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.

Opposition Motion--Safeguarding of Personal Information

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague.

It has been fascinating listening to the Conservatives, because in their upside-down world, they are opening the door to widespread snooping and spying on Canadians but are somehow protecting their privacy.

I ask my hon. colleague about what we are reading in the National Post about the government's supposed fix, Bill C-13. We have been hearing from their tough-on-crime guys. It is all about the police investigation and the importance of investigation. We need to be able to investigate and go after the crooks, the perverts, and the crazy terrorists. However, under Bill C-13, the Conservatives' fix would take out the provision, the caveat, that enforcement agencies would actually have to be doing an investigation. It would no longer be for investigating crime but for anything that would help in “administering any law in Canada”.

It is the ultimate free ride for fishing expeditions, not just for law enforcement but for corporations. Under Bill S-4, corporations could demand information on our Internet use, as could public officers, which include, if we look up the definition, reeves, mayors, and even people who work for the Department of Fisheries, fisheries officers.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague why he thinks the government is so intent on changing the law to allow widespread snooping. Is it possibly because this is what the standard practice has become under the Conservatives' watch?

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand in the House this afternoon in support of the motion by my colleague, the MP for Terrebonne—Blainville, on this great opposition day.

It is a day in the House to be talking about privacy issues. This morning I had the privilege of speaking in support of Bill C-567, an act to amend the Access to Information Act (transparency and duty to document), put forward by my colleague from Winnipeg Centre.

This morning's bill and this afternoon's motion complement each other very well. Together they demonstrate to Canadians our NDP desire that it be the citizens of this country, not the government of this country, who are able to conduct their lives with a reasonable expectation of privacy and that it be the government of this country, not its citizens, that has the obligation to operate in a manner that is transparent, open, and accountable.

If there is a simple conclusion to draw from the sum of the whole day, it is that the current Conservative government has it backwards, upside down, and twisted all around. The Conservatives stand in support of government privacy, of, in fact, the necessity to operate free from the scrutiny of the citizenry of Canada and those they elect to hold the government accountable.

How, the Conservatives ask in response to Bill C-567, can they operate at once openly and honestly? If they are to tell the truth, it must be behind the curtain, they argue, in the dark, out of earshot, and away from the gaze of the public and opposition members of this place. On the other hand, they demonstrate no mere disregard of the privacy rights of Canadian citizens. They demonstrate an appetite, a voracious, seemingly insatiable appetite, for the private information of Canadians.

Much is made of the fact that we live in new and different times, with new forms of information and new means of accessing that information. There is truth, of course, to this, undeniably. I think all of us are alive to the ease with which information we consider private is accessible to those who want to put some effort, and not much is required, into accessing it. Our expectation of privacy is diminished as a result, simply because we know the ease with which we are vulnerable. Therefore, we see the narrative here being one of the need to modernize our laws to take these new circumstances into account. That does not account for the conduct of the current government.

The problem before us is not simply one of a government that has not come up to speed, that has failed to respond in a timely way to these new circumstances, and that has left exposed loopholes in the formulation of the laws of this country. That would paint a picture of an incompetent or slow, but certainly benign, government. No, the current Conservative government is anything but benign.

Confronted with a loophole for accessing the private information of Canadians, a benign government may simply fail to close that loophole. The current government lets through that loophole, fully, completely, and head first, with great enthusiasm and an obvious lust for what it might find on the other side. What we have before us is evidence of this lust.

Very recently, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Chantal Bernier, revealed that Canadian telecom companies disclosed massive volumes of information to government agencies, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada Border Services Agency, and provincial and municipal authorities.

Telecom companies disclosed personal data to the Canadian government 1.2 million times in a single year. We can of course concede that a balance is to be found between privacy rights, public security, and other concerns, including immediate danger to life. However, this can be nothing other than an indiscriminate fishing expedition of monumental proportions that the Privacy Commissioner has revealed to us.

These volumes equate to information requests with respect to one in every 34 or so Canadians. The vast majority of these requests are made without warrants. These volumes equate to a request for personal data, by the federal government to a telecom company, once every 27 seconds.

So great is the volume of information requests that one telecom company has advised that it has installed what it calls “a mirror” on its network so that it can send raw data traffic directly to federal authorities. Michael Geist, a digital law professor at the University of Ottawa, says this of what is happening:

This is happening on a massive scale and rather than the government taking a step back and asking is this appropriate...we instead have a government going in exactly the opposite direction—in a sense doubling down on these disclosures

It is easy to find further evidence of this doubling down, of this appetite for private information. One cannot help but note that Bill C-13, which is purportedly about cyberbullying, is more about lowering the bar on government access to information. The “reason to believe” standard is being replaced with a “reason to suspect” standard, opening up much greater warrantless access to electronic information. Moreover, Bill C-13 would allow a broader and lower range of government officials to have access to the private information of Canadians.

Bill S-4 will also be coming before this House, we suspect. That bill would permit non-governmental organizations and corporations to have access to information from telecom companies. FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, buried deep in the budget bill, would expose the financial information of about one million Canadians to the U.S. government, and so on.

In light of all of this, one could argue that there is a kind of naiveté to the motion I speak in support of today. Certainly the first part of the motion is easy enough. It is, in fact, all the Privacy Commissioner has requested. She has said:

I'm not disputing that there are times when there is no time to get a warrant—life is in danger....

What we would like is for those warrantless disclosures to simply be represented in statistics so that Canadians have an idea of the scope of the phenomenon.

...It would give a form of oversight by empowering citizens to see what the scope of the phenomenon is.

It is a modest enough proposal: at least let me see what it is the federal government is doing here.

However, we are also asking the government to close the loophole that has allowed the indiscriminate disclosure of the personal information of law-abiding Canadians without warrants. In so doing, we must recognize that we are asking the predator to restrain itself, to bind itself, to limit its own appetite for our private information, to guard itself. It has no such impulse, no such sense of constraint, as is obvious from the 1.2 million requests, by Bill C-13, by Bill S-4, and by FATCA.

