Bill C-21 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Customs Act

This enactment amends the Customs Act to authorize the Canada Border Services Agency to collect, from prescribed persons and prescribed sources, personal information on all persons who are leaving or have left Canada. It also amends the Act to authorize an officer, as defined in that Act, to require that goods that are to be exported from Canada are to be reported despite any exemption under that Act. In addition, it amends the Act to provide officers with the power to examine any goods that are to be exported. Finally, it amends the Act to authorize the disclosure of information collected under the Customs Act to an official of the Department of Employment and Social Development for the purposes of administering or enforcing the Old Age Security Act.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Is it reasonable to think that Bill C-21 will improve our performance in protecting our citizens and our trade, precisely because we will be able to keep a better eye on what is going across the borders?

[Jean-Pierre Fortin]

The exchanges are good. Generally, according to the information that I get from customs officers, American authorities usually collaborate well. I myself have worked in a customs examination office with the Americans. They usually collaborate well with our officers.

One thing is for sure. Bill C-21 can greatly improve the quality of the information that we will be able to obtain. You once worked for the Canada Border Services Agency and you know that we have a lot of difficulty establishing any kind of analysis and profile of people leaving the country. This is going to help our officers a great deal and make their job easier.

[Jean-Pierre Fortin]

We are the country's first line of defence at our points of entry.

One of the elements that Bill C-21 seems to want to add is a role for exits. It makes our role more specific, gives us more powers of intervention, on goods leaving the country. That role is a little fuzzy at the moment.

[Daniel Therrien]

The purposes for which information is gathered and can be exchanged with other departments or with the provinces are being developed.

In my opening statement, I said that those purposes seem justifiable to me. I was actually talking about the purposes that had been established previously, which, as far as I know, do not yet include an exchange with the provinces, although that may be possible in the future. What I have before me at the moment does not include an exchange with the provinces. Bill C-21 basically includes the purposes I listed: the border, immigration, national security, law enforcement, and some federal social programs.

I am aware that these purposes could evolve. It is important for the government to consult us if and when the purposes become more extensive.

[Jean-Pierre Fortin, National President, Customs and Immigration Union]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today as your committee reviews Bill C-21, an act to amend the Customs Act.

My name is Jean-Pierre Fortin. I am the national president of the Customs and Immigration Union.

Our union represents Canada's front-line customs and immigration officers, investigations, intelligence, and trade customs officers and hearing officers, as well as support staff who work at the Canada Border Services Agency.

CIU has a long history of involvement in border security and immigration enforcement issues on behalf of its members. We seek to offer our members' operational insights to identify areas of concern and, where possible, to offer what we believe to be informed improvements.

Over the past decade and more, CIU has offered these concerns and suggestions to CBSA management and government ministers, and in appearances before both House and Senate committees. It is in that context that CIU is pleased to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security with respect to Bill C-21.

As committee members are aware, Bill C-21 is the legislation that will complete the implementation of the Canada-U.S. entry/exit initiative, which was itself part of the original 2011 Beyond the Border agreement and action plan.

At the outset, it should be noted that as the national union representing front-line operational law enforcement officers, we recognize that legislative and policy changes can have an impact on our members and the public we serve. We focus on what the operational impacts will be and whether we can actually deliver what is now being authorized. We also examine proposed policy changes and consider if they support and enhance our dual mandate, which on the one hand covers security, and on the other hand trade and travel facilitation.

Also of interest to us is the clarity provided in the legislation with regard to any new enforcement authority. Our members appreciate that they are enforcing public regulation of defined activities to support the public interest. In our experience, clarity supports public confidence.

Let me turn now to some specific issues that merit examination.

As you know, Bill C-21 will create new sections in part V of the Customs Act that will expressly authorize CBSA officers to gather biographical information from all persons who are leaving Canada, including Canadians. Proposed section 94 will create a legal obligation on persons leaving Canada, in whatever fashion, to present themselves to an officer when requested to do so and to answer truthfully all relevant questions, in accordance with the officer's duties.

