Bill C-51 (Historical)

Anti-terrorism Act, 2015

An Act to enact the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act and the Secure Air Travel Act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts

Part 1 enacts the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, which authorizes Government of Canada institutions to disclose information to Government of Canada institutions that have jurisdiction or responsibilities in respect of activities that undermine the security of Canada. It also makes related amendments to other Acts.
Part 2 enacts the Secure Air Travel Act in order to provide a new legislative framework for identifying and responding to persons who may engage in an act that poses a threat to transportation security or who may travel by air for the purpose of committing a terrorism offence. That Act authorizes the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to establish a list of such persons and to direct air carriers to take a specific action to prevent the commission of such acts. In addition, that Act establishes powers and prohibitions governing the collection, use and disclosure of information in support of its administration and enforcement. That Act includes an administrative recourse process for listed persons who have been denied transportation in accordance with a direction from the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and provides appeal procedures for persons affected by any decision or action taken under that Act. That Act also specifies punishment for contraventions of listed provisions and authorizes the Minister of Transport to conduct inspections and issue compliance orders. Finally, this Part makes consequential amendments to the Aeronautics Act and the Canada Evidence Act.
Part 3 amends the Criminal Code to, with respect to recognizances to keep the peace relating to a terrorist activity or a terrorism offence, extend their duration, provide for new thresholds, authorize a judge to impose sureties and require a judge to consider whether it is desirable to include in a recognizance conditions regarding passports and specified geographic areas. With respect to all recognizances to keep the peace, the amendments also allow hearings to be conducted by video conference and orders to be transferred to a judge in a territorial division other than the one in which the order was made and increase the maximum sentences for breach of those recognizances.
It further amends the Criminal Code to provide for an offence of knowingly advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general. It also provides a judge with the power to order the seizure of terrorist propaganda or, if the propaganda is in electronic form, to order the deletion of the propaganda from a computer system.
Finally, it amends the Criminal Code to provide for the increased protection of witnesses, in particular of persons who play a role in respect of proceedings involving security information or criminal intelligence information, and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 4 amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act to permit the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to take, within and outside Canada, measures to reduce threats to the security of Canada, including measures that are authorized by the Federal Court. It authorizes the Federal Court to make an assistance order to give effect to a warrant issued under that Act. It also creates new reporting requirements for the Service and requires the Security Intelligence Review Committee to review the Service’s performance in taking measures to reduce threats to the security of Canada.
Part 5 amends Divisions 8 and 9 of Part 1 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to, among other things,
(a) define obligations related to the provision of information in proceedings under that Division 9;
(b) authorize the judge, on the request of the Minister, to exempt the Minister from providing the special advocate with certain relevant information that has not been filed with the Federal Court, if the judge is satisfied that the information does not enable the person named in a certificate to be reasonably informed of the case made by the Minister, and authorize the judge to ask the special advocate to make submissions with respect to the exemption; and
(c) allow the Minister to appeal, or to apply for judicial review of, any decision requiring the disclosure of information or other evidence if, in the Minister’s opinion, the disclosure would be injurious to national security or endanger the safety of any person.

Motions in Amendment

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

moved:

Mlotion No. 1

That Bill C-59 be amended by deleting the short title.

Motion No. 2

That Bill C-59, in Clause 49.1, be amended:

(a) by replacing lines 13 to 15 on page 43 with the following:

“3 (1) The Governor in Council must issue written directions to all deputy heads prohibiting”

(b) by deleting line 25 on page 43 to line 2 on page 44.

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the third motion, which pertained to one of my amendments, was not selected by the Chair, but I will still come back to the important points about it in a few moments. Just because it was not selected does not mean we cannot talk about it.

We are near the end of what has been a very long road with this government on an issue that dates back to even before the Liberals took office. Obviously, we must recognize that Bill C-59 is the result of the Liberals' approach. On one hand, during the last Parliament they supported Stephen Harper's draconian bill, Bill C-51, and on the other, they claimed that there were a lot of problems with the bill. The Liberals told people not to worry, however, because when they took office they would fix all of those problems. That was problematic for obvious reasons. If the bill was so flawed, posed so many problems with regard to national security matters, and violated Canadians' rights and freedoms, the Liberals should not have voted to pass it, and yet that is exactly what was happening with Bill C-51.

Let us fast forward a little. After the Liberals were elected, they waited two years to introduce the legislation. They said that they had to hold public consultations. I will come back to that.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, used the power to disrupt threats bestowed upon it by Bill C-51. CSIS confirmed that in committee.

While we waited those two years for the government to consult, even though the election promise had been to consult on a specific piece of legislation, this was open consultation, or so it would seem. However the problem was, and many experts decried this, the fact that the government's green paper seemed to indicate, through some of the notions that were put forward, that some of these aspects were already a foregone conclusion. There was a definite bent more toward the side of intelligence gathering and law enforcement, and certainly a lack of substantive points being made in favour of the other side of that, which was protecting Canadians' rights and privacy.

