sense. Air Transat has some large carriers like Airbus A330s, Airbus A310s and Airbus A320s. These planes land in Montreal. I see my colleague, the hon. member for Jeanne-Le Ber, who must hear planes landing at Dorval in his riding. Some of his constituents are even bothered by the noise at times. That is another issue being examined by the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. I do not know whether you are aware, Mr. Speaker, but an Airbus A330 needs more than 50 metres to land. It cannot stay in Canadian territory. If you have ever flown in that aircraft, you know that when it arrives from Europe or the south, it must fly over the American border in order to land, depending on the wind and whether it is on the north-south runway. The border is just a few kilometres from Montreal—50, 60 or 70 kilometres, I do not remember exactly. So, in order to turn to land, it must cross over into American airspace.

This also applies to Air Transat flights in the eastern market. In Vancouver, they have precisely the same problem because they have large carriers, which need a little more room to land and take off than a Cessna, for example. Can we all agree on that, Mr. Speaker? I know you are listening, for you keep nodding your head, which shows that you are paying attention.

In closing, the Bloc Québécois approved this bill in committee and will vote in favour of the amendment to the amendment proposed by the Liberal member.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy working with my colleague from the Bloc on the transport committee.

I understand the ramifications to the airline industry and how that plays out and I also appreciate that negotiations have taken place . According to evidence given at committee, within the homeland security policy there is room for a full exemption for all of these flights if the Canadian government matches up to the security requirements for the passengers at the same level as they are provided in the United States. Government members said it would cost billions of dollars to raise our security level such that we could achieve the full exemption.

Does my hon. colleague think that our security clearances on passengers flying out of Canada on international flights are lax or not of a certain standard? If they are not, does he buy the Conservatives' argument that this would cost an extraordinary amount of money in order to make it happen in a good fashion?

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the NDP member for his question.

In any case, this is not the first time that the Conservatives have talked through their hats in committee or in the House.

They are talking about billions of dollars without any costing. That is what was said. I do not want to attack the credibility of the member who said it. Perhaps, deep down, he believes it, but he did not provide us with any proof. It is easy to say that something will cost billions of dollars. Fortunately, he did not say that it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

We should look up the word “exaggerate” in the dictionary. It is tempting to believe a little white lie. We can be inclined to believe that it is true. But billions of dollars?

I agree with the hon. member. The Conservatives were talking through their hats. That being said, we have a decision to make and we cannot simply ignore the economic impact of that decision. I would not want to be responsible for the closure of Air Transat. On the contrary. I am in favour of Air Transat and I am in favour of further developing Air Transat and creating more jobs in Quebec.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, this week the Prime Minister is travelling to the United States to make an agreement on security arrangements between the two countries. This is a serious matter. At committee we were given the understanding that these regulations had to be put in place and finalized by December 31 to the satisfaction of the United States. Those were the conditions laid down by the government.

The lack of information about what the Prime Minister is proposing with regard to security information in the United States vis-à-vis the perimeter deal--

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I will have to stop the hon. member there.

There are only 30 seconds remaining for the hon. member for Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am missing part of the story. Also, I did not think that you recognized the hon. member twice. I suppose the Standing Orders allow it if no one else rises. I thought he was beginning his speech.

If I have understood correctly, at the end of his question, he spoke about the security perimeter negotiations with the Americans. As I understand it, the Prime Minister will be in Washington on Friday. It seems that one of these items is on the agenda. Unfortunately, I did not understand the question.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure people are well aware that I am rising to speak to Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act. We are dealing with the amendment. I want to commend the member for Western Arctic for so ably outlining all of the reasons that New Democrats are opposed to the bill.

I want to read a bit of the legislative summary because it is important that people understand why we are so opposed to the bill.

The bill would amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. It would amend the section that allows the government to expand the application so it would apply not only with respect to foreign states in which the flight is landing, but also to any foreign state that the flight would travel over. The air carrier would be able to provide disclosure without consent. Those are the two key points about which we have been speaking. One is it is not just that flights are going to the U.S., but even flying over it would require that this information be released. The second is that it is without consent.

I want to touch on the legislative summary that outlines the problems with the no fly list. These are problems people are concerned about in the current context.

With regard to the no fly list, the summary states:

The program was the focus of some controversy in its early days, since Transport Canada, assisted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), adds names to the list without the knowledge or consent of the potential passengers. There has been considerable concern that names will end up on the list mistakenly, resulting in an innocent passenger being banned from air travel. For example, there were media reports that two young boys, a 15-year old junior champion athlete and a 10-year old both named Alastair Butt, were initially stopped from taking domestic Air Canada flights in 2007 because this name appeared on the list.

Essentially, a couple of children were not able to fly.

Many organizations have spoken in opposition to the bill. I want to read something from the press release of the Council of Canadians dated December 3, 2010. It states:

Secure Flight has been roundly criticized by international civil society groups because it requires that a large amount of your personal information be transmitted to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security even if your flight only passes through U.S. airspace. It's not just name, gender, age and destination as government sources claim. Any and all information contained in your travel records will be transmitted to the U.S. security officials, who may use it for whatever purposes they see fit.

We give over a whole lot of information when we are flying, particularly if we are going to a hotel. We have given credit card numbers and we may have given medical conditions. We have given all kinds of information that the Department of Homeland Security will now have access to and can do whatever it pleases with it.

The Council of Canadians goes on to state:

For the vast majority of flights to and from Europe, the Caribbean and South America, Canadians will be asking permission from the U.S. government to travel. If your name is on the expensive and flawed U.S. no-fly list, you could be denied a boarding pass.

Canada has made many steps to harmonize airline security with U.S. programs but none has been good enough to prevent ever more draconian demands. Our severely flawed made in Canada “no fly” list was supposed to prevent the imposition of the U.S. list on Canada. But that benchmark has moved again to the point the U.S. must issue travel permissions to Canadians.

Canada can still say no to Secure Flight. In fact, we would be doing the world a favour by voting no to C-42 because of the enormous global concern about the program from other states, as well as various international bodies, including the United Nations. Because of our geographic location, Canadians have the most to lose from the imposition of Secure Flight rules on Canadian travel. It's only right that Canada takes a stand now, before it's too late.

I could not agree more with that statement by the Council of Canadians.

Other groups that are opposed as well. I will not go through them all, but the Council on American-Islamic Relations has said that the bill could potentially have huge impacts on Canada's sovereignty and our privacy and Charter of Rights.

It is the sovereignty issue I want to turn to now. We are seeing a continuing harmonization in Canada with U.S. rules and regulations. For those of us who have been in the House long enough, we can remember back a few years ago some of the talk that was going on about smart regulations.

Anybody thinking about smart regulations would say, “What is the matter with regulations that are smart?” Smart regulations were an effort to harmonize our regulations in Canada with many of the regulations in the United States. These could affect our health care, our pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and it goes on. These could remove from Canada the right to say no to certain products. Smart regulations kind of went underground because there was a large hue and cry in 2005, particularly in the agricultural sector, about the move to do these smart regulations. Then we had SPP, the Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement. Again, Canadians en masse said, “absolutely not”.

About six or eight months ago some us on Parliament Hill who were opposed to the SPP, the Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement, had a bit of a celebration because we thought it was dead.

I have an article from the Globe and Mail of February 2, which says that the Prime Minister and the President are eyeing sweeping changes in border security. This is an article by John Ibbitson and Steven Chase. The subtitle is, “Plans to implement greater intelligence sharing sure to raise sovereignty, privacy concerns”. I have a few quotes from this because it is relevant to what we are talking about here. It states:

[The Prime Minister] and [President] will meet on Friday to set in motion the most sweeping changes to the Canada-U.S. border since the 1988 free-trade agreement.

According to information obtained by The Globe and Mail, the Prime Minister and the U.S. President will order a working group of senior bureaucrats to finalize within a few months agreements that would transform the 49th parallel through co-operative arrangements on trade, security and management of the boundary line.

It would mean sharing intelligence, harmonizing regulations for everything from cereal to fighter jets, and creating a bilateral agency to oversee the building and upgrading of bridges, roads and other border infrastructure.

The important part of that last sentence is the harmonizing regulations for everything from cereal to fighter jets.

Many of us in the House, certainly in the NDP, have been fighting smart regulations and the SPP. Now the government looks like it is bringing it back under another guise. This time it is border security.

The Globe and Mail article goes on to say:

Some of the agreements could be implemented through changes to regulations, but others could require legislation that would have to be approved by Parliament and Congress.

The new co-operation plan is a follow-up to a failed attempt in the past decade, the Security and Prosperity Partnership, to harmonize the regulatory regimes of Canada, the United States and Mexico....

The most controversial aspect of the talks will be an attempt to more deeply integrate the sharing of intelligence on people and products to ensure that anything or anyone entering either country would be properly inspected and the information shared.

There is a couple of other problems with what is being outlined. One is when things are done by regulation, it effectively removes parliamentary oversight. Most regulations, unless it has been designated in the legislation, do not come to Parliament. What we could essentially have is by the back door, by stealth, imposition of regulations in Canada that Canadians simply do not want. They have signalled that under smart regulations and under the SPP.

First, it is critical that we oppose vigorously Bill C-42, and I hope Canadians are listening to this. I hope they write their members of Parliament to tell them they do not want this violation of our privacy information, that they do not want the United States to say who can fly in Canada. If somebody who wants to go south somewhere and has to fly over the United States, the United States could say, absolutely not, that a boarding pass cannot be issued to that person.

Not only do we not want Bill C-42, we do not want smart regulations. We do not want the SPP. We do not want this new border security agreement that will erode our sovereignty even further.

I am ever hopeful that Canadians are paying attention to this very important issue, the very important erosion of our sovereignty.

There is a number of other ways that the legislation could be amended.