The actual details on how that information is collected or provided to the agency is not specific in Bill C-21. Instead, this is to be prescribed by regulation. It is unclear to us why the government has chosen this approach. It appears to mean that these potentially important details will not be subject to the same parliamentary review as Bill C-21. The committee may wish to clarify why this approach has been taken.

Proposed paragraph 92(1)(c) also appears to confine the collection of departing passengers' arrival information to the United States. The committee may wish to confirm this with the new minister and verify if the new paragraph will result in a prohibition on gathering and retaining departing passengers' arrival information to other countries, as this is an issue of enhanced importance in today's security environment.

The committee should also try to determine how—or if—CBSA intends to use the proposed section 94 authority with regard to persons departing Canada at land border crossings. Presumably, the goal is not to create lineups for people leaving Canada. Lineups already exist for those entering or returning to Canada, primarily because of continuing personnel shortages, which is another critical issue for this committee to consider.

We would urge the committee to explore the issue of how CBSA will use the information it gathers and receives under the entry/exit program. As you may recall, a previous report from the Auditor General identified approximately 44,000 outstanding arrest warrants under IRPA for persons who have failed to appear as required. Will this information now be used, as we suggest it should, to identify those persons as having left Canada so the agency does not waste scarce resources looking for people who have already left our country?

Additionally, will this information be used to create a more accurate lookout database for persons who are inadmissible to Canada in the future, especially on past criminality- and security-related grounds? We urge the committee to raise this with CBSA.

The committee should also ask CBSA for details regarding its liaison arrangements with domestic and U.S. law enforcement to ensure that the potentially important intelligence that can be gathered by the entry/exit initiative enacted in Bill C-21 is shared, as authorized under Canadian legislation, including the Privacy Act, to achieve public safety improvements. It is our understanding that the government has committed to requiring privacy impact assessments for all involved departments and agencies, the status of which the committee may wish to confirm.

Another general area of importance in Bill C-21 is what appears to be an expansion of CBSA's authority to examine goods intended for export. Deficiencies in this operational area have also been noted by the Auditor General, and CIU fully supports this enforcement mandate clarification. The committee may wish to query CBSA with respect to what operational changes it foresees undertaking as a result, and how, specifically, these will impact the deficiencies reported by the Auditor General of Canada.

The committee should also be aware of the underlying cause of these and other operational gaps at CBSA, as the issue requires immediate attention. As a result of the 2011 deficit reduction action plan, DRAP, there has been a loss of over 1,200 positions at CBSA, including those of screening, enforcement, and intelligence officers. These cuts have led to reduced operational capacity, which has resulted in the closing of ports of entry and reduced hours of operation, as well as increased pressure on officers to process more cases. An example of this is taking place in Quebec and Manitoba, where our members are being forced to screen faster the people who are illegally entering Canada between ports of entry, to avoid backlogs.

We are concerned that while Bill C-21 creates appropriate new screening and enforcement tools, the intended result cannot be effectively achieved without restoring the 1,200 positions cut under DRAP. We urge the committee to raise this issue of operational personnel shortages with both CBSA management and the minister.

In conclusion, it is my hope that this presentation will assist the committee in its important work, especially regarding the restoration of the necessary personnel who perform their duties on behalf of Canadians and whom I am proud to represent.

Thank you. I am looking forward to questions.

[Daniel Therrien, Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Today, I am accompanied by Lara Ives, acting director general, audit and review, and by Rebecca Shepherd, legal counsel.

First, thank you for the invitation to talk to you about Bill C-21 and the entry-exit initiative.

The Beyond the Border action plan committed both Canada and the U.S. to the establishment of coordinated entry and exit systems for all travellers crossing the land border, and for Canada to establish an exit system similar to the U.S. in the air mode.

My office has held constructive and ongoing consultations with the Canada Border Services Agency, Public Safety Canada, and other various federal departments implicated in the various phases of the entry-exit initiative.