Too often the Liberals, in the committee in particular, like to put the word “balance” forward. As we heard from representatives of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, when they presented at committee, balance implies that something is being taken away from one side or the other to achieve said balance. For us, the question of rights and liberties, and certainly the protection of Canadians' privacy, is not something that can almost be a victim of that type of compromise required to achieve said balance.

The other aspect that was not included in the public consultations, but that eventually became a central topic in our committee study, is the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE.

CSE, as members will know, is under the purview of the Minister of National Defence and its mandate is given to it by the National Defence Act. However, despite promises to no longer come forward with omnibus legislation, the Liberals have taken something that is the purview of the Minister of National Defence, something that the national defence committee has the institutional memory to study, all due respect to me and my colleagues on the public safety committee, and put it into this legislation.

That ended up taking up inordinate amounts, and rightly so, of time at the committee. These new powers being given to CSC and the huge change being made to CSC's mandate took up a lot of space and led to the most questions, not just from members but also from some of the experts who were there. Quite frankly, as far as we are concerned, many of those questions still remain without answers.

For example, there is the issue of CSE's cyber defence capabilities, as well as its offensive and active capabilities. The experts asked many questions on that subject. I introduced an amendment in committee to eliminate these powers, but it was not intended to compromise the safety of Canadians or our cybersecurity. We still kept CSE's defensive powers and capabilities in place. However, we had the right to ask questions, as I did with the senior CSE officials, though I did not get satisfactory answers, especially about what all this means for our country's military future.

CSE is governed by the National Defence Act, but it is a civilian agency, not a military one. However, Bill C-59, and now the federal budget and the legislation that the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness says will be tabled this fall, is opening the door to capability sharing between CSE and Canadian Forces to improve our cyber capabilities in a military context or even in war zones.

I posed questions to the chief of the CSC and other officials who were present throughout different stages of the study. I said that there was some debate in the context of international law as to what sovereignty meant in this digital age. An act of war is when one infringes on someone's sovereignty, but is a server part of one's sovereignty? What is the role that data is playing in this? Certainly, colleagues who work on the trade file had similar concerns that they raised.

I asked these questions in the context of information-sharing capabilities with Canadian forces. All I was able to get as an answer was that this stuff was already being done and it was better that it be codified in the law with all the protections, oversight, and review. Pardon me for being glib, but that all comes with that. However, it is not enough. If a foreign state actor, as the bill describes, engages in some kind of activity, we are talking about the Minister of National Defence having the capability to interfere with intellectual property and to be engaged in an active way.

In this era, when the federal budget is talking about more and more capability sharing between police and intelligence services, which let us not forget is what CSC is, ultimately, as it is not any kind of offensive entity but rather deals with foreign intelligence, and then to involve the Canadian Armed Forces, we are going down a slippery slope. This is not an issue I raise. It was one that witnesses raised time and again throughout this study.

Part of the reason why I tabled amendments, which were unfortunately voted down by the Liberals at committee, was to remove these elements, not because we disagreed, although they certainly are concerning, but because they required proper study. They should not have been part of omnibus legislation. They had nothing to do with the previous Bill C-51. Nor were they part of the public consultations that both the minister did and the committee did.

That is important. I know the answer I will get is that all the issues relate to national security. That is not enough. We need to be able to examine these issues more thoroughly, and that is certainly not the feeling we got.

Lets continue to look at part three of the bill that has to do with CSE. One of my amendments was unfortunately deemed inadmissible by the Chair, because it was too similar to another amendment I had proposed and that my colleague, the leader of the Green Party, had also proposed. The motion was almost word for word what the experts had suggested. It had to do with publicly available information. We will come back to this concept.

The concept, as it currently exists, is important because it gives CSIS and CSE the power to collect publicly available information. With respect to CSE, we were told over and over again that its mandate does not concern Canadians, since the legislation explicitly prohibits it from targeting Canadians. We must be careful, though, and we have to read part three of the bill, subclause 23 and 24, and the next few subclauses.

Subclause 23 indicates that, despite the ban on targeting Canadians, the centre can collect publicly available information for study and research purposes. In short, it lists a number of things to advance its mandate. Even collecting information inadvertently is allowed. This is very problematic.

We tried to do a few things to fix that. The first was to change the definition of “publicly available information”. That is because when I asked representatives of the CSC if the information that Cambridge Analytica legally but immorally stole from Canadians and others throughout the world through Facebook would be part of publicly available information under the definition provided in this legislation, I got a one-word answer, which is rare in these parts. It was “yes”.