As my time is almost up, I urge people to look at the 1998 European commission's key principles, which would certainly help the legislation be more effective, and also the comments of our Privacy Commissioner who appeared before the committee and outlined a number of issues that she felt were important and that should be included in any legislation where the privacy of Canadians could be infringed upon.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member's comments bring back some memories of being at meetings with the Privacy Commissioner and looking at some of the implications. It turns out that the issue of Canadians' privacy continues to grow. Information on many of the things we do is out there.

I also understand that the requirement to report the flights will no longer apply to domestic flights such as those from Toronto to Vancouver that happen to cross U.S. soil. It will only be required when a flight goes from Canada to a third country and passes over the U.S. It is my understanding that arrangement is about to be put in place.

Does the member believe that we still accommodate the U.S. far too much in its over-reaction to 9/11?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member is correct. Domestic flights will be exempt. Those of us who fly from here to Vancouver Island welcome that piece of news because the flights often fly over the northern states on the way home.

I agree with the member that there is far too much intrusion into Canadian sovereignty with what is happening.

It is just wrong when we have to ask for the blessing and permission of the United States to allow Canadian citizens to fly to Cancun, or Cuba, or some other point when the flight goes over the United States. Canadians should be able to determine whether they are safe on a plane. Canadians should be able to determine who should be on a no-fly list, if they agree with such a thing, not the Americans.

I urge all members to oppose this bill and to say no to what the United States is trying to impose on us.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Madam Speaker, most of us here believe in our country. We have a certain respect for our sovereignty. We believe in our institutions. Yet we see a progressive movement away from our ability to control what we have in Canada as a nation. Bill C-42 is just one step in that direction.

I wonder if my colleague has any ideas as to why the government would be willing to do this. Why is it that the government cannot stand up for what we in Canada really believe in? Why can the government not stand up for our rights instead of progressively selling out step by step our ability to do business we are used to doing here in Canada?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague asked an excellent question.

Thank heaven there have been New Democrats in the House. We have seen the government cave under tremendous pressure on things like the MacDonald, Dettwiler takeover and the potash situation in Saskatchewan. Without our voices in the House talking about the importance of Canada maintaining its own identity, about Canada maintaining control over its own resources, about Canada maintaining its own sovereignty, we would have seen more Canadian resources sold down the river.

All of these foreign takeovers that supposedly have government oversight are rubber-stamped by what we call the ministry of rubber-stamping. Virtually none, except for the two that I have mentioned, have been turned down by the government and, it is sad to say, by previous Liberal governments.

We really need a government that stands up for Canadians, that stands up for the protection of our resources, for the protection of our sovereignty, for the protection of our privacy. Pieces of legislation like Bill C-42 do not give comfort to Canadians that the Conservative government is acting on their behalf.

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

Madam Speaker, I think the question regarding Bill C-42 at this point is what would happen if we did not pass this bill. The government told us that if it was not in force by December 31, the Americans would deny overflights of United States territory, but here we are on February 2 and Air Transat is operating fine.

I understand the Bloc's concern that it has to do what Air Transat tells it to do. In the area of the air passenger bill of rights, the Bloc members were onside with the NDP in the beginning. Then Air Transat got to the Bloc members and they flipped to the other side and did what Air Transat told them to do. Now Air Transat is telling the Bloc members that they have to pass this bill because it is going to cost too much to fly around the edges of the United States. I guess those are valid concerns, but there are broader concerns to be dealt with on this issue.

At the end of the day, I feel, and I think this caucus feels, that if we had negotiated with the Americans in a tougher manner, they would have backed down. If we had said to the Americans that they would have sovereignty over their airspace and we would provide the information for those passengers for those 100 flights a day flying over their territory, but they would have to reciprocate and provide information on those passengers on the 2,000 planes that fly over Canadian airspace each day, I think we would have seen the Americans back off a bit.

They would have had to come to grips with what their constituents would have to say about this, what their airline industry and airlines would say to their government, and what all those thousands of passengers would have to say. There would be an uprising in the United States against their congressmen and senators. They would be telling the U.S. government at this point to hold back and be a little more understanding of the situation.

Let us look at what we would be providing under this agreement versus what we are providing under the agreement with the European Union.

Under this agreement, I do not think we negotiated anything with the Americans. I think we simply kept their demands and said, “Yes sir, whatever you want you are going to get”. The reality is that we would provide all the PNR information to the United States, which the U.S. could keep for up to 40 years and perhaps share with other foreign governments. We are not really sure about that. The information on the PNR is tied to an individual's name, so privacy is a huge issue.

Let us look at the agreement Canada has with the European Union regarding the same information in the PNR. As a matter of fact, the Canada–E.U. agreement has been praised by Canadian and European data protection authorities because it has specific time periods for the disposal of data. In other words, they cannot keep it for 40 years as the Americans can under Bill C-42. They have to dispose of it after, I believe, a week. I am not sure of the days, but it is not a very long period before they have to dispose of the data. It limits the data's use, unlike what we are giving to the Americans. It limits, in particular, the individualization of the data. This is a really important point.

The information under the Canada–E.U. agreement is rendered anonymous. This allows the security services to build up the profile without attaching it to any one individual. Therefore, security is maintained.

If the member for Winnipeg North wants to get on a plane under this agreement that he is likely to vote for with his caucus colleagues, the Bloc and the government in the next number of days, the information he would have to provide would be in the Americans' computer system and it would be tied to him. They would do data mining and build a bank of information and a profile on him over time.

Under the Canada–E.U. agreement, the PNR information is separated from the person's name. Therefore, a person's privacy is maintained. They still accomplish the same goal that they are trying to get. They can build up profiles but they are not violating privacy. This has become one of the global standards for international treaties on PNR agreements. By getting involved with the Americans in Bill C-42, we are moving away from that high standard with the passage of this legislation.

I wish the Liberals and the Bloc would pause for a second and take another look at this.

As I said, we were supposed to pass this bill by the end of the year or the flights would stop. Well, the flights are continuing, and if we do not pass this legislation now, the flights are going to continue into the future. The Prime Minister will be in Washington on Friday no doubt to provide some answers and excuses as to why his government has been unable to get this legislation through the House. It is his problem to explain it, because he waited until the last possible minute to bring the legislation before the House in the first place.

There are other broader issues we should be looking at here. We should get the initial infrastructure that we have had in place since 9/11 working properly first. I will give a few examples of things that are not working right and some broad areas that we should be looking at.

One example is the trusted shippers program. We have a huge exposure in Canada and the United States with I believe it is 1,000 trusted shippers under the trusted shippers program who are not following up on packages and baggage. People are sitting on airplanes after having gone through all the security procedures, and packages and parcels that have not been checked are on the planes right underneath them. Does that make any sense at all?

We should be concentrating on where the exposures are. Right now the biggest exposure according to the American Air Line Pilots Association is the trusted shippers program, all the mail and packages that are being put on planes without being checked. Why are we not looking at that area? In the whole area of the no-fly list, we do not even have the bugs worked out on that yet.

A couple of years ago, we were stopping Senator Ted Kennedy and refusing to let him on a plane. The member for Winnipeg Centre was denied boarding several times because another person with the same name was on the no-fly list. Six-year-old Alyssa Thomas was denied boarding because her name is on the no-fly list. They would not let her on the plane.

And we trust these people with all these data? Good luck, if the Bloc and the Liberals, and the government for that matter, think that giving all this information to the Americans is somehow going to provide security.

All we are going to get at the end of the day is perhaps a delayed flight if we have to go around American airspace. I am not suggesting that is ever going to happen. I would suggest that we should call their bluff and not pass the legislation.

What are other countries doing? What is Mexico doing? The member for Western Arctic said the Mexicans are not participating in this program. Why do we not check these things out? Clearly, the government has no desire to give us information as to what is going on.

When I talk about a reciprocal agreement, what kind of negotiating is going on in the government when it simply holus-bolus accepts what the Americans want it to do? The Conservative government does not say that if we are going to give them information, we want theirs. Did it occur to anybody over there in the government, the government negotiators, at least to suggest that to the Americans? Perhaps that would have slowed down the process a bit. But no, we are simply rolling over.

The government told me that it does not want to ask them for the information because we do not have a computer system that could handle all the information. The Americans are going to take our information on 100 flights and they are going to spend, and I forget the figure I was told, but a huge amount of money anyway to deal with this data and we would have to do the same thing if we got information from them.

I would suggest that the government start looking at its negotiating team and maybe get it to do a little more work.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is nice to come back to the same old, same old. The member is always enthusiastic about these things. The reality is that there are other considerations. We do not deal with matters with the Americans on an item-by-item basis. It is all in the same pot.

When I was on the transport committee, after 9/11 we went to visit with the officials at homeland security in the United States. The gentlemen broke down and cried at the thought of 9/11. They trained all of their flight attendants in karate so that they would be able to take on hijackers. They did absolutely everything and found that nothing worked. They wanted to salvage Thanksgiving week, their biggest flight volume week, but it was a disaster. Confidence has been lost. They are doing bizarre things.

I hope the member agrees that we should be more concerned about the overall privacy issues that we in fact contribute to ourselves. There are a lot of things that we need to do and learn t to protect our privacy. This is only one small issue.

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

Madam Speaker, as I have indicated, there are other extremely important areas that we should be looking at, including the trusted shippers program and all of the exposure to the packages, letters and bags going onto our planes unchecked. I would like to know what the government is doing about that, as opposed to simply rolling over on an American demand that we provide this information with no guarantee as to how it will be dealt with.

All I am saying is that it would be a big improvement if they would simply adopt the provisions of the Canada-EU agreement. Why would the government not have insisted that there be specific time periods for disposal of data, that the data use is limited and that the data individualization is changed so that the information is rendered anonymous, as per the EU.

