Bill C-13 (Historical)

Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act, the Competition Act and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to provide, most notably, for
(a) a new offence of non-consensual distribution of intimate images as well as complementary amendments to authorize the removal of such images from the Internet and the recovery of expenses incurred to obtain the removal of such images, the forfeiture of property used in the commission of the offence, a recognizance order to be issued to prevent the distribution of such images and the restriction of the use of a computer or the Internet by a convicted offender;
(b) the power to make preservation demands and orders to compel the preservation of electronic evidence;
(c) new production orders to compel the production of data relating to the transmission of communications and the location of transactions, individuals or things;
(d) a warrant that will extend the current investigative power for data associated with telephones to transmission data relating to all means of telecommunications;
(e) warrants that will enable the tracking of transactions, individuals and things and that are subject to legal thresholds appropriate to the interests at stake; and
(f) a streamlined process of obtaining warrants and orders related to an authorization to intercept private communications by ensuring that those warrants and orders can be issued by a judge who issues the authorization and by specifying that all documents relating to a request for a related warrant or order are automatically subject to the same rules respecting confidentiality as the request for authorization.
The enactment amends the Canada Evidence Act to ensure that the spouse is a competent and compellable witness for the prosecution with respect to the new offence of non-consensual distribution of intimate images.
It also amends the Competition Act to make applicable, for the purpose of enforcing certain provisions of that Act, the new provisions being added to the Criminal Code respecting demands and orders for the preservation of computer data and orders for the production of documents relating to the transmission of communications or financial data. It also modernizes the provisions of the Act relating to electronic evidence and provides for more effective enforcement in a technologically advanced environment.
Lastly, it amends the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act to make some of the new investigative powers being added to the Criminal Code available to Canadian authorities executing incoming requests for assistance and to allow the Commissioner of Competition to execute search warrants under the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act.

Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Malpeque for his speech, but his reluctant support of this bill, which is riddled with highly questionable—or even dangerous—provisions, required such an intellectual contortion that I must admit that I am a bit worried about his back and other parts of his body.

For example, the bill opens the door to arbitrary, extrajudicial decisions that would put personal information into all kinds of hands.

How can the member justify this reluctant support, in light of these excessive provisions?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, it is not hard to justify. We cannot wait around. If the legislation had been split, it would have been easy, but the reality out there is that people are falling prey to cyberbullying every day. The risk is there.

The member is right that there are some terrible aspects to this bill, and hopefully a future Parliament can deal with them, but cyberbullying, in and of itself, is an urgent concern. Therefore, we feel obligated to support that particular part of the bill, knowing full well that we really do not support other aspects of it. However, we need to deal with that serious issue in Canadian society.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for a good speech. I know he made it low key.

With his experience, I want to give him a chance to explain. Since the current government has been in place, has he seen other examples of bills, whether we call them omnibus, Trojan horses, or any of the other words we have used, that have been totally unacceptable and have only succeeded in dividing the House instead of trying to work for Canadians?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the member is suggesting that a low key for me is unusual. I do not know.

In any event, no, this is not the only bill. In fact, most of the government's bills are that way. The budget bill was a particular example. In it there were endless pieces of legislation that had no relation to the budget.

I expect we are going to see that the next budget has copyright in it. The real strategy of the government is to find a TV clip of someone to use as an attack ad. That is why it is going to be in the next budget bill. It is not going to be debated in its own right; it is likely going to be thrown into the budget bill.

The government is always up to those kinds of tricks. This is a government that believes in creating division and in wedge politics, and that is kind of sad to see in this country, because it is importing the kind of debate that we see south of the border, which is really divisive and often unproductive.

I know it would take a lot, but I would encourage the government to come to its senses and put legislation forward on the specifics of what the bill is supposed to deal with.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is quite ironic that we have the Liberal opposition saying that it is reluctant to support the bill. If Liberals are reluctant, then they should know that they should not be supporting this bill.

The member knows full well that there was a court decision on language similar to what is in this bill. The court decision was made in light of the Spencer case, in which the Supreme Court of Canada ruled, the day after the adoption of the bill by the Conservatives at committee, that Canadians have a right to be anonymous on the Internet and that police must obtain a warrant to uncover their identities. This bill would actually prevent that from occurring.

The Liberals attempted to do something similar when they were in power. They tried to pass a bill that would have amended the Criminal Code to allow police services to carry out lawful access on their networks.