What does my amendment propose to do? The Liberals said not to worry, that they would deal with it. They put in the words “a reasonable expectation of privacy”. That is good. That was part of my amendment as well, as was it part of the amendment brought by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. However, there is a whole slew of information missing from that. Allow me to read it to the House, since unfortunately it was deemed inadmissible and voted down by Liberals at committee.

It states that it would also include, along with information where Canadians have a reasonable expectation of privacy, “information that is published or broadcast only to a selected audience or information that is subscribed to or purchased illegally”, in other words, the prohibition on information purchased illegally. That is the problem with these amendments sometimes when one is reading them without the rest of the text that follows. Why is that important? It is important because despite the assurances that we got, there are a lot of questions about this. These are questions and concerns that some of the foremost experts in the field all have as well.

I also proposed an amendment for a catch-and-release principle, for information acquired incidentally on Canadians by the CSC. If it truly does not need the information captured incidentally, I understand it. That happens sometimes when one is going to study the information infrastructure in Canada. Therefore, we had a reasonable compromise, which was that if it happens, the centre has a responsibility to get rid of it. That was another amendment that was voted down by the Liberals on the committee.

I could speak at length about the CSE aspects, but I have only 20 minutes for my speech. It just goes to show how complex and worrisome the new concepts are and how we are far from having enough time to address them today. I would even say that we had very little time in committee as well. I have been in Parliament for seven years, and for the first time since becoming an MP, even though I can be quite verbose, my mic was constantly cut off and not through any fault of the chair, but because we simply did not have enough time to get into the details. I am not blaming the committee chair, who does excellent work on this study. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time for this conversation.

I want to come back to something more specific that affects more than just CSIS. I am talking about one of my amendments that were deemed admissible. Amendments that go beyond the scope of a bill can be proposed when that bill is referred to committee before second reading, as this one was, and the Liberals took advantage of that.

The Liberals used that opportunity to essentially present a new bill into the legislation dealing with the question of information obtained under use of torture, which bafflingly the Conservatives voted against. However, we do not have time to get into that today.

I voted in favour of it, for two reasons, but it does not go far enough, and we are going to get to that. The first reason is because the fact that it was even on the table was an acknowledgement that the status quo is not good enough, that the ministerial directives right now are not good enough, and that having these concepts more explicitly enshrined in law is always a good thing. Even though some of these symbolic statements in legislation sometimes seem to be only that, symbolic, they guide the decisions made and the advice given when these agencies seek legal opinions and so forth. On that front, it is a good thing. The other reason I supported it was because it is better than nothing. However, the language that remains is that the Governor in Council “may” issue directives to deputy heads. At the end of the day, we remain in the same situation we were in before. These were all recorded votes, so Canadians can check them.

Let me say for the record that I offered more explicit amendments to nearly every section of the bill that dealt with one of these agencies, putting in an explicit prohibition on using information that may have been obtained under the use of torture. Every single Liberal and Conservative on the committee voted against them. That is absolutely shameful.

Here is the motion that is before us today: that “The Governor in Council must issue written directions to all deputy heads..”. At the very least, even though we are still dealing with ministerial directives, that obliges the government of the day to issue the directions, even though we already know that the directives themselves have loopholes. Even if the current directives, I will acknowledge, are stronger than the ones in the previous government, there are still holes in them, and those holes need to be addressed.

It is sad to see that my amendments, which would have at least done something to prohibit the use of that type of information, were defeated through the committee process.

Speaking of my amendments, I want to mention one thing I forgot at the beginning of my speech, since I think the Canadians watching us will find it interesting. The government said that it was open to suggestions from the opposition. I suggested 120 amendments, and just four of them were accepted by the Liberals Three were accepted on the condition that I use the Liberals' wording, and the other was accepted because it was just a preamble. Not a single one of the Conservatives' 25 or 29 amendments was accepted. Not a single one of the Green Party's 55 amendments was accepted either.

The Liberals proposed amendments. Anyone can look at them, they are public. The Liberals put forward one amendment and decided to withdraw the others because they had an inferior one to replace them. I therefore proposed the Liberals' amendments myself, and they voted against their own amendments. That speaks volumes about the process.

I have just three minutes left, and I have only spoken about one part of the bill. I just spent 20 minutes giving a speech on the flaws of a single part of a bill that has 10 parts. That tells you everything you need to know about the flaws in this bill, not to mention the fact that CSIS retains its power to disrupt and to detain without any right to counsel, as was the case with the former Bill C-51.

Without mentioning that apart from changing the word “sharing” to “disclosure”, even though the word “disclosure” was there, what was qualified by groups like the B.C. Liberties Association, among others, as a cosmetic change at best to the information sharing regime remains in place. It was one of the biggest criticisms we had, and a reason for voting against Bill C-51 in the previous Parliament.