Those are all things that would help and the Americans could still build up their profile without attaching the information to the individuals. Hence, the privacy situation would be somewhat mitigated.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Madam Speaker, one of the more absurd parts of this whole negotiation that took place was the exemption that the U.S. gave to domestic flights.

Quite clearly, the history of terrorist action in aircraft in the United States was domestic to domestic. We saw that in the terrible events of 9/11. Quite clearly, in Canada, when we are travelling domestic to domestic, what we have to produce is a simple piece of photo ID, quite easily duplicated and forged. The level of security on these flights is extremely low. As well, domestic to domestic flights in Canada fly over some of the more populated areas in the United States and yet the U.S. government is quite willing to give this exemption for those flights. Why is that?

Does this relate to what the Prime Minister will be doing in the United States with information about all Canadians in this deal that he is signing or working out with President Obama on Friday?

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

Madam Speaker, no doubt there is an overall objective and an overall plan that the security people in the United States have in mind here.

The member is right. The airplanes that were used in 9/11 were domestic airlines. They were not international flights. They were domestic flights that were commandeered in the United States.

Here we have many domestic flights that are taking off from Toronto going to Vancouver and crossing over American air space. He certainly exposes some truth there. Certainly the Prime Minister is under a lot of pressure from the Americans but all we say is that he have some backbone here. The flights were not shut down during the first time they said they would be and they will not be shut down in the future.

We can certainly vote against this bill—

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Vancouver East. I should let her know ahead of time that I will have to interrupt her at 5:30. She has a few minutes to begin her comments.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, although I only have a few minutes this afternoon, I am sure this debate will continue tomorrow because it is a very important bill that we are debating. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-42, the Aeronautics Act.

I first want to thank my colleague from Western Arctic who is the NDP transport critic. I know the member from Western Arctic and his team, the folks in his office, his researchers, have put together just a wealth of information that when one reads through it leaves one with a very troubling sense as to what the bill is all about.

The bill was before the House before the holiday break. There was a sense of urgency, a deadline and it had to be rushed through. This is such a familiar story in this place that it almost makes the notion of Parliament and the work of parliamentarians seem redundant. Everything has an urgency and must be rushed through.

We are here to dig into legislation, to find out what it is about, to look at its merits, to give it a sober first thought and second thought, to have it go through committee and then through all the other processes. That is very important, especially in this day and age when everything is so focused on security, technology and the movement of information from government to government. There are huge issues involved here in terms of people's privacy.

While we have the opportunity and the right to see this legislation, we just think of what it means to the people out there who have not the vaguest notion of how these massive changes are taking place in our society. These days, travelling by air is something that millions of people do. It is part of daily living, part of business and part of one's family life.

Something I find deeply troubling is that most people have absolutely no awareness or knowledge of the rules that are being imposed, the secret agreements that are being laid out, which affect how their personal information is being used. When we relate that to a bigger picture about what is taking place with the deep integration with United States' policies, whether it is trade, security issues or border issues, this is something that I know many Canadians are more and more concerned about.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member will have seven minutes left for her comments when this debate resumes.

The House resumed from February 2 consideration of Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

When the matter was last before the House, the hon. member for Vancouver East had the floor and there are seven minutes remaining in the time allotted to her for her remarks. I therefore call upon the hon. member for Vancouver East.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to continue my remarks from yesterday. I appreciate the information about the significance of the mace today and the fact that we are remembering the fire of 1916 in Parliament. It is very interesting to be in the House on this historical day. I appreciate that being brought forward.

I want to speak to this bill because there is a lot of concern from Canadians about how so much is being eroded in terms of civil liberties and privacy of information by security measures. Certainly Bill C-42 is a very strong case in terms of a further erosion of privacy of Canadians.

There has been a lot of debate about this bill and certainly our critic, the member for Western Arctic, has done an incredible job of bringing forward information, both at committee and in the House, to show just how dangerous this bill will be. As he said in an earlier debate, Bill C-42 really means stripping away the privacy of Canadians and that is something we should be very concerned about.

Out in the broader community, people are very worried about how much government legislation, whether it is so-called anti-terrorism legislation, no-fly lists, or this bill, is impacting the rights and privacy of Canadians. It is all being done in the name of security. Yet there is no evidence to show that these very broad measures that cast such a wide net over every segment of our society actually do improve our security or prevent terrorism from taking place. However, they do create an enormous chill in our society.

As parliamentarians, we have a responsibility to examine this kind of legislation in great detail to establish whether or not it is warranted and whether or not the legislation goes too far towards invading the privacy of Canadians. I would say for us in the NDP, we have come to the conclusion that this legislation does go too far. We know it will allow airlines to send personal information of passengers to foreign security services.

The information that will be forwarded is determined by requirements that are laid out in secret agreements with other countries. In and of itself, that is a huge problem. There is no transparency. I would note that in 1998, the European Commission put forward six key principles that must be included for this type of legislation. They had a very thorough examination because this has been a huge issue in Europe as well as around the world. I do not have time to go into the six principles, but briefly they outline the purpose limitation principle; the information, quality and proportionality principle; the transparency principle; the security principle; the right to access restitution opposition principle; and restriction on onward transfers principle.

The right to access principle says that subjects of the information should have the right to obtain a copy of all the information relating to them that is processed and the right to restitution of the information which is inaccurate. Further, in some situations people should be able to object to the processing of the data that relates to them.

I want to be very clear that this bill we are debating today does not include any of these protections, so that is a very serious matter.

When the bill was examined earlier by committee, there were some very notable witnesses who came forward. One of them was Dr. Mark Salter of the School of Political Studies here in Ottawa who said:

Governments want this information so that they can build profiles of not just risky passengers but safe passengers as well. Research clearly demonstrates that in the United States and the U.K., government agencies are trying to collect as much data about travellers as possible.

He went on at some length about what that means.

There was further evidence from Nathalie Des Rosiers who is the general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

In her testimony she said:

There's no safeguard that the TSA will not pass information to other government agencies, such as law enforcement or immigration. There is no safeguard that the TSA will not pass this information to third countries. And we know this has been a particularly difficult issue for some Canadians, Maher Arar being a case in point. There's no guarantee that the TSA will not use the information for profiling Canadians, to put them on their watch list or the no-fly list.

We have heard many incredible stories about the no-fly list, about people who are on there by mistake, people who are legitimately and in good faith travelling to the United States or elsewhere who cannot access information regarding why they are on the no-fly list. It is a grievous error and problem we face. We can see that, if approved, the legislation will have an enormous impact on our rights, on our privacy. We are not doing our job properly if we allow the bill to go through, so I am proud that members of the NDP are standing in the House to speak out against the bill and make it very clear that we do not believe it is in the public interest nor in the interest of so-called security. It is simply further integrating us with U.S. policies which people are very concerned about, all in the name of security. There is no transparency and no accountability.

I hope other members will reflect on the bill at this stage and decide that it should not go forward and should not be supported.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

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

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

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member raised this point because it is one of the core issues of the bill that we must struggle with and the conflict that it presents. Information is being mined about people and is being stored in enormous data warehouses. Where is the transparency and accountability pertaining to these massive institutions and bureaucracies that develop and control this data?

One of the most fundamental issues is that people do not know what information is being gathered. If they do have a sense that something is wrong because they have been turned away for a flight or they find out that they are on the no-fly list, then under this legislation their ability to get that information is nil. This is why I wanted to draw attention to the European Commission report and the six principles which it claims are fundamental to any legislation such as this. However, Bill C-42 does not adhere to these particular principles. It appears to me that is a serious matter and if we are acting in the public interest and protecting the rights of our constituents, we should not allow this to go ahead.

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

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

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

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

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

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

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

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

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

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore has raised a very interesting question.

I wonder how proud the Conservative members of Parliament in this chamber or the other chamber are of this intrusion into and erosion of the privacy rights of Canadians. I wonder if they will be using their extraordinary mailing privileges to brag and advertise what they did when they went down to that trading session. Somebody mentioned what terrible negotiators they are. It is like Jack and the Beanstalk; they went down and traded their cow for three beans or something. The Conservative members did not come back with something to the advantage of Canada. They came back with this appalling policy, much to the detriment of Canadian rights and freedoms.

It is an appalling situation that the Conservatives were carpet bombing other ridings with their political propaganda. Now that they have actually overdone it to the point where they have been prohibited from doing so, they are allowing their colleagues in the Senate to mail propaganda to ridings such as Winnipeg South Centre using the Senate mailing privileges. That is one example I know of.

My Liberal colleague is getting hate mail essentially from the Conservative members in the Senate regarding her voting record on issues before the House of Commons, and that is funded by taxpayer dollars. The Conservatives should be ashamed of that communication strategy. As well, they should be ashamed of Bill C-42.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

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

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

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

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

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

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

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

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in the House today to speak on this bill.

One of the most disturbing pieces of legislation the government has brought forward is Bill C-42. As I understand it, Bill C-42 amends the Aeronautics Act to allow airlines to send the personal information of passengers to foreign countries. The information to be forwarded will be determined by the requirements laid out in a secret agreement with other countries.

Imagine, it was the current federal government that cancelled the long form census, because it was too invasive of Canadians' privacy, but it is now trying to pass a law to hand over to foreign security agencies undisclosed information about Canadian passengers who may not even be landing on those countries' soil. This secretive government, which is so eager to divulge its citizens' private information to other governments, will not talk about these secret agreements, but we have some understanding of similar information transfer agreements between the European Union and the United States and they are all very troubling.

We know that the agreement allows the forwarding of a passenger's name record, which is the file a travel agent creates when the passenger books a vacation. This file could include credit card information; the name of the person a citizen is travelling with; hotel details and other booking information, such as tours and car rentals, et cetera. This agreement also provides details of any serious medical conditions of passengers.