Here is the very saddest part of this. As we engage with each other through the technologies of this modern world, we do so with some trepidation about how exposed we are to the prying eyes and interests of others, and part of what we need to be concerned about now, we find out, are the prying eyes and interests of our own government. Rather than being able to rely on our own government to support us and to protect our privacy in this modern world, it appears that our government is itself a cause for concern.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand in support of the official opposition New Democratic motion introduced by our superb colleague, the member for Terrebonne—Blainville. I should point out that I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague, the equally commendable member for Beaches—East York.

The motion before the House today reads as follows:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should follow the advice of the Privacy Commissioner and make public the number of warrantless disclosures made by telecommunications companies at the request of federal departments and agencies; and immediately close the loophole that has allowed the indiscriminate disclosure of the personal information of law-abiding Canadians without a warrant.

If we think about those words, and I know Canadians will think about the text of the motion, who could possibly not support this? Who could possibly oppose a motion of the House of Commons in Canada that the government should simply tell the public how many warrantless disclosures are made by telecommunications companies at the federal government's request and close a loophole that allows the indiscriminate disclosure, meaning the improper disclosure, of personal information of law-abiding Canadians without a warrant?

I would have thought that every member of the House would stand in support of such a motion, a motion that preserves and protects the very elementary privacy rights and expectations of Canadians everywhere, but that is not the case, because Conservatives in the House do not support the motion.

I am going to talk about how the motion came to be.

In summary, the motion addresses what we now have learned are rampant requests to telecommunications companies in Canada by various government agencies for Canadians' private information, often—in fact, normally and mostly—without a warrant.

We are calling on the government to listen to the Privacy Commissioner, an independent officer of the House, to make public the number of requests disclosed by these companies, and to tighten the rules that allow it to happen.

This came out of an access to information request that determined that at least one Canadian telecom was giving the government unrestricted access to communications on its network, according to documents from Canada's Privacy Commissioner. The documents were obtained by University of Ottawa digital law Professor Michael Geist. He cited at that time an unnamed telecom firm as saying that it had allowed the government to essentially copy the communications data moving on its networks.

I quote Mr. Geist:

Interception of communications over data networks is accomplished by sending what is essentially a mirror image of the packet data as it transits to network of data nodes.

Then the Privacy Commissioner's document states:

This packet data is then sent directly to the agency who has obtained lawful access to the information. Deep packet inspection is then performed by the law enforcement agency for their purposes.

“Deep packet inspection” is a method of analyzing Internet traffic to determine the exact type of content. It can distinguish between emails, file-sharing and other types of internet communication, and can be used to build statistics about an internet user.

This statement appears in the document prepared by the law firm Gowling Lafleur Henderson for the Privacy Commissioner. It summarizes nine telecom firms' responses to questions about law enforcement access posed by the commissioner.

Mr. Geist called this “an incredible admission”.

He asks:

Are there legal grounds for these disclosures? Who is doing this?

He goes on to say later:

Given the uncertainty of the enormous privacy implications, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is surely entitled to investigate this admission using her current powers under PIPEDA.

Documents subsequently released by the interim Privacy Commissioner, Chantal Bernier, revealed that the government made about 1.2 million requests for subscriber data about Canadians from Canadian telecoms in 2011 alone. Mr. Geist calculates that it works out to one request every 27 seconds, and the Privacy Commissioner's report showed that telecom firms complied with the requests at least 784,000 times.

This issue engages one of the most important values that mark our nation. It is a value that marks our democracy. It is cherished by Canadians, valued by Canadians, and expected by Canadians. That is the value of privacy.

The government exists to protect its citizens. It exists to safeguard our rights, our interests, and our opportunities, so when the government is actually found to be the source of secret requests to private firms to try to get private information about Canadians without their knowledge and without ever appearing before a judge in a court to demonstrate that the government has any lawful interest in that information, in my view that is a violation of the most fundamental precept and obligation of the government. That is what is happening under the watch of the Conservative government.

I want to go through a few facts here. Canadian telecommunications providers collect massive amounts of data about their subscribers. These are the firms that have been asked by the government's agencies to disclose that information to law enforcement agencies. In 2011, providers responded to almost 1.2 million requests, but the actual total is likely even greater, since only three of nine telecom companies told the commissioner's office how many times they granted the government's request for customer data.

In 2010, RCMP data showed that 94% of requests involving customer name and address information was provided voluntarily, without a warrant. The Canada Border Services Agency obtained customer data from telecom companies 19,000 times in one year, and it obtained a warrant in fewer than 200 of those cases. Significantly, one Canadian company has told officials that it has installed “what is essentially a mirror” on its network so that it can send raw data traffic directly to “federal authorities”.

The Privacy Act, which is meant to protect Canadians' privacy and keep the government accountable, has not been updated since 1983, before the Internet, Google, email, Facebook, and Twitter were even invented. PIPEDA, which protects Canadians' privacy in the private sector, has not been updated since 2000. Once again, that is before Facebook, Twitter, and social media had really taken off in our country.

I would think that if the government is really concerned about the values of privacy and protecting Canadians' rights, it would spend time in this place modernizing those acts and doing so in a way that is consistent with Canadians' expectations. Instead, it is doing the opposite. It has introduced Bill C-13, a bill that is expressed to be aimed at attacking cyberbullying, but which is expected to expand warrantless disclosures of Internet or cellular subscriber information to law enforcement.

Bill S-4, the digital privacy act, has been introduced in the Senate. It would also extend the authority to disclose subscriber information without a warrant to private organizations, and not just law enforcement agencies. It would also allow telecom companies to disclose the personal information of consumers without their consent and without a court order to any organization investigating a contractual breach or possible violation of a law.

There are many validators of the New Democratic position. New Democrats think privacy laws should be modernized and strengthened to better protect Canadians' personal information, not weakened. New Democrats believe that we can and should aggressively pursue criminals and punish them to the full extent of the law without treating law-abiding Canadians like criminals and violating their rights.