We will get to that through a future point of order, but hopefully we can vote on different elements of the bill. There are two parts that are good, review and oversight. Despite the fact that we tried to make changes to the review body to make it more accountable to Parliament and less to the executive, it was rejected. With the real-time oversight of the intelligence commissioner, we tried to make that a full-time position. I was not able to propose those changes, as they would require royal prerogative, which I, as an opposition member, do not have. Perhaps I can enter a final plea, although at report stage it is probably too late for that.

It is all too clear that, on the one hand, the Liberals did not want the Conservatives to criticize them for standing up for the rights and freedoms of Canadians and, on the other hand, they wanted to try to protect their progressive image in light of our legitimate criticisms that they have failed in their duty to protect the rights and freedoms of Canadians. Despite all the time we were able to dedicate to the study, despite the public consultations, questions from experts, criticisms from members, and a grandiose announcement that the Liberals were going to do things differently in committee, still, all of our amendments were rejected. The same system will remain in place and not enough improvements are being made in terms of what the Conservatives proposed.

In conclusion, it is true that we are entering a brave new world. We certainly know that in this digital age. I acknowledge that the threats are evolving and we need to address them. There is no doubt about that. However, one thing is for sure: right now, the ability of these agencies to act is outpacing the protections that Canadians have for their rights and freedoms, and their privacy.

That, for me and my party, is completely unacceptable, because at the end of the day, if we truly want to defeat these threats and what they stand for, if we truly want to stand on the other side of that terror and on the right side of history, it means standing up for Canadians' rights and freedoms. This bill just would not do that, and we will continue to oppose it. It is absolutely unfortunate, because we heard that better is always possible, but it does not seem to be with this legislation.

[Alison Irons, As an Individual]

Good afternoon Mr. Chair, and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to speak today.

My name is Alison Irons. I'm the mother of Lindsay Margaret Wilson who, at the age of 26, was stalked and murdered by shotgun by her ex-boyfriend on April 5, 2013, in Bracebridge, Ontario, two weeks before completing her graduating semester at Nipissing University.

My daughter's killer drove from Kingston earlier that week and followed her car from her tiny campus to discover where she was living. The day of her murder, he drove up again, followed her, and hid behind the house. He took four videos of himself on his phone preparing to kill her, and waited until she emerged from the house. He confronted her in the driveway and shot her while she bargained for her life, with pellets and slugs from one of the two long guns he took with him to ensure that he got the job done. He then took his own life.

She was conscious for a few moments, but in no pain, and told EMS that she knew she was dying. Imagine living with that as a parent. Mortally wounded, she didn't know that her murderer had killed himself beside her. She died about 20 minutes later at the Bracebridge hospital.

According to the pathologist, there was extensive internal injury to my daughter's heart and lungs. Her killer knew what he was doing. I'll tell you, as an ex-RCMP officer myself, that this is a lethal target known as centre body mass. Her right shoulder was fractured, five ribs were shattered to pieces. Her left forearm was completely fractured and left hanging by a thread, with what the pathologist called an avulsion of most of her left forearm, likely a defensive wound.

She had minor gunshot wounds to the back of her head, likely from the first shot spinning her body around, and stippling wounds to the lower part of her beautiful face. I'm grateful to the pathologist's staff for concealing these facial injuries with makeup, so that I could kiss my daughter goodbye for the last time.

I don't apologize for being graphic about my daughter's injuries. This is what guns do in the hands of the wrong people.

My daughter met her killer sometime in 2009 or 2010. He hid his criminal past from her and had plausible explanations for why he, as an adult, was living with his parents and seemed to have no real job prospects or tangible income. He was charming, articulate, clean-cut looking, and a recreational hunter.

There was no violence in their relationship, although he could be controlling and manipulative. She left him for the first time in 2011 when she caught him drug dealing. He successfully lured her back with false promises of change, but a year later she caught him drug dealing again.

In 2012, she was devastated when he contracted meningitis and nearly died. She thought that his illness was her fault for having left him. When he survived, she, as a person trained in disability support and out of her sense of guilt, tried to help his recovery, but by Christmas the same manipulative, controlling behaviours recurred, and she severed all contact. He stalked her and murdered her three months later.

As a career-long investigator, I researched his history. He had concealed from my daughter that in 2000 he was arrested by one police force for drug trafficking. Seven days later, he and another male kidnapped a third male from a residence over what Kingston Police believe to have been a drug deal gone wrong. They bundled the victim into a car, drove him off down a secondary highway, while one of the two beat him up in the car. He escaped by rolling out of the moving car onto the side of the highway, where he was rescued by a passerby, and taken to police. Had he not done so, who knows if the victim would have been murdered.

My daughter's killer and the other kidnapper were charged with approximately five offences including forcible confinement, assault, threatening, and at least a couple of other charges, which Kingston Police told me were related to drugs. Through an apparent plea bargain, he was convicted in 2002 of only forcible confinement and assault, through summary conviction. The previous drug trafficking charge was withdrawn. His only sentence was two years' probation.