The information collected can be retained by the United States for up to 40 years. This information may be forwarded to the security service of a third nation without the consent or notification of other signatories. I will dwell on this because it particularly concerns me.

Canada has signed another secret deal with one of the countries that is on this list, and that is Brazil. The secret agreement that was signed concerns the Investment Canada Act. Now we would be sending information on all Canadian citizens who fly over the United States to this country. It was this country that came to Canada under a secret agreement and then put our workers on strike for one year and used scab labour. This same country was given $1 billion by the Canadian government so it could lay off most of its employees in Thompson, Manitoba. Now Canada is going to send to this country all of the information about Canadians who fly to the United States. I think it is unreasonable that we would be sending this information to this country in particular.

No person may know what information is being held about them by the United States and may not correct that information if there are errors. I will also dwell on this.

We had a very good example by our colleague from Winnipeg a few minutes ago. An error was made on his information and it cannot be corrected. This information can be kept for 40 years. Our colleague from Winnipeg is stuck for 40 years. I am sure he is not the only Canadian who had mistakes made, and this is going to increase if we sign this agreement.

The United States may unilaterally amend this agreement as long as it advises the EU of the change. In essence, this bill would allow data mining of Canadians' personal information by foreign security services.

We know that Canada is being bullied by the U.S., that unless this bill passes, the United States could close its airspace to Canadian aircraft. The truth is that Canada and the United States have a long history of co-operation in politics, economics, defence, security and culture. We know that the United States cannot simply cut off its airspace to our flights and passengers. That is simply not realistic.

The government could do better for its citizens, but it is not. We on this side of the House are dumbfounded as to why the government, which bills itself as a great defender of our privacy, would so readily abandon our rights. It is utterly shameful.

I want to stress that this debate is not an ideological one. Its significance is due to the extent to which the federal government would go in relinquishing our rights without any disclosure to its citizens. This is truly a bad piece of legislation.

Do not take my word for it. I will read what others have had to say about this legislation. Roch Tassé, the national coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, has stated:

After running a risk assessment for each passenger using data-mining technology, the Department of Homeland Security in turn issues a boarding pass result back to the airline. The result instructs the airline to issue a boarding pass, deny permission to travel, or issue enhanced screening requirements.

These regulations give the U.S. access to a whole subset of information on air passengers who are not entering the U.S. but merely overflying its airspace.

Another witness at committee has noted:

Furthermore, this information can be shared among at least 16 U.S. agencies and with foreign governments. The program gives the government of a foreign country a de facto right to decide who gets to travel to and from Canada, since the vast majority of Canadian flights to and from Europe, the Caribbean, and South America overfly American airspace.

There are many cases that involve Canadians. Canadians have been denied boarding by the U.S. Even domestic flights in Canada have been reported. These cases include several individuals who have been deemed by Canadian courts and commissions of inquiry not to pose a risk to the national security of Canada.

Dr. Mark Salter, associate professor at the School of Political Studies of the University of Ottawa, had this to say:

Governments want this information so that they can build profiles of not just risky passengers but safe passengers as well.

He went on to say:

What worries me about this particular legislation is that the data not only go to the destination country but may go to all states that the airline might fly over. That, I feel, is the significant change that this legislation brings, and it worries me a great deal.

He is right when he says:

...I think it is dangerous to sacrifice our privacy and our freedoms for the dream of zero risk or perfect security. This particular measure does not provide additional security for the aviation sector, and it places an additional burden on Canadian citizens who are flying.

Mr. Edward Hasbrouck of the Liberty Coalition, a U.S.-based civil liberties group, stated:

You should be very clear that the enactment of Bill C-42 would grant to the U.S. government de facto veto power over the ability of virtually anyone to obtain sanctuary in Canada, since in most cases it's impossible to get to Canada to make a claim for political asylum or refugee status without overflying the U.S., and that power of the U.S. would be exercised at the worst possible point: while a refugee is still on the soil of and subject to the persecution of the regime they are trying to flee.

I want to speak about one point that my colleague from Vancouver East touched on. She said there were six points and she touched on one. I would like to touch on the second point, the information quality and proportionality principle. Information should be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date.

I just want to inform the House that if this information is not accurate, we cannot make any changes to it. How many Canadians will this affect? We know there are many Canadians who fly regularly over the United States. It will result in more and more mistakes, and these mistakes will not be correctable.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I greatly appreciate the people who are speaking against the bill today. It is extremely important to recognize the lack of security that would be a part of this and the fact that the amount of information that would be provided would actually surpass what we should be providing.

I just want to refer to the European Commission of 1998, which put forward six key principles that must be included: the purpose limitation principle; the information quality and proportionality principle; the transparency principle; the security principle; the right to access, rectification and opposition principle; and the restriction on onward transfers principle.

Bill C-42 does not include any of these protections. Under the bill, it is open season on the private information of Canadians. We know what happens with that. We just have to look at Maher Arar. He was detained for over a year for being on a list.

My question to my colleague is, could he elaborate on the difficulties that families would have in trying to get their loved ones back, should this information be provided?

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

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

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

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

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly do have a sensitivity to the privacy issues and the potential misuse of information, but I think the member has maybe inadvertently misled the House with regard to the exact information that is required to be disclosed under this bill and under the agreement with the U.S.

I wonder if the member would care to share with the House exactly what he thinks the required disclosure is, pursuant to Bill C-42.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I did not misinform the House. The following is what is required when information is given out: a person's credit card information, who they are travelling with, what hotel they are staying at, information about their going on tours and renting a car, and information about any serious medical conditions they have. All of this information will be given out, but it is information that is not necessary.

My colleague asked me what information I think should be given out about a Canadian citizen. My answer is simple: none.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the right of privacy, the right of due process, the right to be able to confront one's accuser, these are fundamental principles of western democracy and the rule of law. The Conservatives obviously do not believe in them and neither do the Liberals.

I ask my hon. colleague why he thinks this parcel of rogues has sold out our nation? At least the original parcel of rogues got some gold and silver, but these guys gave away our rights. They are giving away our citizens' privacy for what? We have nothing in return.

What possible motivation could the Conservatives and their pals in the Liberal Party have for selling out the right of privacy of Canadian citizens?

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question and it is impossible to answer it.

What reason would the Conservatives have for wanting to give out our personal information, especially after the fact they cancelled the long form census because it was too invasive.

What is their reasoning? We do not know what their reasoning is, and the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay is correct. They are just a bunch of rogues.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in the debate on Bill C-42. It really is a fundamental question about the right of Canadians to privacy versus some other foreign national government's decision, whether it be the United States, or some other third party such as Colombia or Panama or any other country around the world that wishes to have the personal information of me or anyone else in our country who chooses to travel by air.

I find it quite astounding that somehow we think that giving this information up is okay and we can trot out security as being the justification for giving up our private information.

Where does it would stop? Some would say that it is just our names, the hotel we are going to, whether we are renting a car and where we are going to travel in that country. We know there are sophisticated programs in place that could develop profiles about people. However, profiles can be false. I remind the House that there are a number of us who have similar last names. I and the member for Tobique—Mactaquac have the same last name, but we ensure in the House that we identify the member for Welland or the member for Tobique—Mactaquac. The same is done for others whose names are similar.

However, as my colleague and friend from Winnipeg ably pointed out, what we see is that where mistakes are made, they cannot be corrected. Therefore, if a person has a similar name that may sound like someone else's, that person ends up on a list. As my friend described his case earlier, travelling from his Winnipeg riding to his workplace in Ottawa became a great challenge based on being misidentified. Imagine how many other folks have been misidentified.

We know about Maher Arar and the absolutely heinous crime perpetrated against that individual by misinformation that was passed from government to government. Yet they were supposed to have the ability to do it well.

Now airlines will pass information to government agencies and we will not know where it goes. We will not know who they share it with. It could be other foreign national governments. It could be other agencies within the United States or within other foreign national governments. Yet as individuals we will have no control over our information and we will not even be able to come to our own government. People could not come to us and say that they needed us to help them control what had happened to their personal information because these agencies had it wrong and thought they were someone they were not.

As representatives of the citizens of our country, how do we protect the sovereignty of this nation and those citizens if we cannot correct the information that we helped deliver to a foreign national that got it wrong, when it simply puts up the roadblock, puts its hands in the air and says that it is sorry but that is the way it is going to be?

I remind my colleagues of the days in elementary school. One of the activities that many teachers used to give elementary school children was to whisper a story into the ear of the first child in a row and ask each child to whisper it to the next and pass it all the way through. By the time it came out from child number 23, the class would see how close it matched the original story. I believe, as that information goes from one government to one agency to a second agency to a third to a fourth to a fifth to another government then another government and its agencies, by the time it is finished I am not sure who they think I am anymore.

If it is our sense that somehow we are keeping terrorists out of the sky, we are really mistaken. That will not prevent folks from doing that. Folks who intend to perpetrate heinous crimes find a way to work outside of the system.

My friends in the government are always keen to talk about the long gun registry and how it does not prevent crime because criminals do not obey the law. Terrorists do not obey the law. Developing a law to give information to someone will not prevent terrorists from simply saying that they think they will become Mr. or Mrs. so and so today.

We know how easy it is in this Internet age to steal identities of other people. In my case, I would hate for someone to steal my identity. I could end up, like my colleague from Winnipeg, thinking I am going on vacation with my family and getting turned away at the airport. Because I am headed back to my ancestral homeland, going back to Glasgow, Scotland to visit with my aunts and uncles, I could find out that I cannot get there because I am about to fly over some foreign country. In this case it could be Greenland or Iceland.

I could be told that my name is on a list, unbeknownst to me and because of someone else who decided to misappropriate my identity. It could end up not being able to be corrected. We face this serious situation. Somehow we have not come to grips with it in our rush to simply give up the personal information of our citizens.