Since 2013, the Canada Border Services Agency has been collecting biographical data and travel history on non-Canadians and permanent residents principally for the purpose of immigration enforcement and border integrity.

The purpose of the bill before you is to provide lawful authority for the collection of exit information on Canadian citizens as they leave Canada, which will allow the final phases of this initiative to be realized.

The government has indicated that, at full implementation, the entry-exit data will help Canadian officials to better manage our border, combat cross-border crime, including child abductions and human trafficking, respond to national security threats, ensure the integrity of our immigration system, and reduce fraud and abuse of certain federal programs with residency requirements, such as employment insurance or old-age security benefits.

Collection of information in the land mode between Canada and the United States at a customs office is based on an automatic exchange between both countries. The record of entry into one country is considered a record of exit from the other.

In the air mode, Canada will establish a system similar to the U.S., under which airlines will be required to submit passenger manifest information to the Canada Border Services Agency for all outbound international flights.

As provided under the bill, exit information will include, first, the surname and first name, the date of birth, the citizenship or nationality, and the sex of the person. Second, the information will include the type of travel document that identifies the person, the name of the country or organization that issued the travel document and the travel document number. Finally, the information will include the date, time and place of the person's departure from Canada and, if the person arrives in the United States, the date, time and place of their arrival.

Throughout the earlier phases of this initiative, my office has consistently called on the federal government to be transparent about how it uses personal information collected from travellers and to ensure that the collection and use of this information is justified from a privacy perspective. Based on our discussions with the institutions involved and the information provided to us so far, I am generally convinced that there are important public policy objectives that this initiative is trying to address and that the personal information in question is not particularly sensitive.

That being said, there is a vast range of retention schedules being proposed across the various institutions that intend to use the information. In some cases, the information will be purged immediately where it does not meet a certain threshold. I understand this to be the case with employment insurance, for example. The biographical exit data will be shared with Employment and Social Development Canada, but will be purged immediately in instances where there is no match. However, in other cases the data could be subject to very lengthy retention periods—over 100 years, in some cases—depending on the institution receiving the information and what they are using it for. It has not always been clear to us what the rationales are behind these varying retention periods.

While we accept that collection and sharing is necessary to achieve specific public interest objectives, once these objectives are achieved, the information, in our view, should be destroyed. For that reason, I intend to carefully review retention schedules, and will request that clear justifications be provided by departments.

I am keenly aware that this type of initiative presents challenges for individuals to fully understand who has their personal information, for how long, and for what purpose. So I urge the Government of Canada to remain open and transparent, to limit the use of this information to that which is necessary, and to ensure that information-sharing agreements are in place, that privacy impact assessments, or PIAs, are conducted, and that retention periods are minimized to the extent possible.

All institutions, I'm happy to say, have committed to providing my office with privacy impact assessments 120 days in advance of implementation. We look forward to seeing more complete details of program-specific uses of the data, the safeguards, and the rationales for retention periods proposed. I also ask that we be consulted on the privacy safeguards to be included in information-sharing agreements at the earliest possible opportunity.

In conclusion, since 2013, 20 million exit records have been generated and exchanges between the U.S. and Canada now take place in “near real time”. The underlying purposes for this exchanges are reasonable, in my view, but means to ensure that information collection, sharing, and retention are privacy sensitive is very important. That is why we would expect to be consulted on a timely basis regarding the PIAs and information-sharing agreements.

Thank you for your attention. I look forward to answering your questions.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

My thanks to the witnesses for being here today. Their remarks are very enlightening.

Ms. Bos, I have a practical question.

I see how the ease of access to the information on page 2 of the passport will benefit you. That's clear from this bill, which amends the Customs Act. I imagine that not all immigration and other claims come from the United States.

According to paragraphs 92(1)(a), (b) and (c) proposed in Bill C-21, the place of arrival in the United States must be disclosed. When you process all your applications, is the information that you would receive pursuant to paragraphs 92(1)(a), (b) and (c) about anyone coming from a country other than the U.S. relevant? If someone did a Somalia-Canada return trip rather than the U.S.-Canada, would that affect your investigations? How do you see that?