Immediately upon completing his probation in 2004, he applied for and was granted a possession and acquisition licence. He privately purchased several guns, one of which was the gun he used later to murder my daughter in 2013. Through my own sources, I learned he had been extensively interviewed about his PAL application under the self-reporting model. This meant that he had been red-flagged in the Canadian firearms information system, what is known as a stage A failure, but this flag was then discretionarily overridden in order to grant him the gun licence.

Before he met my daughter, and again concealed from her, he was warned by a person in authority, apparently due to a domestic violence incident, that if he didn't obtain a pardon for these prior convictions, his PAL would not be renewed. Although this incident is recorded in the Canadian firearms information system, it wasn't coded by police in such a way as to precipitate a firearms hit or trigger a review or revocation of his licensing. Yet this warning suggests to me that his licence should never have been granted in the first place. CFIS also contained a conviction for impaired driving.

As Lindsay's mother I ask you how someone with adult criminal convictions for forcible confinement and assault related to drug trafficking, as well as an impaired driving conviction and a CFIS entry for a domestic violence incident could ever get a gun licence in Canada. How does our gun licensing system fail to properly take into account and weigh the actual context of someone's convictions and other CPIC or CFIS history before granting them a licence? Did he obtain the PAL and the guns for hunting, as he likely purported on his application, or did he obtain them to protect his apparently ongoing drug-dealing career over 13 years?

Our gun licensing system and process, particularly in the area of background checks, definition and validation of references, treatment of criminal offences, and the apparent broad discretion to override stage A failures or red flags, clearly failed my daughter. Please don't tell me that he just fell through the cracks.

Justin Bourque killed three Mounties in New Brunswick using legally acquired guns. Alexandre Bissonnette killed six people at a Quebec City mosque using legally acquired guns. Mayor Tory of Toronto has recently written to the minister for help since, due to tighter border controls limiting the smuggling of illegal guns into Canada, trafficking in legally acquired domestic guns to criminals and gangs is on the rise.

Since we couldn't even protect my daughter, we cannot say that bills such as the former C-51 and C-59 protect Canadians from terrorist acts, mass shootings, or lone wolf gunmen like the one who killed Corporal Nathan Cirillo on Parliament Hill, if we do not correspondingly review and begin to strengthen our gun legislation, regulations, policies, processes, and systems and close the gaps.

In the case of an applicant with convictions for personal violence, especially when related to other serious crimes such as drug trafficking, background checks must be more comprehensive and must consider the applicant's adult lifetime criminal history and the context of any crimes of personal violence. Definition of appropriate references for PAL applications must be more stringent and should not include immediate family members or those with a criminal record. All references for those with a criminal record for personal violence should be validated as to suitability, CPIC and CFIS checked, and contacted. An appropriate level of skilled resources should be in place to ensure that more comprehensive background and reference checks can be conducted.

Do I have just one minute more?

Customs Act

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague across the aisle to cast his mind back two or three years to the time when his party was outraged by several elements of Bill C-51. Regardless, he pledged to vote for the bill and amend it once his party came to power.

Now we are faced with Bill C-21, which is essentially an extension of that other bill. Bill C-21 could give Canadian citizens legitimate grounds to fear that their cellphones will be confiscated for the purpose of accessing their data and seeing if there is any information worth giving or disclosing to the Americans.

Is he aware that his own party promised to amend Bill C-51 and make it less intrusive?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would much rather see the Liberal government repeal Bill C-51. I think that is what Canadians wanted to see. However, we did not have that. Let us be clear about that.

With Bill C-21, there are concerns the Privacy Commissioner raised and brought to the attention of the committee. In terms of privacy and information sharing and the data that has been collected, what will happen with that data? At a time when we have so many concerns about data breaches and privacy, why would the government embark on a process that would allow for further information to be shared? If the minister and the government really want to address this issue in a fulsome way, they might actually start by repealing Bill C-51.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, would the hon. member not concede that the very thing she is complaining about in Bill C-51 is, in fact, being amended, improved, and changed in Bill C-59? Bill C-51 was the Conservative bill. Bill C-59 is the current bill that is being dealt with by this Parliament to correct the problems existing in C-51.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the member did not pay attention to my speech. If he had, he would realize the points I raised as to why the NDP is concerned about Bill C-21.

Specifically, at committee, this question was asked of the Privacy Commissioner. Let me repeat this for the member's clarity. During his appearance at the public safety committee on the study of Bill C-21, my colleague questioned the Privacy Commissioner on whether information-sharing programs implemented under the former, controversial Bill C-51 would apply to data collected at the border under Bill C-21. The Privacy Commissioner stated:

Yes, the information collected under Bill C-21 on people leaving Canada could very possibly be shared through the measures established under Bill C-51.