We are not asking for this to be done, by the way. There is no great groundswell of public opinion in Canada asking us to do this.

One of the questions earlier was about information. I believe the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore asked if the government was delineating this information in any kind of political way. Forget about the politics, the government ought to tell Canadians that it is willing to tell foreign governments all about them, that it is willing to give them the information of Canadians, that it is not going to fight to ensure Canadians can keep their privacy and that it is going to pass a bill to ensure their privacy is compromised. Let us see what Canadians have to say to us about that.

This is so far under the radar, no pun intended, that it is ridiculous. We need to inform our citizens that the government is about to compromise their privacy. They believe they have a right to privacy. The charter says they do have a right to privacy.

If citizens believe it and it is enshrined in law, why is the government compromising it, all in the name of “security”? I believe those who work for our security services, whether it be CSIS, the CBSA, the RCMP or the other agencies across this land, are up to the job. When people board a plane, folks have a sense of who they are. They have to identify themselves.

If there is an issue with me, if I have some difficulties with the law, security services will know that and they will then be able to do something about it.

We are contracting out, like we do with so many other things, the security and the privacy of Canadians to someone else. It could be to Panama, Bolivia, Guatemala, the U.S. or the EU. Our right is to our citizens. Our work is on behalf of our citizens. In my view we do not have the right to contract that obligation and that responsibility out to third, fourth, fifth, sixth parties. As they pass it around, that is exactly where it is going to go.

This is from testimony that came before the committee from some of the witnesses who talked about how this thing actually took place. It states:

After running a risk assessment for each passenger using data-mining technology, the Department of Homeland Security in turn issues a boarding pass result back to the airline. The result instructs the airline to issue a boarding pass...

In other words, someone in Canada is looking to get a board pass, the list goes somewhere else, to Homeland Security in this case because he or she is going to over fly the U.S. The U.S. Homeland Security will decided whether people can get a boarding pass, even though they are not going to the United States. They could be going to a destination wedding in Mexico. My family is participating in one next week for a very gorgeous young woman who I have known from the age of five.

I cannot comprehend the thought of my wife and two daughters showing at the airport and somehow their names being on a list. They could get turned away and not be able to go to the wedding of that young woman, simply because someone in the U.S. said that their names were on a list. Their name would be on a list inappropriately.

We need to ensure we do the job in our country and do it well. I think Canadians expect us to do that. We need to ensure that our security forces are robust, and they are. We do not need the help of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security still thinks the 9/11 terrorists came across the 49th parallel and flew those planes into the Twin Towers. The bottom line is it was wrong. It was such a horrendous, heinous crime and yet Homeland Security cannot get it right. I do not know it can get Smith and Allen right quite frankly.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, this an important issue, considering that the Prime Minister will be in Washington on Friday negotiating even further enhancements of this type of information-sharing with the United States.

I refer to an article in today's Globe and Mail. It talks about key areas of co-operation that have been released out of a document that guides their discussions. One of the items is about tracking travellers. It was a conundrum to me as to why the U.S. government would allow an exemption for domestic flights when there is such a low level of security on domestic to domestic. Here is what the article says:

Countries would develop programs to better verify the identifies of travellers, including through “common standards for the use of biometrics” and shared information on travellers “in real time.”

Will the Prime Minister be in Washington to strike a deal that would allow information about any Canadian on a flight to be shared with a foreign power? What does that mean to our privacy and our rights as Canadians?

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Western Arctic is a real champion of the privacy of Canadians. If it had not been for my colleague from Western Arctic standing up for the privacy of Canadians, I do not think anybody in the House would have. He has brought it to the forefront.

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

I would have.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I hear my colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore saying that he would have, and so would all New Democrats.

The bottom line is the member for Western Arctic is the champion who has said that ultimately we need to protect the privacy of Canadians because they expect that from us. They expect no less. New Democrats will ensure we do that. I encourage every other member in Parliament to do exactly the same thing.

[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.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will speak on this because I have the testimony of the Privacy Commissioner here. The issue really comes down to the sovereign right to protect airspace. Is that something that is under challenge by the member, or is it simply the nature of the information that is being disclosed?

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

Mr. Speaker, no one denies any sovereign nation the right to protect its sovereignty.

Let me ask the member a question. If America is so paranoid that it has to have my credit card and hotel information if I fly from Halifax to Jamaica, why then is he not worried about an American travelling from L.A. to Amsterdam in Canadian airspace? Why are we not asking for reciprocity on this one? Why are we not requesting all the sensitive and health information of American travellers? Why have we not asked for that? The reason is we do not need it. We do not want it and do not desire it because it will not protect us. It is not about security. It is about being paranoid.

What is most dangerous and egregious, and I can only make an assumption, is that the real reason perhaps is for commercial purposes, that the information may be used in ways for which it was not intended. That could be very dangerous.

I wonder why the hon. member will not stand up for the private rights of Canadian citizens. I would hope he could tell his constituents that this is a privacy issue. Canadians have a right to protect their privacy. If Americans have the right to protect their sovereignty, we have the right to protect Canadians' privacy.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the speech my colleague just gave. The Aeronautics Act is an untoward invasion of the privacy of Canadians. The fact that the private information of airline passengers will be shared with other countries is quite a concern. Canadians should be worried about that.

I am wondering if my colleague could elaborate on the fact that this information will actually be shared with other countries that have corruption in these areas as well. We know there are corrupt governments out there. Why would Canadians want to have their information shared that way when we cannot have a census that would provide information to assist in programming and research?

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

Mr. Speaker, this is not about the protection of sovereignty of U.S. airspace. First of all, why would the Americans want this information and then have the ability, without our knowing it, to transfer that information somewhere else? It is not about protection. It is not about enhancing security. It has to be for another reason. I can only anticipate, although I do not know this for sure, that it is for commercial purposes, that they would sell that personal information for whatever reason. It is not about security. It is not about protecting people. It is not about the economic opportunities between our two countries.

It is unbelievable that we as parliamentarians or the government will not stand up for the privacy rights of all Canadians. It is a shame and a sham and the bill deserves to be dead right now.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my interest in the bill is from having recently spent three years on the access to information, privacy and ethics committee, where I got to know a fair bit about the Privacy Act and PIPEDA, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, and their importance to the protection of Canadians' privacy.

Throughout this debate, a lot of assertions have been made that somehow a great deal of private information is going to be transferred consequential to a flight going over U.S. soil or through their airspace. It is not quite that straightforward.

Bill C-42 is a very short bill. In fact, the information is not prescribed in the bill. That has to be handled through the Aeronautics Act and through the regulations.

When I asked the question earlier, what information did the particular member who spoke on this believe was going to be disclosed, the member rattled off a litany of information, such as what hotel someone was staying at, and a whole bunch of other things. That is not correct. There is not this laundry list of information.

If a person wants to stand in the House and claim, “I am the defender of the privacy rights of Canadians”, and to make general statements raising the spectre of a bogeyman and the invasion of privacy and say that, “I'm protecting them and I'm going to challenge this bill”, there has to be some substance to it. Politically, it is easy to say, “I'm defending privacy rights”. It is like saying, “I have the flag on my chest here and I'm going to protect Canadians”. However, there has to be a substantive way that someone can demonstrate they are protecting Canadians. They have to protect Canadians against something, and that something happens to be information that we provide in many ways when we travel to the United States. We must have a passport these days, with our name, our address, our birthdate, our passport number, and information on everywhere we have travelled. The U.S. has access to that. That is as much information as will be given under the intent of Bill C-42 when someone is flying over U.S. airspace.

The issue was always whether or not there was an obligation or duty to respect another country's right to protect its own airspace. Indeed, when we look at the testimony before committee, and I have looked at the testimony from November last year, particularly the testimony of the Privacy Commissioner when she appeared, and a number of other witnesses, including representatives of the Government of the United States, the Government of Canada, the aviation industry, and a very large list of civil rights groups that had expressed concern about the disclosure of information, it is clear that the bottom line or conclusion of the proceedings of the committee was that there was no choice. We had to allow the requested information to be given.

Thus I guess some of the questions, and maybe members who are not sure may want to inform themselves by other ways, are: who is going to decide what information it will be, where that information is to reside, and when it is going to happen.

This whole thing was supposed to be in place by the end of 2010. It is not. We are carrying on here; we have not completed this bill.

However, I would refer the members to the committee hearings of November 18, 2010. Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner, appeared and gave a statement outlining very succinctly what we were facing.

Ms. Stoddart characterized Bill C-42 as a deceptively simple bill. It is short. It only has two clauses and only does one thing: it amends the Aeronautics Act to allow the operator of an aircraft scheduled to fly over a foreign state to provide certain personal information about passengers on the flight to the foreign state, when required to do so by the laws of that state. That is what it does. It is their right, and if a carrier that is resident of another country is not prepared to respect the rights of the destination country, or a country over whose airspace it travels, it has a choice. It can take another route. We cannot expect one country to dictate what the rules of the game will be in another jurisdiction, another country. That is their sovereign right, and we want to protect our sovereign right as well.

Arguments have been made that it should be reciprocal, that we should get their information too. I am pretty sure that we do in many ways already.

With regard to the specifics, I am looking at the testimony of the Privacy Commissioner and her suggestions, including to:

Ensure that the minimal amount of personal information is disclosed to American authorities.

Here the commissioner noted that the secure flight program, which is another program:

requires only three pieces of information. In particular, Transport Canada should work...to avoid excessive disclosures of personal information.

Of course, that is the role of the Privacy Commission, to protect the disclosure of information that is not essential or necessary for the point, and this is what has happened.

In questioning the Privacy Commissioner, the member for Markham—Unionville asked:

In respect of the minimal amount of information being passed to the U.S. government, are you suggesting that the Canadian government can have regulations to ensure that only the three basic pieces of information—name, date of birth, and gender—can be transferred to the U.S.? Is that what you're suggesting?