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your attendance today. I just have a couple of questions.

Do you feel that the information you'll be collecting with regard to Bill C-21 will reduce IRCC's workload? If it reduces workload, will it also reduce costs?

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Thank you all for your contributions and for being here.

First, I think one of the hot topics related to Bill C-21 is the information sharing. So, for the benefit of those following the discussions from outside, could you once again talk about the procedure you follow to obtain information and how you might use the information and pass it on, if applicable?

Is that possible?

[Mieke Bos, Director General, Admissibility, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Chair, good morning.

Members of the committee, good morning and thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the entry-exit initiative, as Bill C-21 is now in second reading and being studied by this committee.

Thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the entry/exit initiative.

My name is Mieke Bos, and I am the director general for the admissibility branch at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, IRCC.

The admissibility branch within IRCC provides policy support to the managed migration of visitors to Canada and protects the health, safety, and security of Canadians. We work very closely with the Canada Border Services Agency, CBSA, on a number of files, and entry-exit is just one of them. We liaise on an ongoing basis with the CBSA on migration control and security management, including admissibility, identity management, visas, travel documents, and information sharing.

I am accompanied today by two colleagues: Emmanuelle Deault-Bonin who is the director of Identity Management and Information Sharing, and Marc-Andre Daigle, director of Strategic Initiatives and Global Case Management System Coordination in the Operations section of the department.

As you will have heard earlier in the week from the Minister of Public Safety and colleagues from CBSA, as an entry-exit initiative partner, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada will receive entry-exit data from the CBSA to support its program objectives.

Building on what you heard, I would like to focus on the significance of the entry/exit initiative for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

The essence of the entry-exit initiative is about information sharing, verification, and compliance. It is about knowing who enters Canada and who exits Canada at any given moment in time. It's about providing a complete travel history for those applying to be permanent residents or Canadian citizens. It is a system to share information between Canada and the U.S., so that a record of entry into one country becomes a record of exit from the other. The benefits of this initiative are important for my department as the entry-exit system will close a knowledge gap by providing objective information on movements into and out of Canada.

Canada has also committed to collecting exit information about the air mode by requiring airlines to submit a list of all passenger information on outbound international flights.

I cannot stress enough how access to this information will enhance program integrity across multiple lines of business by providing IRCC's officers with a tool to objectively confirm an applicant's presence in, absence from, entry into, or departure from Canada. I would underscore that this is not new. IRCC already collects travel histories from clients applying for citizenship or confirming permanent resident status.

With entry-exit records, however, IRCC officers would be able to verify the accuracy of information submitted by applicants, including their time spent inside and outside of Canada. This information may impact a decision on whether or not an individual qualifies for permanent resident status or being granted citizenship.

IRCC has been working closely with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to advance this initiative and plans to obtain entry and exit information from the CBSA to support its administration of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Citizenship Act and the Canadian Passport Order. The entry and exit information will also assist in case processing and identifying instances of fraud across IRCC's multiple lines of business.

For example, an individual's presence in or absence from Canada is a key requirement in the large volumes of applications and investigations processed annually in the temporary resident, permanent resident, asylum, citizenship, and passport streams. Taking it a step further, access to the CBSA's entry-exit information will provide IRCC decision-makers with an objective travel history to support the processing of an application or investigation. I will give you a few examples.

Accurate, objective entry-exit records will allow IRCC to strengthen the integrity of citizenship and immigration programs by being able to verify that those who claim to have resided in Canada and to have met the residency requirements have actually done so.

It will allow us to better identify temporary residents who overstay their allowable period in Canada. It will allow us to verify that sponsors in the family class are residing in Canada where required by law, and to verify relationships in compliance with conditions for spouses and partners applying or admitted in the family class. It will allow us to ensure ongoing entitlement to a Canadian travel document. It will allow us to support investigations into possible fraud in relation to immigration, citizenship, and passport travel documents, and to detect persons overstaying their visa and immigration warrant closures. It will also allow us to identify individuals who may have failed to meet residency requirements for permanent residency status or citizenship applications.