If that does not ring alarm bells for the member, it should. Canadians have already voiced grave concerns about Bill C-51, and now we would bring another provision that would very possibly allow further information sharing, which the Privacy Commissioner actually raised at committee.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to rise to raise my concerns in this place regarding Bill C-21.

New Democrats take the personal information and privacy concerns of Canadians very seriously. It is clear that since the bill was first introduced in June 2016, Canadians have become increasingly concerned about the privacy of their personal information, as we have seen numerous troubling situations of data breaches, unscrupulous data collection and mining, and targeted misinformation campaigns based on collected personal data, just to name a few things.

Just last month we learned that Facebook estimates that over 620,000 Canadian users had their data improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. In 2017, we found out that Equifax, one of the three largest credit agencies in the world, had been hacked and that the personal, financial, and identification information of an estimated 19,000 Canadians had been stolen.

While these data breaches were in the private sector, we know that these kinds of data breaches can occur in the public sector as well. In 2016, we learned of an employee at the Canada Revenue Agency improperly accessing personal accounts. We learned as well of the loss of a DVD containing the confidential tax information of 28,000 taxpayers in the Yukon.

Canadian taxpayers also had to pay roughly $17.5 million when the government settled a class action law suit at the end of 2017 over the loss of personal information for roughly 580,000 Canada student loan recipients that had occurred five years ago.

Regarding the data that would be collected under Bill C-21, Professor Wesley Wark, a security intelligence expert, stated that “There's been a lot of concern over the years in Canada and elsewhere about data breaches where various malicious actors—criminal groups, hackers, foreign governments—are going after information held by the Canadian government, and this big database will be an attractive target.”

It is our duty as elected representatives to take the privacy and security of our constituents' personal information very seriously, and we must ensure the utmost care any time authorization is given for the collection of their data. We must be even more careful when we authorize that data to be shared if we have no jurisdiction or control over what other entities may do with it.

Bill C-21 does just that. I and my New Democratic colleagues are concerned that the Liberal government is not taking the privacy concerns of Canadians and the recommendations of experts on these matters as seriously as they should.

We saw this in Bill C-59 and again here in Bill C-21. This bill would amend the Customs Act to allow for the collection and sharing with United States authorities the exit information on all persons leaving Canada, including Canadian citizens. Currently no authority exists in the Customs Act to collect exit information from travellers, including Canadian citizens, and there is only limited authority to question travellers departing from Canada.

Bill C-21 would be a significant departure from the current situation. When he spoke on the bill, my esteemed colleague from Beloeil—Chambly spoke about how the government continues to suggest that there is nothing to worry about, that this is just the collection and sharing of basic information, just information that is found on page 2 of a passport.

However, as I said, any time we are expanding our data collection, we need to be sure that we actually need to do so, that this data will be adequately protected, and that it will not lead to any undue harm for Canadians. That third piece is the most important.

The role of the Canada Border Services Agency is not to hand over Canadian information to foreign authorities; the role of the Canada Border Services Agency, first and foremost, is to protect Canada. Once the CBSA turns over data to the United States, there is no way to know how the information will be used. There is no way to know how long those records will be kept. More troubling, there is no equivalent to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in the United States.

In fact, when my hon. colleague, the member for Salaberry—Suroît, spoke to this bill, she pointed out the alarming surveillance that occurs in the United States, which the world learned about through the whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

As we debate this bill at third reading, given the length of time it has taken to reach this stage, we need to acknowledge and examine how things have changed in the nation with which we will be routinely sharing this information since this bill was first tabled. The election of Donald Trump has brought a very real anti-immigration, anti-foreigner streak to the highest level of office in the U.S. We see this not just with refugee claimants crossing into Canada at irregular intervals from the United States and hoping that the Canadian system will provide them a fair opportunity to hear their case, but in also in the numerous instances of Canadians being mistreated and profiled based on the colour of their skin when they were entering or attempting to enter the United States.

American authorities, emboldened by a president who pursues shutting down American borders to Muslims and building a wall to keep Mexicans out, have subjected Canadians to inappropriate questioning and profiling when Canadians attempted to make a routine border crossing. In fact, I rose in this place three times in February 2017, on the 9th, 13th, and 22nd, asking the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Prime Minister what actions will be taken to ensure Canadians will not be subjected to racial profiling while attempting to cross the border into the United States.

We heard about Fadwa Alaoui, a Muslim Canadian born in Morocco, whose Canadian passport was not enough. She was berated by the U.S. border guards about how often she attended her mosque and what her views were on the president, and was even asked if she knew the people killed in the Quebec City mosque attack. After four hours of feeling humiliated, she gave up and drove home.

The Liberals kept assuring parliamentarians and the public that Trump's travel bans and rhetoric would not impact Canadians, but the stories continued. We heard about 19-year-old Yassine Aber, who was a student at Sherbrooke University and a member of the school's track and field team. As part of the team, he was travelling into the United States to participate at a track meet. Mr. Aber was born in Canada and was travelling on a Canadian passport that did not expire until 2026. His parents came to Canada from Morocco over 25 years ago.

