As I was saying, we created this position to make sure we get the information. The role of the ethics committee was to make sure that the Ethics Commissioner had all the means and tools at his disposal to do his job.
This summer, we made a decision that I am not very supportive of. I'm telling you that sincerely. I am passionate about politics. I love politics. When I was 14, I subscribed to the House of Commons minutes, Hansard. Who does that? I think our system is important.
We made a decision that I'm not comfortable with. We said we were going to gather information. When that decision was made at the time, I told my colleagues around this table that if they wanted to do that, we could do that, but that we would have to take all the necessary steps to ensure that this information would go directly to the Ethics Commissioner, through the clerk. Unfortunately, I was not able to convince my colleagues. I insisted that we ourselves should ensure that this information was protected.
Some people around the table may have realized that they went a little too far. So arrangements have been made so that if you insist on getting this information, only members of Parliament can see it, behind closed doors, and their staff will not have access to it. Just to keep that door closed, members will not be able to bring their electronic devices with them when they need to access information in the presence of the clerk. Mr. Chair, I predict that this could have serious consequences in the future, not necessarily for us, since we may one day find ourselves on the opposition benches—which would be normal, and even healthy—but for other members of Parliament.
Once you are in government and that door is opened, you will see that it makes no sense for MPs to investigate other MPs. You may think that we should have put brakes on or set some benchmarks. I am repeating my plea to my colleagues to stop this while there is still time and let the Ethics Commissioner do his job. Otherwise, let us make sure that we put very strong safeguards in place to limit the release of these documents. I think that's fundamental.
It's like the law that governs the popular financing of politicians and political parties.
It's exactly the same reasoning. That's why we have a Chief Electoral Officer. We must not play with the system or play games in these matters. That would be detrimental to the system and it would not be in the public interest. We do not want to see what we see happening with our neighbours, where anything is acceptable. They have crossed the line in many areas and they are experiencing the fallout from all of this. We need to avoid that.
I think our role is to strengthen the role of the Ethics Commissioner. We can do this in a number of ways, and I would like us to do it unanimously. I sit on another committee, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, which is chaired by a member of the official opposition. In the last session, that committee was chaired by a member of Parliament for whom I have a great deal of respect, much like yourself. This committee has always been able to produce unanimous reports. There is a strength behind that, especially since it deals with difficult issues. I hope that, under your chairmanship, we will succeed in doing the same thing here while always respecting standards, in a desirable and healthy context. In this way, we can do a great service to all Canadians.
As I said, and this is the common thread running through my comments, I invite you all to take a step back and see what we can do to strengthen the role of the Ethics Commissioner and see to it that he has all the tools he needs to ensure that Canadians have confidence in his work, that he can review everything, that his findings are his own and that we act accordingly. If we muddy the waters, it's going to take us in a direction that everyone will regret sooner or later.
In conclusion, I think we have demonstrated the importance of letting the commissioner do his job. Mr. Barrett, Mr. Angus, Mr. Dong, Ms. Shanahan and all those who spoke before me have made the point that there are much more important things we need to focus on. We talked about the importance of contact tracing in this pandemic.
There is an application that you can use and that is an excellent tool. It is COVID Alert. However, we have to make sure of one thing: that we always respect the personal data of individuals. I think we have done it, but we can verify it.
Ms. Gaudreau, Mr. Angus and I have all talked about the importance of conducting a study on artificial intelligence and, more importantly, facial recognition. Software already exists, but the development of this type of product was interrupted during this crisis because everyone is wearing a mask. This gives us a small opportunity to review this issue and consult with privacy experts.
As a Black Canadian, I can tell you that this type of software has a significant margin of error.
It becomes 10 times more inaccurate when it is trying to identify, frankly, anyone who isn't white.
The system that has been developed for artificial intelligence of facial recognition is not good. I can't think of a single law that I've broken in my life, but It means, Mr. Speaker, that I could be flying somewhere and all of a sudden my name's going to be flagged because of this faulty software. That will affect me and anybody who looks like me. That's just not right.
We need to establish guidelines. We identified this back in February—February 19, if I recall correctly—that this was going to be one of our priority studies for our committee. We should get to that.
We should let the Ethics Commissioner do his work and we should allow ourselves to focus on the areas where we really have an appropriate role to play. To me, that is just so important.
Mr. Speaker, I would like us to get to that point. I would like us to let the person who is charged with the responsibility of examining the affairs of members to be given that responsibility. We could play a supportive role, making sure that he has all the tools and the access to the information that he needs. If he doesn't, we should invite him to our committee to let us know where he needs help, and we could provide that help.
Mr. Speaker, if we go down the route of investigating ourselves, our families, our relatives, investigating our neighbours and friends, we're going down the wrong road. Sincerely, we are going down the wrong road.
Having said that, Mr. Chair, I'll turn the floor over to you.
Thank you for giving me this time to express myself. I know you are new to this committee. I hope that you found my comments relevant and useful, and that they will help you in your deliberations leading to a decision.
Thank you very much.