Moving on to privacy safeguards and concerns, IRCC has a strong privacy track record. As the holders of a vast amount of personal information, we are well versed in the legislative and policy requirements that guide the collection, use, and safeguarding of personal information. The existing privacy frameworks that IRCC has in place for its various business lines continue to apply.

I would echo the Minister of Public Safety's comment earlier in the week that privacy is an important component of the entry-exit initiative. IRCC will be submitting its own privacy impact assessment to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for entry-exit, and updating its application forms and website to ensure that applicants are aware that the information on their travel history will be obtained from the CBSA to support their application.

IRCC takes its privacy obligations very seriously, and together with the CBSA, and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC), we will continue to work to ensure that privacy principles are upheld.

From a functionality perspective, IRCC would only query the CBSA's entry-exit database when processing an application or when conducting an investigation. For instance, IRCC would access entry-exit data when there is a program need, for example, to confirm that an individual has met the residency requirement for a grant of citizenship.

From a client perspective, the benefits of entry-exit information means that IRCC is able to make better informed decisions that impact the lives of those clients. IRCC will use entry-exit information to enhance the processing of legitimate applications and investigations into temporary resident, permanent resident, asylum, citizenship, and passport programs.

For example, entry/exit records would make it easier for IRCC to verify that residence requirements are being met by applicants for eligibility in citizenship and immigration programs. Access to entry/exit information from the CBSA will be used to strengthen current limited travel history information found in passport stamps, which may not always be available or add to processing delays.

Collecting the entry-exit records of Canadian citizens will enhance the integrity of IRCC citizenship, immigration, and travel documents programs. Entry-exit travel records would support provisions under IRPA legislation relating to sponsorship residency and verification of family relationships. Entry-exit information would support investigations concerning the revocation of citizenship and the misuse or abuse of Canadian travel documents such as the Canadian passport.

Members of the committee, as you can tell from my remarks, from an IRCC perspective we very much welcome your consideration of Bill C-21. The information that will become available to us once entry-exit is fully functional is important to the work of my department.

With that, I conclude my opening remarks.

Thank you again for the opportunity to be here with you today.

My colleagues and I will be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for paying attention to a most sensitive issue that falls under the values of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: privacy protection.

You said that you're getting more and more calls and messages with people's fears about their privacy protection. In addition, your organization made its own comments. You said you are concerned about the negative impact of the exchange of information prompted by Bill C-21.

Are those concerns and comments the result of a misunderstanding of Bill C-21? Do you believe that this bill focuses on sharing information that is limited basically to what is on page 2 of the passport and some logistical information? If not, do your concerns simply stem from an analysis based on hypothetical situations and speculations?

[Eric Jacksch, As an Individual]

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Eric Jacksch, and I'm pleased to be here to discuss Bill C-21.

By way of background, I have a B.A. in sociology-criminology and started my career working as a correctional officer and probation and parole officer for the Province of Ontario. I've also had the great privilege of serving in the Canadian Forces Reserve, both the infantry and intelligence branches. My interest in high-tech, combined with a part-time software development business, drew me to Ottawa during the tech boom in the mid-nineties, and I quickly specialized in what we now call cybersecurity.

I have more than 20 years experience in information security, as well as a background in physical security. I am board-certified in security management by ASIS International, and hold their certified protection professional, or CPP designation. I also hold the certified information security manager designation from ISACA, previously known as the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, and the certified information systems security professional or CISSP designation from the international information system security certification consortium, also known as (ISC)².

So far in my career, I've had the pleasure of providing security services to a variety of federal, provincial, and municipal governments, as well as some of the world's largest banks, automakers, insurance companies, and postal organizations. Consulting engagements have taken me across Canada and the United States, and to the U.K., Switzerland, Spain, Netherlands, Japan, and Singapore. I have taught courses, spoken at conferences, and written numerous articles.