My question to my colleague is this: why are Liberals supporting a bill that they say they are reluctantly supporting? Do they actually firmly believe that it is proper for people's privacy to be infringed on, as this law would do, knowing full well that the government continues to put bills forward that are very controversial in nature?

The government knows that people are supportive of addressing and fixing the cyberbullying situation, but in the meantime it keeps putting in a poison pill by throwing the whole kitchen sink into the bill. The government knows Canadians will not be in favour of these other measures, but by making the opposition look like they are against a situation such as cyberbullying, which is not the truth, it can gain points.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I guess the simple answer to that question is that Liberals are hopeful that within a year's time we will be able to get rid of the people who are putting those poison pills in the bottle. In that way, there will not be poison pills in the future, and there will be a government in this place that would be able to correct some of the concerns that I know the member has, as we do.

The fact of the matter is that those who are impacted by cyberbullying right now cannot wait a year. It is a difficult call, but it is a judgment call that we in the Liberal Party believe has to be made. We tried and fought hard to split the bill so that we could vote against those aspects, but we see the need for the cyberbullying part. It is a judgment call, and it is all about taking the right kind of leadership position.

I can assure everyone that the Liberal Party is up for providing leadership to Canada and Canadians, and we are going to vote in support of the cyberbullying side.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin I would like to confirm that I will be splitting my time with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour.

It is great to follow on the heels of the member for Malpeque. We certainly appreciate his reluctant support, far more than we appreciate their responsible neutrality on other issues in this place.

It is a great opportunity to stand and be part of a government that understands the needs and challenges of Canadians. That government gives us lowly backbenchers an opportunity to speak in the House, which I know the member for Malpeque also has a tremendous amount of disdain for.

I am pleased to speak today about Bill C-13, the protecting Canadians from online crime act, which proposes key amendments to the Criminal Code, the Competition Act, and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act in order to bring them up to date with 21st century technologies.

The bill is both timely and vitally important. We so frequently remark that the world is getting smaller and smaller by the day that it is just a cliché. The barriers that distance used to create between people are becoming less and less relevant as technology advances.

The advent of the Internet, e-mail, web addresses, and all this technology has meant that we can stay connected from almost anywhere in the world. These technologies have obviously brought about incredible opportunities for Canadians. It is increasingly possible for Canadians to conduct business easily and efficiently on a global scale. We can keep in touch with our loved ones while pursuing opportunities in distant lands. We can learn about the world we live in by using the vast resources available on the Internet today.

It is not an understatement to say that these new technologies have changed the way we live. Unfortunately, some of them have also changed the way crimes are being committed and the kinds of evidence that are left behind. These technologies have made it possible to commit crimes that transcend geographical borders. Existing methods of investigating just will not work in this environment, and no country can conduct these kinds of cross-border investigations without co-operation from other countries.

That is why Bill C-13 is so important. It would provide police with the tools they need to investigate not only crimes committed here in Canada but also transnational crimes. Crucially, Bill C-13 would allow Canada to ratify the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime.

This convention is the only international treaty that is specifically designed to provide a standard set of legal tools to help in the investigation and prosecution of computer and Internet-based crime as well as more general crimes involving electronic devices. It would also assist parties to the convention by providing them with a mechanism for international co-operation. Canadian police will be able to access the Criminal Code's new investigative tools in appropriate cases and coordinate with other countries for transnational investigations.

I would like to focus my remarks on the convention.

The convention facilitates national and transnational investigations by requiring three principal things. It will require a minimum standard of offences, it will require a minimum standard of investigative tools, and it will require a point of contact in each country that is available 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

The convention requires signatory states to adopt a minimum set of standard offences for computer-related crimes. For instance, the convention requires that countries criminalize certain illegal uses of computers, such as hacking. It also requires that all participating countries criminalize illegal interception, data interference, system interference, misuse of devices, and, of course, child pornography. These measures will help to reduce the overall incidence of computer crime by deterring the use of the states parties to the convention as safe havens for criminal purposes.

It is important to note that Canada already has a great set of offences to combat cybercrime. However, Bill C-13 is designed to fill the gaps that remain, and I can assure members that those are very few.

Ensuring that all state parties have laws that are similar would allow for better co-operation in the investigation and prosecution of crimes that have connections to multiple jurisdictions. To this end, the Convention on Cybercrime would assist to ensure that convention partners would have compatible cybercrime-related offences.