Privacy is something that must be judiciously and carefully guarded by every generation. We have people as diverse as Benjamin Franklin, who said that those who would give up liberty for a little security deserve neither. We have organizations as diverse as the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, who are joining together in their concern about the issue of violations of privacy and surveillance of Canadians' private interests on the Internet by the government.

I say that what Canadians want of their federal government is for it to protect their privacy interests, not be complicit in violating them.

For the Conservative government to allow 1.2 million requests to go to telecoms for Canadians' personal information without their consent, without their knowledge, and without a court order is something that every Canadian in this land would disapprove of.

I ask all of my colleagues in the House to vote for this well-thought-out motion.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to first of all thank the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness for sharing her time today. She gave an excellent speech on this topic and it is an honour for me to speak to this issue. I appreciate the New Democratic Party using its supply day that provides opposition parties an opportunity in every session a number of days to put forward any items they would like for discussion.

Frankly, in the past some of the topics that have been brought forward on supply days I thought were very much a waste of important time that the opposition is allotted. However, in this case it is important. It is in the news. It is something that has been happening in terms of information that is out there and it is important for us to have a debate on this and discuss what the facts are in this case and going forward.

There is an important balance required between privacy and the ability of law enforcement, in particular, to be able to do their jobs. The Conservatives have has put in around 30 measures since we have taken office to improve issues with privacy and access to information regarding this and it is always important to have a balance.

There have been a few misconceptions propagated in the press or in the House and connections with what was in the newspaper and Bill S-4 in the Senate that talks about PIPEDA and a number of other areas, but I want to focus on what is in front of us today. The main question is what type of information our law enforcement and intelligence agencies are requesting from telecommunications service providers.

The vast majority of those investigations were agencies requesting voluntary co-operation. Before we go any further, it is voluntary co-operation. They ask and the service providers provide. They are not providing all the content of what an individual may be using or looking at through their IPS or service provider, whether it is a cellphone or the Internet, but they are providing basic address information such as name and address.

A simple example would be this. The police could look in the phone book. They know where I live. I know who is on my street. I have lived there for 16 years. Police might come to my door and ask if so-and-so lives next door. I have to say “yes”. I voluntarily provide that information and that is basically what has been asked for. I do not give the police permission to go into my neighbour's mailbox, open their mail, and read their mail. That is not the permission we are providing and that is being accessed here.

I would not expect the police or anyone else to be able to go into my mailbox in my house. I am happy for them to come to my door to find me. I think that is information that has been out there for many moons, but they are not entitled to go into my mailbox and read my mail. They can if they get a warrant through the judicial system that allows that to happen. That is exactly what is happening here.

The world is changing. In the late eighties, early nineties, I worked for a company and I had what was called a car phone. It was on a post attached to the floor of my car. At that time, there were few of us who had them, but times have changed. Now 21 million Canadians have access to a cellphone, they are texting and it is a different type of communication. There is no reason why we, as the government or the police force or intelligence agency, should not be able to keep up with the times. How are we going to do our jobs if we do not keep up with the times?

Many of my constituents think that government is always behind the times, and some days here I actually agree with them.

However, it is not about the content of this information that is voluntarily being provided. If a company decides that it does not wish to provide it on a voluntary basis, then the police force, intelligence agency, or whoever is asking for it, is required to go and get a warrant or whatever legal document they need through the legal system to be able to have access to that information. I have no particular issue with this. Does any of this information require a warrant? Not if it is voluntarily provided.

I would say that if there is any further detail about exactly what somebody is accessing through their email, who they are emailing and all of that larger data, even as it is grouped, is not allowed. One needs a warrant for that particular information. Megadata is not covered in the voluntary aspect of those requests and they would still need a warrant.

I think members will find that the information that has been asked for and voluntarily provided is very simple address information. The parliamentary secretary indicated a number of uses for that information, and I think that is appropriate.

I can say that if I had a loved one who was missing or recently found and officials were able to contact me because they were able to find, through who they were dealing with, my phone number so they could let me know that they had found this individual, I would be very happy for the police to do that.

I had my home broken into a number of years ago and we had some property stolen. We voluntarily provided the police information to contact us if they were able to find some of our stolen goods. In fact, the police did. They found it at a pawn shop and they contacted us. They were also able to track down the individual who was in our home and prosecute the individual for the crime against us.

This is the kind of information that is now available and required. It is address information that happens to be in an electronic format. It is not on paper any more. It is not a phone book on paper, but in an electronic format, and officials are able to use that.

The justice committee that I chair is presently looking at a cyberbullying bill, Bill C-13. We are just embarking on that study and as of tomorrow we will hear from victims of cyberbullying. We will also hear from police forces and agencies that protect children. I will be interested to find out how they feel about basic address information being provided to law enforcement organizations to help prevent this kind of abuse and tragedy that happens to our young people throughout the country.

I have great faith and trust in our law enforcement agencies, as I think all of us do in this House. I am confident that our law enforcement agencies are following the law that is on the books presently. They are gathering information that they are entitled to, which is given voluntarily to help them solve crimes. For information that is deeper and more informative that they need, they will get the proper legal documentation, whether that is a warrant or other devices available to them. I have confidence in our system.

I have confidence in our law enforcement agencies. I believe it is important to balance the issues of privacy and protection of the public. I believe our law enforcement and intelligence agencies do an excellent job for Canadians.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my hon. colleague with interest, and a little surprise. This is a government that seems to be talking out of the both sides of its mouth. It first says it is just basic data that anyone can get in a phone book but that we need to do it immediately to stop all kinds of terrorist threats.