Perhaps most relevant to these proceedings, I have performed risk and privacy assessments for Canadian federal government departments, as well as provincial and private sector organizations required to meet Government of Canada security requirements.

A significant challenge in cybersecurity is education and awareness. In addition to running securityshelf.com, a security news aggregation site, I write a column for IT in Canada. That first put the issues underlying Bill C-21 on my radar.

Back in March 2016, just after Prime Minister Trudeau's visit to Washington, I read articles in the media suggesting that Canada was gearing up to start sharing more personal information with the United States. I thought it would make an interesting article for my column, so I did some research.

As it turned out, the media coverage was mostly hype. However, it did make for an interesting article entitled, “No, the sky is not falling”. You're welcome to visit canadait.com to read that and more of my articles.

I'm sure you've all been briefed on the history, but in summary, as I understand it, in December 2011, then prime minister Steven Harper and president Barack Obama released the beyond the border action plan for perimeter security and economic competitiveness. As part of the plan, Canada and the United States committed to establishing a coordinated entry and exit information system that includes sharing information so that the record of a land entry into one country can be used to establish an exit record from the other.

According to the CBSA, phase one ran from September 2012 to January 2013, during which time:

...both countries tested their capacity to exchange and reconcile biographic entry information of third-country nationals (non-U.S. or Canadian citizens), permanent residents of Canada who are not U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents of the U.S. who are not Canadian citizens [having crossed] at four land ports of entry in British Columbia/Washington State and Ontario/New York.

In June 2013, phase two expanded the program to cover all common land border ports of entry with the processing capacity to capture traveller passage as an electronic record. During this phase, information was not shared “on Canadian [or U.S.] citizens, Registered Indians, or protected persons.”

What we are essentially talking about today is the next phase of the entry-exit initiative, and expanding information sharing to all travellers at land border crossings. It's understandable that Canadians are concerned about the prospect of Canada and the United States sharing personal information. From a security perspective, I see three areas of potential concern.

First, there's the actual implementation of information sharing between CBSA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. To understand that impact, we need to consider what's being shared. I'll quote the privacy impact assessment summary for phase two, published by the CBSA:

At entry, each country presently collects the following data elements as agreed to for the Phase II exchange: Name (first, middle, last), Date of Birth, Nationality/Citizenship, Gender, Document information (type, number and country of issuance); these elements were demonstrated to be effective in reconciling entry and exit information in Phase I. The only data to be exchanged, which are not already known to the receiving country, will be the date of entry, time of entry and the port through which the individual has entered.

Assuming that information sharing is constrained to this set of biographical data, which I also see reflected in Bill C-21., the exchange of information between CBSA and the U.S. CBP has no practical impact on honest, law-abiding travellers.

The second area is how this information is protected in transit and rest. Canada has proven methodologies to assess cybersecurity risk, and specific guidance on the security controls required to effectively protect this type of information is readily available. Assuming that the cybersecurity aspects of this data sharing are taken seriously, there is minimal risk to Canadians.

The third and perhaps most difficult area is ensuring that information is used only for the intended purposes. When any entity, public or private, has information, there's always a temptation to find new uses for it. Abuse of information by individuals is a problem. Informal information sharing between organizations can give rise to serious security and privacy concerns.

I understand that the Privacy Commissioner has already been involved, and I hope that continues. I also applaud CBSA for publishing a summary of their privacy impact assessment online. As legislators, I urge you to ensure that appropriate privacy controls are in place and to make it clear to Canadians how and under what circumstances this entry and exit information may be shared outside of CBSA.

Section 6 of the charter guarantees every citizen the right to enter, remain in, and leave Canada, but it doesn't say that they can do so anonymously. Canada already tracks entry and exit information for air travellers, and from a security perspective, expanding it to land border crossings makes good sense. I don't foresee any significant security obstacles in the proposed approach.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this topic. I welcome your questions.