The Privacy Commissioner responded:

Yes. I understand that this can be specified under the Aeronautics Act. My understanding is that they would have to specify whether they want Canadian planes to continue to fly over airspace in harmony with what DHS [Department of Homeland Security] is asking for.

I think we have found ourselves in a situation where, if we want to drag out a bill, this is probably a good one with which to do it because it is very short, but it touches on an area that is an important concern, not only to Canadians but also to members of Parliament.

Privacy issues are a big topic, particularly with regard to things that we have studied about Facebook and Google and whatever, including the banking system. The velocity of information in our society is enormous, but we understand that in the United States, with the Department of Homeland Security that operates separately from transport operations, they do have an extraordinary latitude and a mandate to be able to give assurances to American citizens as well.

That is what the United States has done in requesting this accommodation to have this information, but if we are to debate the bill, we had better debate the facts of what information is actually to be transferred. It cannot be acceptable in this place to start saying that hotel addresses will have to be given out and the names of family members. That is not the case. Members really need some focus here.

I understand the fervour for protecting privacy, but we cannot just put it on our sleeves and say we are protecting the privacy of Canadians. We need to understand that we have some obligations.

This is not the only bill involved in our relationship with the United States. We have many arrangements with regard to the United States that work for our mutual benefit. They are not identical in all respects in the way in which they have a special interest, but we have taken a position to work with the United States to ensure public security.

I am sure my time is going to run out shortly, but the other thing that members will find if they look at the testimony of the Privacy Commissioner deals with the retention of the information. That is another area. Indeed, the Privacy Commissioner looked for retention periods of somewhere in the neighbourhood of seven years, mirroring our current practice.

I hope I have helped members to understand this is not that complicated.

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

Madam Speaker, the member knows that for any flight actually landing in the United States, the Americans get passport information before the flight actually leaves the ground in Canada. This legislation would basically extend that same process to flights that are overflying the United States.

It makes perfect sense to me that when the Canadian government is negotiating with the Americans, it would demand reciprocity. That is just the normal process. Thus if we are going to provide information on those 100 flights over American airspace, the U.S. in turn should provide us with information on 2,000 flights over Canada.

A member of the government told me the other day that the government could not afford to pay for the computer system to process all of the information and that because of that, the government had not asked for it. Had we asked for that information, the whole process would have ground to a halt, because the American airlines and the American public would have been enraged and would have gone to Congress and their senators and voiced their concerns. If so, this whole idea would not have been pushed with the deadline of December 31 and this other sense of urgency that we are seeing right now.

Furthermore, in the Canada-EU agreement, in regard to PNR management matters, the PNR is treated totally differently. There is a time limit for disposal of the data, which is not in this agreement before us, where the data can be held for 40 years. There is a limit on the data's use, which is not in this agreement. Under this agreement the data can be shared with other countries like Panama. There are limits in terms of the individualization of the data. The information is rendered anonymous so the security services can build up a profile without attaching it to any one individual. Is that not--

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

I must give the hon. member for Mississauga South equal time to respond.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-42 has to do with Canada complying with a request by the United States to have air carriers disclose basic information on people flying.

The member's premise, and I have heard him repeat this several times, is that if the U.S. is going to do that to us, then we should do that to the U.S. That is not part of the bill. It is not the kind of discussion we should be having. It could be something that could be asked of the government in question period. The Minister of Transport or whomever could be brought before committee and asked about it. Let us discuss the process of how we do these things, because this is not part of the bill, and I am not sure whether or not it is part of what we need.

We would define our needs, and if we had thought we needed to know that information for public safety reasons, then we would have made that request. The case has not been made, apparently. The need has not been expressed, apparently. Consequently I am not sure that the argument holds that if the U.S. has asked us to do it, then we had better get the same information back. I am not sure, but we do not even play in the sandbox like that.

Thus I disagree with the member's premise. The question is an interesting one and it should be asked in the proper forum.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Madam Speaker, quite clearly, when the Minister of Public Safety appeared before our committee, he said that the government did not want this bill, that the government did not want to give this information to the U.S., that it had tried everything it could but did not accomplish its task of getting the U.S. to give up on this idea because, quite clearly, the security implications of it were minimal, if anything.

When my colleague says the government should have worked harder to find a way to get the U.S. to recognize the ridiculousness of this bill, that is what we are trying to do here. That is why we put forward a three-year drop dead clause.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member for Mississauga South.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, we would prefer not to have to do anything to protect public security or to deal with our neighbours to the south. However, the U.S. has asked for this. We cannot say that we are not going to do it. We cannot say this is not the way we want to go. The important thing is to look at the whole story.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act, which is very important legislation.

We have finally heard other opinions in debate about the legislation, and I want to congratulate the members of the Liberal Party for joining the debate. It would be nice to hear from some Conservatives, but it has been interesting to hear the various points of view.

The last member who spoke, someone I have great respect for, said that we would have to go along with the bill because we had no choice when it came to negotiating on issues of security with the United States. On that very issue, I would take him on. I believe we have a choice and the government has a choice. The government has a choice about whether we should stand up for the privacy rights of Canadians. I believe the bill diminishes the privacy rights of Canadians.

The key part of the bill is to exempt airlines from the provisions of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act so they can provide personal information about passengers on Canadian airlines to American security agencies. I think this is a very serious concern to Canadians. Just how much of our personal information will get into the hands of U.S. security agencies and where does it go from there? Who else is it being shared with? There are all kinds of questions that we need to be ask.

Rather than saying it is not a privacy issue, though I think it is, it is also an issue of sovereignty. How do Canadians make decisions about their personal information and do we have to fold every time the United States seeks to increase the security of its borders, which impacts Canada? We see that time and time again.

I wish the Conservative government was as aggressive on this issue as it is on the issue of the census, which is a no-brainer. It will defend the right of Canadians not to tell census takers how many bedrooms or bathrooms they have in their homes, but when it comes to sharing our personal information with American security officials, it is open season. It is incredibly ironic we have this debate about the legislation and that we should just holus-bolus roll over and send the information south.

The government claims to be great defenders of the privacy of Canadians, that somehow it is too intrusive to ask people how many bathrooms or bedrooms they have, when most of us know how that information is used and how much the personal privacy of the people who provide the information is protected in our country. It is an incredible irony to me that the same government is responsible for both of those positions.

Should we be concerned about our information going south? Time and time again we see that information crops up in places where it is a real problem. This morning we heard the member for Winnipeg Centre say that he was on the no fly list, that he could not get on a plane in Canada easily. It has changed now because he misspells his name to alert the airlines and security officials that he is the member of Parliament from Winnipeg Centre, not the guy who should be on the no fly list. What kind of bogus approach is that?

A Canadian member of Parliament cannot get his name off of the no fly list. What chance does an average citizen have? That is just one of the problems with this kind of security apparatus that has been established. When a mistake is made, it cannot be corrected.

I have a friend who is in exactly the same position as the member for Winnipeg Centre. He has to make the same kind of run around the no fly list because it has created havoc with his ability to travel, totally unjustly. There is no way of correcting that in the system. There is no way of finding out why a person's name is on the no fly list.

People are justly concerned about their personal information and what happens when it gets into the hands of a security agency that they have no ability to access, to appeal to or to make changes.

We see it in other ways. It is not exactly a parallel to the situation we are debating today, but it is another instance of what happens when a security agency outside of Canada gets hold of our personal information. Recently, a woman from Toronto was denied access into the United States because a U.S. customs and border protection officer at Pearson airport denied her entry for medical reasons because he had access to her medical report. He knew that she had attempted suicide in 2006. Apparently he knew this because police records were available to him that showed the police had attended at her house because she had attempted to do violence to self.

Why does this American agency have information about a non-criminal activity from the metro Toronto police? Why would it have what is essentially health information about this Canadian woman who is trying to travel to the United States? Why would the Americans deny her entry on the basis of that information?

She had to go through a whole rigmarole. She had to have a medical examination by a state department physician that cost her an additional $250. Then that report had to be screened before she was eventually allowed into the United States.

This is just another example of what happens to our personal information. In my opinion, from what I have read in the media and heard from her lawyer, this information should never have been made available to a foreign security agency. It has no relevance to her interest in travelling to the United States. There is no security issue with her travelling to the United States. Yet it was raised in that circumstance with her at the airport while she was trying to travel to the there.

No one can seem to allay my fear that this is the kind of thing that will become more common. More information will be shipped south about Canadians wanting to travel to the United States and even when they are not trying to travel there. It is very worrisome.

Another example is this. Most of us who travel at least have had pause to consider the placement of the full body scanners in Canadian airports. We have seen these expensive machines cropping up at all of our security checkpoints in airports. There are real privacy concerns about the kind of imaging they produce, the full body scan. Recently a new generation of these machines have been unveiled that gives an even finer, more exact naked image of the person being screened. I think people have legitimate concerns about that.

Today there is a report that the machines are being modified so not all images would be viewed by the person doing the screening, only those where there is an identified problem. One wonders why that feature was not built into the system from the get-go rather than weeks or months down the road when people raised concerns about it. It speaks to the enthusiasm for new security measures that are not tested appropriately and not thought through.

Again, why do we have these kinds of expensive scanners in airports? I have not seen the evidence that says the old scanning system was somehow flawed or that there had been incidents of major concerns, especially in Canada, that would cause us to need this new technology. Every time I see one of those I wish it was a scanner in a hospital rather than at the airport. If we could sink that money into scanners for medical purposes, I think Canadians would be extremely enthusiastic.

Somehow, because the United States started putting them at security checkpoints in its airports, we had to do it in Canada. I do not think we did it for our own reasons. I think we did it because the Americans wanted it. Once again, they said “hop” and we hopped and put them in here at the expense, aggravation and diminution of the privacy of Canadians. The perception of the Americans of their security needs demanded it. I do not think that is acceptable. It is not acceptable from a privacy standard or a sovereignty standard.