She mentioned ISP numbers and IP addresses and said that is ordinary; it is like looking in a phone book. I would like to quote Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, who I am sure my hon. colleague would agree is a vigilant defender of Canadians' rights. She said that getting government information on an IP address is not like the digital equivalent of using a phone book. She stated:

...customer name and address information ties us to our entire digital life, unlike a stationary street address. Therefore, “subscriber information” is far from the modern day equivalent of a publicly available “phone book”. Rather, it is the key to a much wider, sensitive subset of information.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague why this large subset of sensitive information would be opened up under Bill C-13 to so-called public officers, which would include reeves, wardens, fisheries officers, and mayors. Under Bill S-4, this information will also be turned over to corporations that ask for it through telecoms. Then the telecoms would be given blanket immunity not to tell Canadians. Why is it that the government is going to expand who has access to this sensitive subset of information on the private lives of Canadians?

Privacy

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

Mr. Speaker, Canadians were spied on 1.2 million times last year, and under the government, it is about to get a lot worse. Under Bill S-4, the Conservatives will now make it legal for corporations to call telecoms and demand an individual's personal information.

Under Bill C-13, peace officers or public officers, who are defined in law as small town reeves, fisheries inspectors and officers and yes, mayors like Rob Ford will now be able to call telecoms and demand our personal information.

It is like a massive fishing expedition. Why has the government declared open season on the private rights of law-abiding Canadian citizens?

Opposition Motion—Safeguarding of Personal Information

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I do take the member up on the first point that she made. All Canadians should be concerned about privacy. All Canadians may be concerned about it, but the Conservative government is definitely not concerned.

I mentioned two bills, Bill C-13, the bill aimed at attacking cyberbullying, and Bill S-4, the digital privacy act. Both of these bills expand warrantless disclosure of Internet or cellular subscriber information to law enforcement.

There is no oversight. The Conservative government does not have a grip on the laws of social media.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I stand in support of the motion by the hon. member for Terrebonne—Blainville.

The motion calls on government to make public the number, and just the number, of warrantless disclosures made by telecom companies at the request of federal departments and agencies. The motion also calls on government to close the loophole that has allowed the indiscriminate disclosure of personal information of law-abiding Canadians without a warrant.

To simplify, how many times have telecom companies handed out personal information about Canadians without a warrant to government? The government must find an immediate way to shut down the loophole that allows such personal information to be released.

We live in an incredibly connected world. Earlier this year I travelled to Tanzania, Africa, to tour Canadian development projects with a group called Results Canada. Its mission is all about ending extreme poverty, and I did see some extreme poverty. One of the images that will always stick with me is walking into a maternity ward at a rural hospital, or what they called a hospital. The maternity ward was crammed with nine or 10 beds, but there were two women in labour to a single bed.

The Tanzanians I met were the finest and best kind of people, a lovely people, but they were living with basically nothing. Still, almost every adult I came across, who could have absolutely nothing but the second-hand clothes on their back and be sleeping under a tree, still had a cellphone, and they looked at the screens as often as we do.

My point is that from Tanzania to Mount Pearl, Newfoundland and Labrador, my neck of the woods, the dependency on the Internet and on cellphones is universal.

Just this weekend I read an article by Stephen Hawking, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, on how artificial intelligence—and we are almost to that point—could be the worst thing to happen to humanity. It would be more or less the rise of the machines. I cannot even imagine a country being led by a robot.

Oh, wait; yes, I can.

Another article I read this weekend outlined how U.S. intelligence whistle-blower Edward Snowden has warned that entire populations, rather than just individuals, now live under constant surveillance. I do not know if it is to that point in Canada, but we do have some serious cause for concern.

Let us look at the numbers first.

In late April, we learned that government departments and agencies—the RCMP, Canada Border Services Agency, and CSIS, the Canadian spy agency—requested personal information from telecom companies almost 1.2 million times in 2011 alone. That is staggering. It is a jaw-dropping rate. As the previous speaker said, it is one request every 27 seconds.

However, the number of requests for personal information is most likely greater than 1.2 million, because three of nine telecom companies told the Privacy Commissioner how many times they granted the government's requests for customer data, not how many times the government asked for the data. It was how many times they gave the data.

It is reported that wireless telecom companies complied with the government's requests for customer data at least 785,000 times. The 2010 data from the RCMP show that 94% of requests involving customer name and address information was provided voluntarily without a warrant.

Here is another indicator or how often warrants were used or not used. Canada Border Services Agency obtained customer data from telecom companies 19,000 times in one year, but it obtained a warrant in fewer than 200 of those cases.

Do Canadians have a problem with telecom companies handing out their personal information left, right, and centre? Yes, we do. This is not 1984 or Brave New World. The idea of a Conservative Big Brother does not sit well with Canadians.

That said, it is generally understood across the board that police need information to catch criminals and to protect Canadian society. There is no time to get a warrant when a life is in danger, when a life is in jeopardy.

However, this is beyond that. At least 1.2 million requests for personal information, most times without a hint of a warrant, is a staggering statistic. The current Conservative government is paying to access our personal information, to the tune of between $1 and $3 for each request.

More than two years ago in this House, the former minister of public safety, Vic Toews, introduced Bill C-30, a bill to expand police surveillance of the web. At the time, he said “[You're either] with us or with the child pornographers”. That statement got the attention of all of Canada, and the immediate and appropriate backlash forced the Conservatives to back down, to walk away from the bill.

Since that outrageous bill was dropped and Toews was appointed to the Manitoba bench—but that is another story—the current government has introduced other legislation to this House that it says will protect the privacy of Canadians. In fact, the legislation may actually increase spying on Canadians without a warrant. The first example, Bill C-13, is a bill that is aimed at tackling cyberbullying and is expected to expand warrantless disclosure of Internet and cellular subscriber information to law enforcement agencies. Another example is Bill S-4, the digital privacy act, which would extend the authority to disclose subscriber information without a warrant to private organizations, not just law enforcement agencies.

The government has a bad habit of doing through the back door what it cannot do through the front door. The current government also has some hypocritical tendencies. On the one hand, the Minister of Industry argued that the long form census was intrusive, so the Conservatives eliminated it. On the other hand, this administration has no qualms and sees nothing wrong with invading the private information of Canadians and not telling them about what it is doing. It has repeatedly introduced legislation that would make it easier for Conservatives to snoop on Canadians.