[Brenda McPhail, Director, Privacy, Technology and Surveillance Project, Canadian Civil Liberties Association]

Thank you to the committee for allowing the Canadian Civil Liberties Association the opportunity to appear before you today and speak on Bill C-21.

I'm going to focus on three topics: first, the need to for appropriate frameworks including explicit privacy protection for information sharing that happens between the CBP and the CBSA; second, the need to ensure that critical details about how the collection of this information will take place receives public attention and parliamentary debate rather than relying excessively on regulations; and third, the need to increase CBSA accountability commensurately with this significant increase in their powers.

The information that Canada will collect and share with the United States after Bill C-21 is passed includes biographical information as well as the date, time, and place of entry or exit for every traveller crossing the Canadian border, including Canadian citizens.

This is information on literally millions of Canadians. StatsCan suggests that in January 2017 alone Canadians made 3.6 million trips to the U.S. It also allows for information about every person who boards a plane, train, bus, or ship—if those conveyances are prescribed, because that prescription is left to regulation—in Canada to be collected and shared.

When the beyond the border agreement was signed, CCLA along with the ACLU in the United States and Privacy International in the U.K. developed and released a series of core legal principles for sharing the U.S.-Canada security perimeter. In respect of information sharing, we recommended that it should be restricted to the particular purpose—not used, disseminated, or stored for secondary uses. It needs to be subject to rules limiting the duration of retention to reasonable periods, and it should be subject to independent oversight review and accountability procedures. In particular, when the laws of the two countries differ, the highest standard that grants the best protections to individuals should prevail.

As an example of the problems introduced by different privacy standards, we're concerned that at the time this bill was originally discussed in 2014 one source suggested that Canada had decided to limit the time they could retain personally identifiable information to 15 years. The U.S. has said they reserve the right to retain it for 75 years or longer. Even 15 years is a long time, and it's worth considering whether or not that's the right time frame. It is highly questionable that Canada could maintain control over the uses of information through a memorandum of agreement with the U.S. for as long as a lifetime .

We believe the responsibility for taking such principles seriously should be explicit in the legislation. In addition to the current amendments to Bill C-21, we would suggest including an amendment to add a preamble similar to that found in the recent national security legislation, Bill C-59, and similar to that found in section 3 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which is another act that CBSA administers. Both of these pieces of legislation explicitly identify the responsibility of customs enforcement officers to carry out their responsibilities in a manner that safeguards the rights and freedoms of Canadians and that respects the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. One might argue that it's incumbent on them to do so whether or not that clause is inserted in the legislation, but we would argue that there is both practical and symbolic value in including it in the Customs Act at this time.

On a pragmatic level, one way to ensure that privacy protections are in place is to conduct privacy impact assessments. Clearly, for a project of this scope, which is going to collect information on millions of Canadians, these assessments should be undertaken before information is collected under this legislation and ideally in time to inform the regulations. The assessments should be reviewed by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and an executive summary should be publicly reported.

We realize that Bill C-21 is enabling legislation and will continue a process that has already begun. In fact, there were privacy impact assessments for the pilot stages of this project before Canadian information was collected, but these assessments need to be updated in light of the expanded collection.

CBSA also committed to conducting an analysis on all uses of personal information by all parties involved in the sharing of biographic entry data, and while that analysis to my knowledge is not publicly available, I would suggest that, as an important precautionary step before expanding the scope, the committee might wish to see if that analysis actually took place, and figure out how it's working now before we expand it.

I'd also just like to flag that in 2015, in his spring report, the Auditor General expressed concerns that the CBSA's project management framework was not conducting risk assessments at appropriate times. That would be another area where the committee might want to make sure the technological infrastructures as well as the policy infrastructures around this information are appropriately secure.

In relation to regulations, clause 2 of Bill C-21 amends the act so that proposed subsection 92(1) will allow the CBSA to collect information from prescribed sources in the prescribed circumstances, within the prescribed time, and in the prescribed manner, and then allow the Governor in Council to make regulations to fill in those blanks. The problem is that leaving so much to be prescribed means a process that is less public, less transparent, and less accountable.