However, the convention does not just deal with crimes themselves. The convention also deals with the investigation of crime. Computer crimes that transcend national boundaries often leave behind digital evidence in multiple locations. The nature of investigations is changing, both in technique and in scope. The convention would ensure that participating countries would have the tools they need to combat cybercrime at home, and equally important, that they would be able to assist each other in the investigation and prosecution of crime at a multi-jurisdictional level.

For instance, participating nations would be required to adopt tools that would facilitate the tracing of communications and would be able to order the production of data related to the routing of telecommunications.

The bill contains amendments that would provide for such things, including preservation orders and demands. These powers would require the computer data that would be vital to an investigation to be preserved from destruction so police would have the time to obtain the warrants or orders to obtain that data.

Importantly, the convention requires participating nations to have readily identifiable contacts to increase communication and co-operation on investigations. Specifically, it requires that each country designate a point of contact that would be available 24/7 to give immediate assistance to those kinds of investigations.

Knowing who to call in another country can make all the difference to an investigation involving electronic evidence where time is literally of the essence. For example, in the time it may take to identify the responsible foreign authority, information important to an investigation could be lost forever.

Becoming a real party to the convention on cybercrime is all about that. It is about ensuring that Canadian investigators have all the tools they need at their disposal to conduct efficient and effective investigations, both in Canada and in the context of investigations that reach beyond our borders. It is about ensuring that we are not in the fight against cybercrime alone. It is about taking responsibility for our role as a nation in transnational crime, supporting transnational investigation and benefiting from the assistance of our international partners in return.

I hope all members will support this bill so Canada can join its partners in making the world a safer place.

Finally, it should be noted that Canada is the only G7 country that has not has not yet ratified the Convention on Cybercrime. Further, all countries, including Canada, publicly endorsed the convention for its substantive and procedural framework. It is a model for international co-operation. All of Canada's main partners recognize the convention as a foundation on which international co-operation can be facilitated. Canada's ratification of the convention would extend the reach of Canadian law enforcement across the globe and enhance our ability to better protect Canadians.

We need to do our part and encourage other countries to join us in rising to these important challenges. Ratification of the Convention on Cybercrime is a necessary step in that direction, and Bill C-13 would enable that.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the bill has been a long time coming. I just do not understand why the Conservative government was so slow in moving it forward. We proposed amendments during the process, but they were rejected. That could have moved the bill forward much more quickly.

In the past as well, our member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour presented Bill C-540. A number of the elements that are in the beginning of Bill C-13 were in fact in his private member's bill, but the government side rejected it.

Why did the member vote against Bill C-540?

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague mentioned the speed at which this bill could have progressed through the House and the parliamentary process. While I indicated in my speech that we were the only country left to sign the convention, we encourage other nations to step up and do their part.

It is also important that we ensure we get this legislation right, not only within the context of the convention but also within the context of a Canadian need, within the context of our realities and our own challenges, with the advent of cybercrime, with the evolution of technology and with the increasing complexity and complete and increasing sophistication that both the perpetrators of these crimes possess and demonstrate and the tools that our law enforcement community needs.

It was clearly important for our government to ensure we got this legislation right and that we were able to involve our stakeholders and our law enforcement partners in this decision. It was important to ensure that the tools we provided them in this legislation were the ones that would be effective and would work.

I certainly hope the member opposite and his party will join us in moving this legislation forward now at the right pace, with the right tools and the right support services that will help end this problem.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment and Social Development]

Mr. Speaker, this has been a huge and impactful issue for young people in my riding of Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley. As a former school principal, I have seen first hand the damage that cyberbullying can do, and continues to do, to our young people. Unfortunately, in my riding we have had over four young people commit suicide, in part or in full due to cyberbullying because they were being tortured online, sometimes by adults, sometimes by peers within their own school community.

I had the opportunity to sit with the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness a couple of summers ago and with the parents of children who had committed suicide due to ongoing persecution online, many times by their peers.

We absolutely have to take hold of this issue. I give credit to the minister for bringing this legislation forward. It is very needed. I am proud of the fact our government has stood in support of our young people across the country.

Would the hon. member inform the House why it is so important that we pass this legislation as quickly as possible so we can step up and protect our children?