Here is another example of hypocrisy. This country's information watchdog has said that it has been flooded with complaints that the current Conservative government is too often citing security in order to withhold documents requested under the Access to Information Act. The Conservatives are using the security excuse to withhold public information at the same time that the floodgates are open on the personal information and security of Canadians.

We live in an age when technology is advancing at an incredible pace and rate, yet the Privacy Act that is meant to protect the privacy of Canadians and keep government accountable has not been updated since 1983. That was before the Internet, Google, email, Facebook, and Twitter. Another act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, has not been updated since 2000, also before social media was born.

New Democrats believe that privacy laws should be modernized. We also believe they should be strengthened, not weakened, to better protect the personal information of Canadians. We also believe we can pursue bad guys and throw the book at them without treating law-abiding Canadians like criminals and violating their rights.

I will end with words from Edward Snowden, the former U.S. intelligence contractor, who said last week that state surveillance today is a euphemism for mass surveillance. He said:

It's no longer based on the traditional practice of targeted taps based on some individual suspicion of wrongdoing. It covers phone calls, emails, texts, search history, what you buy, who your friends are, where you go, who you love.

In so many ways, the Internet and social media are the new frontier. They are still the new frontier. It is our duty to ensure that laws and security do not fall to Big Conservative Brother.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of rising in the House on behalf of the people of Pontiac to support the opposition motion moved by my hon. colleague, who does an excellent job when it comes to protecting the privacy of Canadians in the digital age.

I will be sharing my time with the wonderful member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl, who tells me that his riding is the most beautiful in the country. However, I have to disagree with him because surely Pontiac is the most beautiful.

The subject of this motion could not be more important: the privacy of Canadians. The good people of the Pontiac are as concerned as other citizens that the increasingly technological world we live in should respect the privacy of individuals. This privacy may be breached in all sorts of ways today, but governments, as well as companies, have a fundamental responsibility to ensure that they protect the private lives of Canadians.

To me, the privacy of Canadians is sacrosanct. We are a G7 country where democracy has been stable, and we have a duty to our fellow citizens in this regard. However, we must remain constantly vigilant when the government begins to creep into the lives of Canadians. This is a slippery slope in any democracy, and certain inherent dangers exist in the sharing of private information with the government. This begs the question: what limits are imposed on governments today when they request information that is not voluntarily given by Canadians?

We have learned recently that Canadian law enforcement agencies have begun to request massive amounts of information on Canadians from telecommunications companies. Due to advances in technology, it is the telecommunications sector, and providers in particular, who collect massive amounts of data about their subscribers.

What is worrying is that this is not the first time we have heard this. In 2011, according to the Privacy Commissioner, telecommunications providers responded to 1,193,630 requests for the personal information of Canadians. That is an average of one request every 27 seconds. This does not even cover it, since only three of the nine major telecom companies actually informed the commissioner's office of how many times they granted the government's request for consumer data.

Of this staggering number of requests, figures provided to the office in late 2011 show that wireless telecom companies complied with the government's request for customer data, and the vast majority of these requests were done without a warrant or even information sent to the individuals concerned. No consent was sought, and no consent was given.

The situation is so bad, and so many requests have been made, that one major company actually had to install a mirror of their data on a network so that it could send this raw data traffic directly to the federal authorities requesting it.

A concerted government response is clearly required and urgently needed to protect the privacy of Canadians. Instead, seemingly to have an increased amount of information on Canadians, the government has actually eroded the protection of the privacy of Canadians since it formed government. Whether this has been on purpose or by accident, we can judge the consequences.

For example, it has consistently refused to update any of the laws that keep the government accountable with regard to the privacy information of Canadians. The privacy laws have not been updated since the 1980s. That was before Facebook. In fact, the Internet was in its infancy back then. We have to do better.

By allowing thousands of breaches of personal information, the government has also consistently shown itself to be incapable of adequately protecting Canadians' privacy within its own departments, as we have seen with the recent Heartbleed situation or as one can recall from the letter debacle at the CRA. Contradictions abound, because under the pretext of protecting the privacy of Canadians and while decrying heavy-handed government, the industry minister argued that the long form census was intrusive and eliminated it, yet the government sees nothing wrong with invading Canadians' private information without a warrant and without even telling them.

It has repeatedly introduced legislation that makes it easier for Conservatives and the government to snoop on Canadians. For example, we can remember the public safety minister's introduction of the infamous Bill C-30, known as the online snooping bill. Fortunately, Canadians were paying attention. They were outraged, and the government was forced to back down. Since then, though, Bill C-13, the government's cyberbullying law, though well-intentioned, includes lawful access provisions that would expand warrantless disclosure of information to law enforcement by giving immunity from any liability to companies holding Canadians' information if they disclose it without a warrant. This makes it more likely that companies would have to hand over information without a warrant, as there are no risks they would face or any criminal or civil penalties if they do so.

We can also mention Bill S-4, the new so-called digital privacy act, which would go even further and allow private sector organizations to hand over Canadians' private information. This again could be done without consent and without a court order to any organization investigating a breach of contract or potential violation of any law. This could also be done in secret, without the knowledge of the affected person.

We may, quite reasonably, ask why the government is not taking the privacy of Canadians more seriously. Where is the libertarian zeal that motivated so many of my colleagues on the other side of the House, the idea that government was too big and too intrusive in the lives of Canadians? The reality is that government has crept more into the lives of Canadians under the watch of this government than at perhaps any other time in Canadian history.

Many questions remain unanswered. The citizens of my riding would like to understand why breaches to their privacy are happening more and more frequently. The onus is on the government to prove there is enough crime or potential terrorism or other matters of national security to justify 1.2 million requests for personal information in a single year.