In simpler terms, who we are going to collect the information from, why, when, and how is not clearly specified anywhere in the legislation, but these aren't inconsequential details. Knowing them would allow us to evaluate the nature of the collection process, weigh the potential risks to privacy, and better understand the potential costs of a leak or breach. Knowing the source of information allows us to judge its integrity. Knowing why and how it can be collected allows us to assess the proportionality of the collection in relation to its purpose. Clichés sometimes ring true: the devil is in the details.

While we appreciate the need to keep the legislation technologically neutral and flexible, flexible should not mean completely open-ended, particularly because regulations can be changed quietly, largely out of public view, with a much less democratic process than the one we're engaging in today. What current drafters intend to include in the regulations may not be what subsequent governments would choose.

We are, at this time, witness to a dramatic change in policy direction in one of our neighbours. We should take that lesson to heart. When we're talking about practices that engage charter-protected rights to privacy and mobility, safeguards should be enshrined in law. To this end we recommend the committee consider what aspects of the collection process could and should reasonably be included in the legislation.

Lastly, this bill expands CBSA powers but does not increase accountability. CBSA is still the only federal agency with security and law enforcement powers that doesn't have comprehensive, independent oversight or review of its actions. We argue that it's unwise to continue expanding their powers without increasing that accountability framework.

CBSA will now be allowed to share information for the purposes of enforcing the Employment Insurance Act and the Old Age Security Act. If mistakes are made, that could have highly detrimental effects on individuals. There should be a possibility for individuals to appeal the accuracy of the information to an independent body.

CBSA's role in controlling the exit of goods and people from Canada is expanding. The bill creates a new requirement for people exiting Canada now to answer the questions of a CBSA officer truthfully. Answering falsely is an offence. This is a broad power. There is no question that people should have to respond truthfully to a CBSA officer, but I'm sure we've all seen recent stories about agents on both sides of the border asking questions that people are alleging relate to racial background, religious beliefs, and political opinions. Potentially allowing some form of this intrusive and problematic questioning on exit as well as entry doubles the opportunity for potential abuses of power.

While creating an independent review body for the CBSA is clearly beyond the scope of this bill, allowing a potential escalation of a non-problem while simultaneously failing to provide a recourse to an independent civilian body to receive complaints, review policies or officer conduct, or investigate potential misconduct is simply wrong. Every time the CBSA's powers are increased, the lack of an independent review body to provide additional and necessary safeguards becomes more problematic.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide these comments. I look forward to your questions.

Bill C-48--Time Allocation Motion

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed in this, and we as a party are offended.

There was an agreement made two and a half weeks ago when this session started that we would work together with the government and not be obstructionist, but work to help pass bills that we were able to support.

The result so far is that the government has passed Bill S-2, C-21, C-47, and Bill C-58 all without time allocation, and progress was being made on three more bills, Bill C-55, C-57, and C-60.

There was one bill that we said we had a lot of interest in and would like to have enough time for all of our members to be able to speak, and that was Bill C-48. Now the House leader has broken her word. There is no other way to interpret this. If this is the way she is going to start this session after we have worked in such good faith for the last two and half weeks, all the members know that it will be a case of here we go again: a repeat of the failure we saw in the spring session.

Where in the world is the House leader's integrity and ability to keep her word?

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

I'm going to ask a very broad question, I guess. We know, as we move forward in this legislation, Mr. Chair and committee, we're going to be expected to go through some of the provisions line by line, to make sure we are in agreement and can move forward.

CBSA is the law enforcement agency that plays out how Bill C-21 is going to be operationalized. You have had a chance to review this. I would like to ask all three of you individually what suggestions, in an ideal world, you would make to this committee to maybe examine differently or tweak a little bit—from your opinions—to make Bill C-21 even better than what's being proposed currently.