He was subjected to similar harassment for five hours. His phone was seized, and he was forced to give the agent his phone's password. He was the only person of the 20 to be subjected to this, and only Mr. Aber was ultimately refused entry. He was told he was not allowed to cross because he did not have a valid visa.

Canadian citizens with valid passports do not require visas to enter the United States. These were acts of discrimination and profiling, plain and simple.

It was also brought to my attention through the sharing of an access to information request that dozens of Canadians born abroad have had their card revoked for vague reasons. It is within this context that we would be passing and enacting Bill C-21.

In addition to the fact that there is no U.S. equivalent to our Privacy Commissioner, President Trump signed an executive order explicitly stating that persons who are not U.S. citizens are now excluded from the protections offered under United States privacy legislation. It is within this context that the CBSA will be turning over information on Canadian citizens to their American border counterparts.

Canada's Privacy Commissioner has expressed concerns regarding Canada's privacy framework. In 2016 he stated:

The issue is that if you allow greater information-sharing, the legal standards authorizing this activity should be such that law-abiding Canadians, ordinary Canadians who should have nothing to fear from surveillance activities of the state, are not caught by the information-sharing regime.

Canadians should also hear about the impact of certain surveillance measures on democratic rights and privacy. A more balanced and comprehensive national discussion is needed.

When it comes to the collection and sharing of their personal data, I believe that we would easily find that most Canadians have moved well beyond the idea that if they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about. Canadians are wary of their personal information being shared among government agencies and Canada's foreign partners because of previous acts passed, such as the Harper government's Bill C-51.

The current government's plan to collect and share even more personal information, without proper independent oversight of our national security agencies, is of great concern to New Democrats. The Canada Border Services Agency was never required to collect information on those exiting Canada, as that was the responsibility of the agency where the individual was travelling to. There is a real concern that Canadian authorities are being asked by foreign governments to hand over the personal information of Canadians. That should not be the responsibility of the CBSA. Our border agency's full purpose is to protect Canada, not to hand over Canadian information to foreign authorities. In the case of extenuating circumstances, where such information needs to be shared, such as threats to national security or criminality, the relevant police agencies, such as the RCMP and CSIS, are already in contact with their international counterparts. In these cases, existing legislation and practices are already applicable. Therefore, in many ways, Bill C-21 is a solution in search of a problem.

To date, the government has failed to truly show this House why this legislation is needed and has failed to provide real assurances that the risks of this additional data collection and data sharing would be properly addressed and mitigated. Given the current context that we would be entering into this new level of data collection and sharing, it is my opinion, and my colleagues', that Bill C-21 needs to be opposed.

During his appearance at the public safety committee on the study of Bill C-21, my colleague questioned the Privacy Commissioner on whether information-sharing programs implemented under the former, controversial Bill C-51 would apply to data collected at the border under Bill C-21. The Privacy Commissioner stated:

Yes, the information collected under Bill C-21 on people leaving Canada could very possibly be shared through the measures established under Bill C-51.

The Privacy Commissioner went on to reaffirm the following, saying:

As you know, I have commented on Bill C-51 as to the standard under which information-sharing is permitted. In my opinion, the standard established under Bill C-51 is too permissive when it comes to information sharing. I stand by those comments.

Once again, we have no ability to control what American authorities do with this data once it is shared.

As I illustrated in examples earlier, we know that Canadians are being impacted at the border by President Trump's rhetoric and policies. Instead of standing up for Canadians who are being targeted and profiled by Canadian border agents on the basis of their skin colour and religion, the Liberal government appears, instead, to be committed to offering to make the agents' jobs easier by collecting for them and turning over more personal data.

It is the responsibility of the government to protect public safety and to defend civil liberties. The government has failed to show that Bill C-21 would do either of these things. Until it is able to do so, the government needs to shelve this bill.

Public Safety

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 I rise today to table a petition regarding the former Bill C-51. Although the petitioners are from southern Ontario and not from my immediate riding of Ottawa South, I am tabling this petition on their behalf.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

The committee passed it, and we all know that it's just a random coincidence that the same language was passed by every committee, because a committee is the master of its own procedures.

All I will say is that my motion is identical to that of Mr. Dubé. It is to have a more timely review of four years and not six. I'll just say, if you'll forgive me one little moment, that on January 30, 2015, a Friday, Bill C-51 was dropped for first reading. I took it home with me on the airplane and read it, and I came back to Parliament on the Monday and said, “This is the secret police act and we have to stop it.”

I am grateful for the many changes that are being made here today. I wish we could have made more, but remaining vigilant to make those changes, I'd like to see the review period set at four years instead of six.