However, what concerns me the most is the lack of due process. It seems to me that when law enforcement agencies decide they want private information on citizens, at the very least there should be a good cause for them to seek it. In our current situation, that determination is assured by the warrant process. If a request does not meet the requirements of a warrant, then it should simply not be made.

Since I am short on time, I will skip ahead. Essentially, Canadians have a right to know who is snooping on them and how they are doing it. I just do not understand why the Conservative government does not simply come clean with Canadians and give them the whole picture of what is really going on. On our side of the House, we want this information to be provided to Canadians as rapidly as possible.

Canadians understand that law enforcement agencies need information to track down criminals.

However, the fact that the government is requesting Canadians' personal information from telecommunications companies without a warrant 1.2 million times a year is completely unacceptable. The problem with warrantless disclosure is that it is uncontrolled and results in information being disclosed much more frequently than is justified.

In conclusion, it is clear that our privacy laws need to be updated in order to better protect Canadians' personal information. These laws must not be weakened. We need to be able to take effective legal action against criminals without infringing on the rights of law-abiding Canadians and treating them like criminals.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-13, presently before committee, contains in it an immunity for the voluntary, secret, and warrantless disclosure of information by telephone companies. Bill S-4, presently before the Senate, expands the entities that can receive this information, so the two of them added together would result in greater lawful, warrantless, and secret disclosure of Canadians' subscriber information.

Does the minister not feel that Canadians have any right to know when and how their subscriber information is being disclosed to an increasingly broad audience?

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on his great speech. He mentioned that Bill C-13 will expand the abilities of government agencies and public officers, and even those of certain mayors and certain people in the fisheries department, which is somewhat odd. However, one thing it does is give legal immunity to telecommunications companies that decide to disclose voluntarily customer data.

Although this is a huge loophole in the law that we have created and today we are hoping that we can close this loophole through our motion, one of the things a telecommunications company might think before disclosing data is whether it could get in trouble, be sued, and so forth. That is the one little tiny threshold that we have in place right now. We are removing that with Bill C-13.

I want to ask my colleague this today. Is he scared that we might be creating somewhat of a quasi-governmental spying agency through telecoms?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today on this very important issue. The New Democratic Party calls for accountability and an explanation on behalf of Canadians into the widespread spying and interference of Canadians' Internet use and their cellphone use under the current government.

What we are asking for today is eminently reasonable. We are asking simply to ensure the powers of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the member who represents us as a parliamentary officer, who represents the Canadian people, and that she have the authority to ensure that the laws of this land are being followed.

Now, we have a government, of course, that will do anything it can to obstruct the work of the offices of Parliament because right now the offices of Parliament are about the only bulwark standing in the way of the numerous underminings of Canadians' legal rights, and even the illegal activities that are being undertaken by the Conservative Party.

It has been said that one of the foundations of a democracy is to ensure maximum transparency for government and maximum privacy for citizens. However, the current paranoid and secretive government has flipped it. The Conservatives have maximum privacy for their black holes of administration where they refuse to answer the simplest questions, and they are getting maximum transparency on the lives of Canadian citizens to the tune of 1.2 million requests of telecoms last year.

Now that is a conservative number, and I say “conservative” in the way the Conservatives have begun to use this, because not all the telecoms bothered to even respond to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. That is a very disturbing trend.

What does the 1.2 million requests mean? It means that every 27 seconds someone from a government agency, who, we do not know; for what reason, we do not know; for what possible motive, we do not know; picks up a telecom and asks for information about the private lives of Canadian citizens, and gets it without warrant.

Let us debunk the excuses we have heard from the Conservatives on this.

First is the bogeyman excuse. Conservatives use the bogeyman all the time. The bogeyman is out there roaming the streets. The member for Oak Ridges—Markham the other day made it sound like his neighbourhood was a case of Shaun of the Dead. There are these violent criminals and terrorists all over the place and so the Conservatives have to be able to call up a telecom immediately to gather any information they need whenever they want it.

Those laws already exist and it is fairly straightforward to get information if a violent crime is occurring. However, we are being led to believe that the bogeyman is out there and the current government has to stop it.

How does the government define terrorists?

I think we should say that, in this whole piece on spying, we are dealing with the revenge of Vic Toews. I refer members back to February 2012 when Vic Toews branded the new anti-terrorism strategy, “building resilience against terrorism: Canada’s counter-terrorism strategy”.

The government was going to go after terrorists, which included domestic extremism that is “based on grievances--real or perceived--revolving around the promotion of various causes such as animal rights...environmentalism and anti-capitalism”.

If a person is against the Northern Gateway Pipeline, under the current government's framework, he or she is a potential terrorist. Therefore, the government can decide to follow his or her movements, as he or she is one of the bogeymen.

A concern about animal rights is not that of concern for animal rights such as our Prime Minister's wife who tells us that 1,000 murdered or missing women may be a great cause, but they are here for abandoned cats. The government is probably not spying on the Prime Minister's wife. However, someone else who might have concerns about animal rights, and it is in there, is a potential terrorist and worthy of picking up the phone.

One of the other excuses is that the Conservatives are not asking for anything that is not already the norm. It is just like picking up a phone book and looking up a number. Calling a telecom and demanding private information on Canadians is just like using a phone book.

The Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Ann Cavoukian, says that is a load of bunk. She said the following about getting even basic subscriber information such as ISP numbers:

...customer name and address information ties us to our entire digital life, unlike a stationary street address. Therefore, “subscriber information” is far from the modern day equivalent of a publicly available “phone book”. Rather, it is the key to a much wider subset of information.

Then the Conservatives say, “Don't you trust our police?” We certainly would trust the police. However, we also see that Ann Cavoukian has said that at no time have Canadian authorities provided the public with any evidence or reasoning that Canadian law enforcement agencies have been frustrated in the performance of their duties as a result of shortcomings in the current law. The privacy commissioners in their joint letter, also write to the Prime Minister saying, “The capacity of the state to conduct surveillance and access private information while reducing the frequency and vigour of judicial scrutiny” is the heart of the issue.