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, online cyberbullying and cyberbullying generally is prolific right across North America. In fact, reports and statistics are clear that the vast majority of bullying is going on over the Internet and with other forms of electronic tools. Unfortunately, the impact on our youth in our school system is the single greatest effect. It is affecting attendance rates, the health and well-being of our young people, and their self-esteem.

As the parliamentary secretary indicated, in some cases it leads to very sad and tragic consequences. That cannot be overlooked by any member of the House of Commons. The seriousness of this cannot be overlooked by any party. It is one component of this legislation, but I think we would all argue in this place that probably the most important part of it is the cyberbullying component.

I am grateful the parliamentary secretary raised that point. We need to get this through the House to ensure we protect Canadian young people from these types of crimes.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour and for Western Economic Diversification]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join this important debate on a Friday before Thanksgiving. I would also like to wish everyone here a happy Thanksgiving and a productive constituency week.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in support of Bill C-13, which is the protecting Canadians from online crime act. This bill would give enforcement officials the tools to conduct their investigations in a world that has moved from old fashioned telephone calls and snail mail to a constantly evolving telecommunications environment.

I might date myself a bit, but I remember in the late 1980s, early 1990s, learning about the Internet. If we look at what has happened since then, we had giant computers and now most of us sit here with our smartphones and small iPads. There has been an amazing change in the world, and to be quite frank, our tools have not kept up with these enormous changes.

Although the primary objective of Bill C-13 is to ensure that the criminal justice system is able to keep pace with this new environment, as well as changing the nature of how criminals operate, the government has to be attentive to the privacy intrusive character of investigative techniques. This is what I will focus my remarks on today.

The media, through some commentators, has characterized Bill C-13 as bad for the privacy of Canadians. To be quite frank, that is not accurate. Bill C-13 would enhance the privacy protections for Canadians.

While a police investigative tool, such as a search warrant or production order will naturally impact upon a person's privacy, all the amendments included in Bill C-13 have been very carefully crafted to balance the pressing need to provide police forces with the effective investigative tools they need in the current environment with the constitutional imperative to protect the rights of Canadians to a reasonable expectation of privacy. A good term for that is “privacy with precision”.

The Criminal Code already contains several tools that allow police to obtain evidence of crimes. For example, there are judicial warrant provisions to allow police forces to collect evidence themselves in real time, such as through tracking of a person. There is also judicial production orders, which allow the police to ask a third party to produce certain types of historical data or documents, for example, a record of phone calls.

These current tools were designed and implemented before the advent of much of the technology and social media that we rely on today, making them inefficient in today's world and too privacy invasive in some respects. Therefore, the approach we have taken with Bill C-13 is aimed at ensuring that the privacy of Canadians is adequately protected, while meeting the investigative requirements by providing police appropriate investigative tools that have been judicially authorized for specific investigative needs.

For example, C-13 would create new types of production orders to obtain specific information of a less personal nature, such as the path of a telecommunication, rather than relying on the current general production order, which allows access to all types of information, including those of a more personal nature, such as the content of the data that has been stored on a computer.

Police officers today basically have access to only one means of compelling the production of documents and data in relationship to the electronic evidence, and that is the general production order. Whether they want to attain a library full of information on a suspect or one single piece of information, such as an email address, police officers must use the same judicial protection order. To put it another way, and I think it is more illustrative, we can think of a general production order as a large net that authorizes police to catch everything within reach of that net.

I am going to use a bit of an analogy here, coming from a family that loves to fish. If we think of the police as the fisher, the fisher would use this net to catch everything the net came into contact with, such as mackerel, cod and salmon. It would be appropriate for the fisher to use the net if he or she was authorized to catch all those fish and the fisher wanted to catch all those fish. In the same way, when police want all data and documents a third party has on a suspect, it would be appropriate to use the net, in this case, what we term the general production order.

However, let us say the fisher is only authorized to catch a subsistence quantity of cod, so that he may be able to put food on the table for his family. If he were to use a net, the fisher runs the risk of not only catching the cod but also the mackerel and the salmon, which the fisher neither wants nor is he authorized to catch. For this purpose, the fisher should be using a more precise and more specific tool. A fishing line and a jigger is a good example. With the cod jigger, the fisher can catch his three or four fish and be on his way without fear of over-catching or taking fish that he does not want or need.

In this vein, the new privacy with precision production orders in Bill C-13 provide the police with tailored tools that grant access to specific and limited information. The specific judicial production orders are like the cod jigger, only capable of catching cod, for example.