Thank you very much.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

In the interest of trying to get one of my amendments passed, I'm a bit in a jam, so I'm going to state for the record that, because obviously out of principle for this issue that I think is very important for the bill, my preference would be to have a vote on my amendment.

If you're telling me the wording is identical to NDP-96, which I believe is what you're telling me, then I can withdraw my suite, stating on the record that I'll consider them de facto rejected, apart from NDP-96, because we're not going to see any of the other ones.

If we were going to see some of the other ones, they would have also been presented with this one that's identical to NDP-96, so I'm just going to restate that I believe the counselling offence is already built into the elements of the Criminal Code that talk about the counselling of an offence, so while this is definitely a minor improvement over what was in Conservative Bill C-51, it certainly doesn't go far enough.

In the interests of getting something out of that suite of amendments, I'll withdraw them and let the Liberals propose theirs.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

I feel as if my amendment has gotten lost in relitigating the difference between C-51 and C-59. I just wanted to state, now that we've come back around, that the amendment I'm proposing that's before us right now is that I believe “promotion” is awful. I believe that the solution proposed by the Liberals of “counselling” is redundant, so I call for it to be repealed.

[Douglas Breithaupt]

Thank you. Quite a bit can be said.

The Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, did create a new offence of advocating or promoting terrorism offences and the commission of terrorism offences in general. This was to respond to a gap or uncertainty in the law. The pre-existing counselling provisions in the Criminal Code would not apply where what is being counselled was not a specific terrorism offence but any, some, or all of the full range of terrorism offences found in the Criminal Code.

In Bill C-51, the offence of advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general was criticized for using vague, overbroad, and potentially violating the charter because of its use of the phrase “advocates or promotes the commission of terrorism offences in general”. The government did a green paper consultation and has come back with a proposed reformed section 83.221 with the same intent but with wording to apply a well-known concept of counselling. Essentially it is the same thing. Counselling is the deliberate encouragement or active inducement of the commission of a criminal offence. Essentially advocating and promoting is the same thing, but counselling is clear to understand.

There were briefs and testimony before the committee trying to get clear on how the proposed revised section 83.221 would interact with the current offences of counselling in sections 22 and 464 of the Criminal Code. Some believed that the offence is superfluous and duplicates sections 22 or 464. There was some confusion as to the purpose of the proposed provision. The overlap was intended to give the prosecutor increased flexibility in deciding which offence to charge on a given case, having regard to the particular circumstances of the case.

Bill C-59 proposed, as you can see, a changed offence using a more familiar language, which is a counselling offence. I might just read it. Proposed subsection 83.221(1) says:

Every person who counsels another person to commit a terrorism offence—other than an offence under this section—is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years.

It continues, in proposed subsection 83.221(2):

An offence may be committed under subsection (1) whether or not

(a) a terrorism offence is committed; and

(b) the person counsels the commission of a specific terrorism offence.

Further to the discussions in the committee, and on further thought, the view that the overlap was intended to give the prosecutor increased flexibility was the initial design of the proposed offence or revision of the offence, but we've noticed that section 464 of the Criminal Code provides that, except where otherwise expressly provided by law, where one person counsels another to commit an indictable offence that is not committed, that person is liable to the same penalty as one who attempted to commit the offence, which is generally half the maximum penalty for the completed offence. In the case of life imprisonment, it would be 14 years, for example.

It would be potentially open to interpretation that, due to the exception in section 464, which is a counselling offence that is not committed, the proposed section 83.221 would cap any counselling related to terrorism offences that are not committed at a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment. This is a legal problem that could significantly limit the punishment available, but could be rectified by amending the bill.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As Matthew was just saying, there is no need to fix the language that was so problematic in Bill C-51, on advocating terrorism offences or advocating terrorism in general, or all of that. In Bill C-59, we're attempting to fix language for a section that is completely unnecessary and is, in fact, redundant to what we already have in the Criminal Code. As you noted, Mr. Chair, a number of my amendments go to this point, but again, it was the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, among others, who asked why we want to insert a redundant provision in Bill C-59 to something that's already covered in the Criminal Code.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Okay, great. I don't mean to attempt to do your job for you.

As we've heard from a number of witnesses who came before the committee on this bill, and as we heard throughout the debate on Bill C-51 in the previous Parliament, the counselling terrorism offences are superfluous because, as we know, the counselling offence is already in the Criminal Code. Since we've been very keen to avoid perceived redundancies throughout this process, I'm hoping to see support for this particular amendment and to simply eliminate those redundant parts of the counselling terrorism offences that were introduced and are still here in Bill C-59.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, going back to the fact that C-59 has not repaired the damage done by C-51 as it relates to access for special advocates to all information in the government's possession about particular cases, this amendment is put forward on the advice of Professor Kent Roach, Alex Neve, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. This one is to amend those sections such that the special advocates have full disclosure to all the information in the government's possession relating to security certificates.