This goes back to the misapprehension that somehow the 9/11 attackers came from Canada. We know they did not. However, Canada accepted 30,000 people who were trying to fly into the United States without question. We landed them here, welcomed and took care of them when the United States would not let them into its country.

That says something about the difference between how we approach a security problem and how the Americans approach a security problem. I want us to remember that when we approach any kind of legislation that deals with the security demands of the United States and the sovereignty and privacy concerns of Canadians.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, let me congratulate the member for bringing the discussion to where we really should be on this bill.

The bill has raised a broader question about our relationship with other countries, particularly with the United States. The member has raised a number of questions such as whether we should we monitor those development or invest and follow as much as we do.

Those are the questions that should be asked. Maybe we should urge the transport committee and the public safety committee to take these into account. Maybe we need to ask the government more specifically about the reasons and the rationale for taking a decision.

Those are the fundamentals that really underlie this issue. It is not so much that we disagree with someone's right to sovereignty over airspace. We are concerned about the privacy, but if we are talking about name, birthdate and gender, that is not an invasion of privacy about which Canadians will get terribly excited, but it is at the thin edge of the wedge.

Those are the kinds of things the member has brought up. I want to thank him for that. Does he have any further suggestions on how we address this important issue?

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, I hope when the Prime Minister is meeting with President Obama tomorrow, when they are discussing perimeter security arrangements for North America, which is a legitimate topic for discussion, that he calls the American President on some of the excesses of what the Americans are doing.

I understand the Americans feel threatened. I understand they have been attacked. However, maybe somebody needs to put those questions and who better than their closest neighbour? Who better than someone they share all kinds of common interests with? Those are the kinds of questions that a friend can put to them most clearly.

I think the Americans may have gone too far on some of these things. Maybe we are the right people to ask them that question, to point that out to them and to try to find a different way through that. Those are things that we could be doing as Canadians.

Maybe that is something we bring, rather than what appears to be the case of always conceding to the demand of the Americans for the new technology, the new restrictions and the new requirements for more information to be shared. Is it the right way to go? We need to ask those questions and put that kind of pressure on our friends. Friends are for that. When we are in difficulty or are not seeing the situation clearly, friends raise those kinds of issues.

I hope that is what the Prime Minister is taking to the meeting with the President.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to acknowledge the work the member for B.C. has done over the years in this place and thank him for that work. I wish him all the best in future endeavours. We will certainly miss him.

One thing the member touched on was how we would approach these issues. We hear concerns raised by some of the other opposition parties, but when it comes to voting for or against this proposition, only one party will vote against the bill because we have concerns.

Does my colleague see the value in raising concerns on the one hand, but at the end of the day just voting for the bill and watching it pass through the House with no amendments even proposed by other opposition parties? What does he think about that?

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his tribute to the nearly departed.

It is really important that we pay attention to these issues and raise them in this place. There is often this feeling that somehow the Americans always have the power to enforce their interests. I do not believe that is the case.

Canadians have a power to bring to negotiations with the United States, that we do not always have to compromise in its interest. We can stand up for our own interests in these discussions. We have had governments that have been too willing to compromise our interests for too long. I see other parties in this place continuing that trend.

Clearly we want to have a good relationship with the United States. It is our closest neighbour. However, we could take a different course in our negotiations with the Americans.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, our party's concern with Bill C-42 is not news to other members. I should correct the record. I mentioned a moment ago that other parties had not put forward amendments. They have. I would consider them minor. A review of a process that is flawed should be addressed at the beginning, not after three years.

I want to go back to a debate we had in the House on Bill C-31. It addressed concerns around the electoral process in our country. I remember well the debates around the bill at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs The bill looked at how we could streamline the electoral process in this country. Our party was the only one to push against the provision for the government to allow birthdates of Canadians to be put on the voters' list. It had never been utilized before. It was fascinating to watch. People I thought were libertarians, people who believed in the protection of Canadians' privacy, simply caved on the issue of whether or not birthdates should be on the electoral list. It was the two other opposition parties at committee who welcomed this change.

Their colleagues were not aware that we would have birthdates on the electoral list. Thankfully, the Privacy Commissioner intervened, at my request, which was not initially allowed at committee. The committee thought we had heard enough from Ms. Stoddart, however, she had not been able to intervene on this new provision for electoral lists. She provided her opinion that this was a sellout of privacy of Canadians, that they should not have their birthdate on the electoral list.

It was astonishing to see the two other opposition parties allow this to go through. The provision was killed but not because of opposition from the government or the other two opposition parties. Our party fought against it. Why? It is a very basic principle that the privacy of Canadians is paramount. There are times when there is a need for authorities to have information on Canadians, but imagine having one's birthdate and address on a list for all to see.

At the time, we called it a theft kit for identification fraud brought about by the Government of Canada. That is really what it was. For those who want to steal an identity, whether it be for false credit cards or whatever, all that is needed is a birthdate and an address.

We fought against it. Thankfully, we were able to get a clear opinion from the Privacy Commissioner. That made a huge difference, to the point where that provision was eventually dropped. We relied on her office and her opinion to do that. The government fought against having her evidence brought forward at committee. Members sitting on that committee know of what I speak.

Here we are again looking at a bill that would compromise Canadians' privacy. I am astonished that instead of getting this right to ensure that Canadians' privacy will not be compromised, we are going ahead full bore.

The government has recycled countless bills through prorogation, elections, et cetera, simply so it can reintroduce them and claim it is moving ahead, usually on crime legislation. It is all politics, all the time. A bill as important as this gets very little debate, very little attention from the government and not a lot from my friends down the way in the opposition. In one case an opposition party thinks the bill is great and would push it through as quickly as possible.

Someone has to stand up for privacy in this country and in this Parliament. If we do not do that, we have to go to our constituents when the bill is passed and tell them we looked at this in Parliament and we are sorry their names were compromised and ended up on a no-fly list. We were told it would not happen on flights from Windsor to Vancouver.

It is not good enough. We have to be thorough. We have to be careful when we are talking about issues of privacy. This is very different from the Canada Elections Act. The elections act was an abuse of privacy. Ms. Stoddart talked about it in her testimony and we debated that in the House and at committee. This is about another government having access. It is one thing to have Parliament acquiesce and provide that information to Elections Canada that ends up being in the hands of anyone who has access to those lists, but it is another thing to provide that information to another government. With all due respect, it matters not which government. This is a question about our sovereignty. This is a question about who gets to decide the privacy of Canadians.

As mentioned by my colleague from the north, we are putting into law provisions that would allow, in this case, the United States, access to information that normally would not be given to it when a flight is just going from A to B within our own country. It is astonishing that we would go through the process so quickly with a government that makes no bones about the politics of keeping bills going for Parliament after Parliament. When it comes to an issue as important as the sovereignty of Canadians, it wants to get it through as quickly as possible.

We need to understand what is at stake here. We are not talking about being “soft” on terrorism. That should be thrown out immediately. If we are going to talk about provisions around security, let us look at where investments are being made. Let us look at border security. Let us look at shared information with regard to law enforcement. We have been very critical of the lack of investment in that area. Let us look at cargo inspection. If we really want to get at the issue of security, then we should put our investments in the right place. This is the veneer of security, at a cost. The cost is the vulnerability of Canadians' privacy.

In the first part of Bill C-42 the government did not do its usual play on language and nomenclature. I usually do not read the exact text because it sometimes is not as engaging as one might want to have in debate, but this is important. Proposed subsection 4.83(1) states:

Despite section 5 of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, to the extent that that section relates to obligations set out in Schedule 1 to that Act relating to the disclosure of information, and despite subsection 7(3) of that Act, an operator of an aircraft departing from Canada that is due to land in a foreign state or fly over a foreign state and land outside Canada or of a Canadian aircraft departing from any place outside Canada that is due to land in or fly over a foreign state may, in accordance with the regulations, provide to a competent authority--

Those are the other guys.

--in that foreign state any information that is in the operator’s control....

Let me be clear about the first part. It means that we have to amend our privacy rights for the bill to go through and it compromises Canadians. That is wrong.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member for Ottawa Centre has always been strong on issues of personal privacy, personal information and assuring Canadians that their personal information is protected. He raised extremely valid points about the impact of what, up until now, has been a fairly obscure bill, but a bill that Canadians are increasingly concerned about.

We know the Conservatives are pushing ahead and Conservative MPs do not have the ability or the right to disagree in any way with their government. They just rubber-stamp anything that the current government brings forward.

Why are the Liberals supporting this appallingly bad, intrusive legislation? Liberal members have criticized the legislation, but they are voting for it. I would like the member to explain that incredible contradiction. Why is the Liberal Party rubber-stamping bad Conservative legislation yet again?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I wish I had a sanguine answer for that, but I do not.

I am very concerned about the fact that members have been very clear about this being wrong in terms of the privacy provisions and that we need to do something about it and if they had been in government, they would have done a better job somehow.

The fact is we are in this place debating this legislation. If we do not think it is good enough, a three-year review is not the answer. It is a matter of saying our personal information is at stake and we should vote against the bill. There is no in between, there is no middle ground on this bill. It is unfortunate members feel they have to vote for this bill and yet make arguments against the content of the bill.

I say to my colleague who asked the question it is a matter of members having to look in the mirror and ask whom they are standing for, who are they representing and can they in good conscience vote for a bill that compromises Canadians' privacy. The answer is clear. They should not compromise privacy and should vote against the bill. There is time to do that.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to ask the member to consider for a moment that there could have been some common ground in these negotiations. It would have been a much tougher approach by the Canadian government to say to the Americans that 100 flights a day from Canada fly in United States airspace but there are 2,000 flights a day from the U.S. flying in Canadian airspace, that Canada will provide that information but the U.S. will have to provide Canada with the same information. Immediately American airlines and consumers would have become very agitated and would have started calling their representatives in Congress and there would have been a pullback on this issue.