We all remember when Vic Toews stood up in the House and told Canadian citizens who were concerned about the fact that they were being spied on, that they were basically in league with child pornographers if they had the nerve to stand up for them. That was such a boneheaded move and it caused such a blowback on the government that they had to retract the legislation. Why would the Conservatives show intent on pushing that through? We now know, they were trying to legalize what has become the common practice. Their shadow world of spying on Canadians is not legal. Gathering this information without warrants is not legal. This is why they put forward Bill C-30, to attempt to deal with it. We all remember Vic Toews had one of those pieces, “The Minister may provide the telecommunications service provider with any equipment or other thing that the Minister considers the service provider needs to comply with” their ability to spy on Canadians.

That seemed like such a bizarre request at the time, but we have seen with the NSA and the widespread spying on American citizens and citizens around the world is exactly what Vic Toews was getting at, which is the ability to create mirror sites. The fact that we just learned in Der Spiegel that the NSA tapped the underwater cable network between Europe and U.S.A. to listen in on what ordinary citizens were doing on the Internet. The Conservatives have the same vision. They wanted to legalize that ability, and they were frustrated.

We are hearing the biggest excuse from the Conservatives. They realize the Vic Toews approach of accusing ordinary Canadians of being like child pornographers really did not work, but now they would reassure Canadians that they would fix it. They will fix it all right. They will fix it so that not only they will get to spy on Canadians, but anybody who wants to will be able to spy on Canadians: corporations can spy on Canadians, and all manner of very dubiously named authorities now will be able to spy.

Let us go through some of the issues on Bill S-4 and Bill C-13. According to Michael Geist, Bill S-4 will “massively expand warrantless disclosure of personal information”, because under Bill S-4, “an organization may disclose the personal information without the knowledge and consent of the individual...if the disclosure is made to another organization”. Not the laws of the land, not the RCMP, not anti-terrorism units, but if an individual is in dispute with a corporation over some contractual obligation, it can call their telecom, have their information handed over and they will not be told.

The Conservatives will certainly fix it. They will fix it to make widespread snooping of everything we do all the time perfectly legitimate for any corporation that just phones up and says it wants to know what they are doing on the Internet.

That is not all. Let us look at Bill C-13, which will give a public officer or a peace officer the ability to call telecom, demand information, and the telecoms will receive legal immunity for passing over this private information.

An interesting article in the National Post points out that Rob Ford will now be able to make these requests, because, oh, yes, he is a public officer, and under the act, if Rob Ford wants to find out what his neighbours are doing, interfering with the drug gangs in Rexdale with whom he might be friends, he would actually be able to make the calls.

The Criminal Code describes these peace officers, public officers, as including reeves of small towns, county wardens, who would be able to get information, and even people designated under the Fisheries Act. However, there is another element that is really important. Under the present laws, even with all this snooping that is going on, it has to be part of an investigation. The government would remove the caveat that says this snooping, this spying on the rights of Canadians does not have to have anything to do with an investigation. If the Conservatives want a fishing trip, if they want to keep tabs on them, they will be able to do so.

This needs to be dealt with. This is a government that is spying on law-abiding citizens and treating them as criminals, and it needs to be held accountable for this abuse of Canadians' rights.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague. I have great respect for the excellent work she does for Canadians on this very important file.

I would like to ask her about the spin we are hearing from the government. Conservatives keep changing their story about how they actually somehow care for Canadians' private information, and the Minister of Industry is telling us that Bill C-13 and Bill S-4 will fix the problem. They will fix it, all right.

Under Bill C-13, anyone designated as a public officer will be able to gather information without a warrant. It is in the bill. Under clause 20, what a peace officer or public officer would be in the Criminal Code would include wardens, reeves of small towns, sheriffs, justices of the peace, and persons designated under the Fisheries Act, meaning that the Fisheries Act would be able to get information from the telecoms about folks in Timmins—James Bay who are out fishing. Of course, mayors are included as well.

It seems to me that the government is now moving backward to actually legalize widespread snooping and open up snooping to all manner of people who have no business being able to find out personal information, what people do on the Internet, or who they phone.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague why she thinks the government is telling Canadians that allowing widespread snooping by wardens, reeves, sheriffs, mayors, and people designated under the Fisheries Act will somehow protect Canadians' privacy.

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

moved:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should follow the advice of the Privacy Commissioner and make public the number of warrantless disclosures made by telecommunications companies at the request of federal departments and agencies; and immediately close the loophole that has allowed the indiscriminate disclosure of the personal information of law-abiding Canadians without a warrant.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by stating that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Timmins—James Bay.

I am very pleased today to move this motion to ensure that justice is served for Canadians. However, I am very disappointed to have to rise once again to protest this government's extremely reprehensible actions.

I would have thought that, after three years, it would have finally understood. However, once again, the government has been caught spying on its own people.

With such ridiculous statements as, for example, if we did not support bill C-30 we were siding with pedophiles, the government has constantly tried to minimize the impact of its proposed measures on the lives of Canadians, all the while boasting and insinuating that it is proposing reasonable and necessary measures, which has been proven to be false by many impartial stakeholders.

The Conservative government called our assessment “speculation and unwarranted fearmongering” or a series of outlandish conspiracies made up by the NDP. After being harshly criticized by the public, media, and civil liberty and rights groups, as well as by privacy experts, the government finally listened and withdrew these bills or let them die on the order paper.

However, we still need to point out that exploiting the personal information on Canadians without reasonable cause and without a warrant is a huge violation of their privacy. I do not think I have heard about 1.2 million criminals being convicted of accessing personal information in 2011.

Last week, new revelations showed that government agencies and departments allegedly asked telecommunications companies to share personal information with them without a warrant. Not once, not a hundred times or a thousand times. They asked 1.2 million times.

We condemn this highly questionable tactic, since there is no legislative oversight to determine whether the government's reasons for accessing this information were valid.