In the context of production orders, a specific production order would only give police access to a limited range of information that does not have an elevated expectation of privacy, such as historical data related to the tracing of a communication or historical data related to the tracking of a transaction.

The use of these specific tools provides police with the information they want and need to continue an investigation, while at the same ensuring that police are not over-obtaining the personal information of Canadians.

These new tools under the reasonable suspicion standard have been crafted to reflect the leading decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada and mirror existing Criminal Code provisions, some of which date back to 1993. I mention this because these proposed new production orders have been criticized for introducing the reasonable suspicion standard to the Criminal Code.

Let me be clear, this standard is not new. It has been employed in Canadian criminal law since 1993. On this point, I am going to go back to my net analogy one more time in relation to judicial scrutiny. One could characterize this as a resource issue for police, because for police the difference between meeting the judicial standard of reasonable belief and reasonable suspicion is the amount of time and proof they need to meet each standard. In this regard, we could say that meeting the standard of reasonable belief is more resource intensive than meeting the standard of reasonable suspicion.

For the fisher, this would be the cost of his equipment or his tools. The fisher must decide whether he will spend $100 on a net or $5 for a line. While the net would give the fisher access to whatever is in the sea, the fisher may really only want a few cod for dinner. The net would be overkill and could catch things the fisher should not be catching. Again, the fisher, for this purpose, should be using the cod jigger.

I apologize for the analogy, but I think if there are Canadians watching, sometimes those analogies do help make a little sense out of what can be some very complicated legal issues.

Conversely, if the fisher is entitled to a commercial catch and authorized to catch a certain tonnage, he would probably prefer to use the net.

For the police, it is more appropriate for them to provide more proof to the courts and to spend more time preparing the application when they need all the data and documents related to a suspect for which there is a high expectation. Conversely, it is also appropriate that they meet a lower level of judicial oversight when the information they want is limited and less privacy invasive.

Before I conclude, I would like to emphasize that nothing in Bill C-13 would permit the police to compel the production of any personal data without a judicially authorized warrant or order. There are absolutely no provisions in the bill that would authorize the warrantless access of private personal data.

In addition to privacy with precision, the bill also includes other privacy enhancements. For example, Bill C-13 proposes to increase the threshold for obtaining a tracking warrant in situations involving the tracking of an individual's movements.

While reasonable suspicion would remain the test for obtaining a warrant to track the movement or location of things, the government strongly believes that tracking an individual's movements is a much more serious infringement on the right to a reasonable expectation of privacy. Hence, the legislation proposes to provide a more stringent test, which the police would have to meet before they could obtain a warrant to track an individual.

The Government of Canada is strongly committed to maintaining the rule of law through all of its legislation. It will continue to ensure that such authority will be exercised, bearing in mind the privacy interests and human rights protected in Canadian laws, such as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Privacy Act, and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

Bill C-13, protecting Canadians from online crime act, is a prime example of this commitment. Again, I would like to urge all members in this chamber to support Bill C-13 and to see it put in place.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the parliamentary secretary's speech. I want to talk about her fisher analogy.

She seems to think that this bill will not allow anyone to access personal information without a warrant, but does she realize that there is already a parallel system to allow any government agency to cast a line and a big net to an Internet service provider—which would be the ocean in this case—and to catch all kinds of fish?

That does not seem clear to my colleague. Perhaps the government did not explain all the details of the bill to her. I do not know everything, but I know that this provision is in the bill. I would like to know whether she likes that.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I need to reiterate that the investigative powers would be subject to appropriate judicial oversight. None of the lawful access orders such as, for example, production orders, preservation orders, interception orders and search warrants, would permit information to be obtained in the absence of a warrantee or lawful authority.

We have talked about how the world has changed, and I thought the New Democrats had maybe come along a little way toward recognizing these significant changes in terms of what is happening out there. Just yesterday, there was another example of a young woman whose intimate images were distributed without her consent, and there was a devastating impact. Again, I have to encourage the opposition members not only to support the bill but to really recognize the importance of giving the tools and moving forward in terms of making this a reality for Canadians.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, every year, over 700 million Canadians are subjected to bullying in one form or another. It happens most often on mobile phones.

The member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord introduced an anti-cyberbullying bill and the government voted against it.

If cyberbullying and protecting victims are so important to the government, why did it vote against that bill?