The government told me the other day that Canada could not afford the computer system to process all of this information and the Americans have the half a billion dollars to dedicate to that.

The other issue is that in terms of the agreement itself, Canada has an agreement on PNR use with the European Union. It deals with the PNR totally differently. Unlike this agreement where we are going to give the Americans the information and they can keep it for 40 years, the PNR agreement with the EU requires a very limited time period for the disposal of the data. It makes sure that the information is rendered anonymously so it is not tied to an individual. There is—

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member for Ottawa Centre.

I must give the hon. member time to respond.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, there were a lot of good points and questions. It is safe to say there is another way. One of our concerns is how quickly this bill is being spirited through this place.

There were amendments put forward by the NDP, essentially what my friend from Winnipeg was saying, that would have challenged the way in which this was being done and perhaps provide another way. At the end of the day, we are having to succumb to the wishes of another country.

All members travel and pay the airport tax now. That airport tax that the government imposed, which it does not like to say is a tax, is to pay for security measures imposed on us by the U.S. This is the same thing.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is important for all members to speak to Bill C-42 because, even though it has not received a lot of media attention and journalists have not been writing the kinds of articles they should be writing about its implications, it does have implications for the average Canadian from coast to coast to coast.

I hope that as a result of the debate that has grown over the course of this week that we will see more interest from our Press Gallery and from our national journalists on this important question because Bill C-42 would have an impact everywhere in the country.

I will begin my remarks where the member for Ottawa Centre left off on what this bill actually says. It says that:

--an operator of an aircraft departing from Canada that is due to land in a foreign state or fly over the United States and land outside Canada or of a Canadian aircraft departing from any place outside Canada that is due to land in a foreign state or fly over the United States may, in accordance with the regulations, provide to a competent authority in that foreign state any information that is in the operator’s control relating to persons on board or expected to be on board the aircraft and that is required by the laws of the foreign state.

The bill states that someone's personal information can be handed over. That is not a small issue, particularly as we go through some of the personal information that will be handed over to the secret services of the United States and other foreign states. It is not information that any Canadian would want to have shared widely.

We know the extent to which security services share this kind of personal information. All of us see the chaos that is occurring in Egypt. We know that the secret service of the Egyptian government is one of the potential recipients of this kind of personal information. The information will not be held in any sort of secure place. It can be held for up to 40 years. We are talking about personal information that is completely out of the bounds of what is normally considered to be personal information protection.

The privacy question is completely gutted by this bill, and perhaps that is the reason we are not hearing many Conservative voices rising up to defend it. This bill is, quite frankly, indefensible. I think the Conservatives, particularly in light of what they purported to put out on a census, will have some great difficulty defending to their constituents what is a significant massive handover of personal information.

What is the kind of information that the Conservative government wants to hand over to the United States secret service and other foreign secret services? It begs the questions: why is the government not standing up for Canadians? Why has it not tried to negotiate any sort of agreement that takes into consideration the concerns that the Privacy Commissioner has brought forward?

Concerns have been raised by the Privacy Commissioner. A number of my colleagues in the Liberal Party said that her concerns do not matter but I have to disagree. It certainly does matter when the Privacy Commissioner raises a whole series of conditions around this exchange of information and the government does absolutely nothing to protect that personal information. That is a cause for great concern.

What is in the information that can be exchanged? As my colleague, the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore said, we are talking about a passenger's name record that can include credit card information, who the passenger is travelling with, the passenger's hotel, the booking information concerning the trip and also medical conditions. Medical conditions and credit card information then get sent abroad.

The government has not in any way tried to change that. The government seems to be trying to ram this legislation through. The Minister of Public Safety stood in the House in December and said that the bill needed to be passed by December 31 or the earth would collapse, the roof would fall in and all planes would be grounded.

I was on a plane yesterday and what the Minister of Public Safety said was complete balderdash. That has not happened.

The government needs to step back from what has been an hysterical attempt to ram the legislation through and start to justify why it wants to share credit card information and confidential medical information with foreign secret services regardless of the fact that it has no idea where the information will end up.

The information can be stored legally up to 40 years. We are not talking about information that is transferred and then destroyed according to very strict protocols. We are talking about information that is gone forever. Our personal information and the personal information of other Canadians across the country is out there. It is gone. This is a statement of fact and yet the Conservatives have not tried to justify in any way why they did not endeavour to put in place protocols that would allow for the destruction of that information on a very strict and time sensitive basis.

The other element here is that Canadians cannot find out what information is held about them and, if that information is inaccurate, they cannot in any way change that information. Personal information is sent to the United States and to other foreign governments and the information is held for decades in conditions we have no knowledge of and no control over. It is information that can never be corrected and we can never find out what that information is about.

It is absolutely absurd, when we look at the components of what is actually in the bill, that we have a government trying on the one hand to defend this wholesale transfer of Canadians' personal information, their credit card information, their medical information and other information, and, at the same time, it is the same government, as the member for Winnipeg Centre said earlier today, that wanted to shut down the census because it thought information like the size of a person's house was too sensitive to share.

What is wrong with this picture? The census is a valuable tool. The mandatory long form census was used to give governments an accurate idea of what was happening in the population, whether Canadians were moving to larger homes, whether more people were living within the same residence and to what extent government policies impacted people's housing arrangements and incomes. Those kinds of elements are vitally important for the government to act in the public good.

The Conservatives were screaming hysterically against the mandatory long form census and now they are bringing in a bill that would transport vastly more personal information all over high heaven, to security services wherever; the Egyptian secret service or the American secret service, and that information can be thrown about for decades without any sort of checks and balances or any type of controls.

The government either does not understand how hypocritical that looks to Canadians or it has been playing politics all along with the census information and is now playing politics in a very clear way with Canadians' personal information.

We have seen with the no fly list how the kinds of mistakes that are made can lead to people simply being unable to board flights. We have seen it with fine upstanding citizens, such as Senator Ted Kennedy, members of Parliament and well-known celebrities, who, through no fault of their own, found themselves on a no fly list and are completely incapable of getting themselves off the list.

Instead of trying to fix that, we have a government that is going into vastly darker, deeper recesses of the kinds of information sharing that is irresponsible and clearly not in the interests of Canadians. That is why in this corner of the House the NDP is standing up for those ordinary Canadians and saying no to this wholesale, irresponsible transfer of Canadians' personal information.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am glad my colleague from British Columbia touched on the fact that the Conservative government got rid of the long form census because it was too invasive to Canadians, that we knew too much about Canadians, where they live, how many people were in their homes and where they worked, all good statistics that could be used by doctors, hospitals and municipalities.

In Bill C-42, the government would allow all kinds of information, even more information than was in the long form census, to go to these foreign countries.

I would like the hon. member from B.C. to try to explain to me why the change in the ideology between the long form census and Bill C-42 from the Conservative government?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member from Nickel Belt has been a very strong defender of Canadians' privacy rights in this House of Commons. I am glad he is continuing to do that work on behalf of Canadians.

What we have is a government that is incredibly mean-spirited with Canadians at home. We have seen the kind of bullying that the government does. With governments abroad, we have seen it being incompetent and insipid. We also saw that with the softwood lumber sellout, the buy American sellout and the shipbuilding sellout. We will be talking about another agreement shortly with Panama, which is the same kind of sellout of Canadian interests.

The government is simply incapable of standing up for Canadians' interests.

However, I think the member for Nickel Belt has really stumbled on the key here. The government thinks it can manage Canadians, that it can do two things that are completely contradictory and hypocritical. On the one hand it says that it will abolish the census because of privacy concerns and then on the other hand it says that it will give credit card and medical information to secret services around the world. Mr. and Mrs. Smith of Nanaimo, B.C. will have their personal information distributed around the world. The government thinks, in its arrogance, that it can get away with that kind of contradiction because for the last two and a half years the Liberals have simply rubber-stamped everything the Conservative government brings forward.

Fortunately, in this corner of the House there is a proud NDP caucus standing up for Canadians and we will not let them get away with it.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, the census issue may be an interesting example of privacy issues and the no fly list is another interesting example.

However this is taking Bill C-42 as a proxy to campaign on platitudes of “We are good and everybody else is not so good”.

The member asserted that credit card information would be required to be disclosed under Bill C-42. Could the member advise the House as to exactly where in the bill or in the regulations that is prescribed because that is contrary to the evidence that was given to the standing committee that reviewed this bill in detail?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is very clear in reading the bill, which I am sure the member has read because he is diligent member, that the passenger name record is the information that is disclosed. The passenger name record includes credit card information. It is very clear when we read section 4.83 of the act where it states, “provide to a competent authority in that foreign state any information that is in the operator’s control”.

In the operator's control includes credit card information and medical information. I know that the hon. member does his due diligence most of the time but I think in this case I will have to beg to differ with him. I think the Liberals have fallen a bit short on their due diligence and in verifying just what information is being transferred.

Now that the Liberals understand that information, hopefully they will change their vote and will vote with us to defeat this bill so that Canadians will not have their private information thrown all over the world to secret services.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

The question is on the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

(Amendment agreed to)

The next question is on Motion No. 1, as amended. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion, as amended?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[An hon. member]

On division.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

(Motion No. 1, as amended, agreed to)

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

moved that the bill, as amended, be concurred in.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

The recorded division is deferred until Monday, February 7, immediately after private members' business.

The House resumed from February 3 consideration of Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

STRENGTHENING AVIATION SECURITY ACT

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

It being 6:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at the report stage of Bill C-42.

The question is on Motion No. 1.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #156

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

I declare the motion carried.