Like many Canadians, I understand and support the need for security authorities to have the tools they need to fight crime in our country and to make us feel safe at home.

However, how can the government justify 1.2 million requests in a single year to achieve that goal? That happened in 2011, and the government was not required to explain what this information was necessary or how and for what it would be used.

When I think of the majority of Canadians who abide by the law and who could be affected by these requests, I find it unacceptable, disgusting and incomprehensible that the government is treating them like criminals.

The privacy of Canadians has been taken lightly by past Liberal and Conservative governments for far too long, and Canadians affected by the thousands of data breaches in government agencies are paying the price. To hear that the government is snooping on them as though they were common criminals when they have done nothing wrong is another blow on top of it all. Last week the government tried to make us believe these requests were made for public safety reasons, but let us look at the case of the CBSA.

In response to my order paper question, after reviewing the number of requests made from the CBSA in one year, we find that no requests were made in exigent circumstances. The 18,849 others were made in non-exigent circumstances. From these requests, only two were made for national security reasons, none for terrorism alerts, none for foreign intelligence, and none on the grounds of child exploitation, so it is hard to believe the government when it says that these millions of requests were made for national security reasons when the numbers speak a very different truth.

Canadians understand that law enforcement institutions need information to identify, catch and judge criminals. However, when the government makes 1.2 million requests for Canadians' private information from telecommunications companies per year, that is not just about cracking down own crime; that is spying.

The vast majority of Canadians are law-abiding. There is no reason for the government to engage in such broad spying activities. If the Canadian government decides to spy on its own citizens, it should do so only if it has reason to suspect them and only with a warrant.

If the law permits this kind of warrantless spying, the law must be changed immediately, and that is what the NDP is trying to do today. If the government needs a warrant to listen to Canadians' phone conversations, the same should apply to their online activities.

We understand that certain extremely urgent circumstances do not permit the obtaining of a warrant. However, the information we received from the Privacy Commissioner last week goes far beyond the imaginable: 1.2 million requests for subscriber data without a warrant is unacceptable and unjustifiable.

In Canada, we are very lucky to have a legal framework for obtaining a warrant. That framework protects Canadians and prevents abuses by the authorities. Unfortunately, there is a loophole in the system the Liberals introduced.

Today, the Conservatives are taking advantage of that loophole to spy on their own citizens. Clearly, the government is no longer in control of the warrantless disclosure procedures.

As I said earlier, the Conservatives' spying cannot be justified on national security grounds. Moreover, it is done in secret. The Privacy Commissioner is not even informed.

If the government had a real, viable motive for snooping on Canadians, it would have no problem whatsoever with warning Canadians when they were being snooped on, it would have no issue working with the OPC, and it would strengthen our laws to better protect Canadians against these types of abuses.

We do not know why, how often or how long the government has been spying. What is even more incredible is that the Conservatives have long been trying to expand the legal framework around requesting information without a warrant. If the government decides to spy on Canadians, there should be just cause, it should be overseen by the courts and it should happen only under exceptional circumstances.

What is even more ridiculous than the government's unwillingness to protect Canadians' privacy is its complete lack of understanding about the scope of the problem. Just last week, the Privy Council Office asked that all departments provide details about the number of personal information requests submitted to various telecommunications companies over the past three years.

That proves that the government has abused the loophole in the law to the point where it has lost control of its departments on this issue.

The Conservatives have proven that they are unable to protect the privacy of Canadians. The Privacy Act dates back to 1983, before the arrival of the Internet, and PIPEDA has not been updated since 2000, before the age of social media.

Instead of strengthening the laws and increasing government accountability, the Conservatives are moving in the other direction. Instead of protecting Canadians' privacy, Bills C-13 and S-4 will increase the likelihood that the government will spy on its own citizens. From an ethical standpoint, that is extremely problematic.

With Bill C-13 alone, the government would expand the number of people who can make requests for subscriber data so that even people like Rob Ford could access our personal information. It would create legal immunity for voluntary disclosure of personal information and it would expand the circumstances under which personal information could be disclosed.

As if that were not enough, the government is using taxpayers' money to spy on them. Government agencies pay telecommunications companies between $1 and $3 for each information request. That means that, at the very least, Canadian taxpayers have paid between $1.2 million and $3.6 million to be spied on. I say that is the minimum because only some of the telecommunications companies have disclosed how often they provide information to the government.

If all of those information requests were justified, and if the telecommunications companies were not worried about disclosing their practices, I would likely not be making this speech today. Unfortunately, the Conservatives are trying so hard to hide their spying that it is worrisome.

What are they using all that personal information for? Can they even justify the importance of the information? It is clear that the government believes that Canadians are criminals because it spies on them without their knowledge, as though it suspected them of something. This motion defends the privacy rights of law-abiding Canadians, and it is meant to counter the government's nefarious attempts to get information by the back door.

Since becoming the critic for digital issues, I have risen dozens of times to draw attention to and criticize the alarming state of our privacy laws. Laws that are meant to properly protect us in the digital age should have been revised years ago and are now unsuitable for protecting the public and our children.

In my time as opposition critic for digital issues, I have seen not one but four different pieces of legislation introduced in the House that would facilitate government snooping instead of fixing the problem.

Canadians are worried. They are right to be. The Internet that they have known as an open and free space for social and political discussions is threatened by the snooping of their very own government. Law-abiding citizens should be able to benefit from the Internet without the threat of being treated like common criminals.

I ask all my colleagues to vote in favour of our motion in order to restore Canadians' trust in matters concerning the protection of their privacy and of the Internet as the social and political tool it should be.

Privacy

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, quite frankly, I am not surprised to see the Conservatives stooping so low, as they typically do, on an issue as serious as cyberbullying.

This bill has been before the House for months now. Canadians want transparency on how their personal information is being handled. They do not want political games or troubling provisions on electronic surveillance brought in through the back door in a bill on cyberbullying.

Why are the Conservatives afraid of debating their own provisions on surveillance in Bill C-13?