Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, let me introduce myself. I was the speaker of the National Assembly of Quebec for six and a half years and a parliamentarian for 25 years. I often lecture about ethics. I have written numerous texts and I have worked with institutes of ethics, particularly the one at the Université Laval. I am active in the Mouvement démocratie nouvelle, which is principally, but not exclusively, focussed on the reform of the voting system. I have been its president for some years.
To get tothe crux of the issue, we know that the Public Health Agency of Canada contracted Telus to collect personal cellphone data from millions of Canadians without their knowledge or consent.
There appeared to be no transparency in the operation, which theMinister of Health defended nevertheless. We also know that the Privacy Commissioner of Canada—we found this out very recently—had been informed about the government's intentions, but was kept at a distance from the process. The consequence is that basically three problems became clear.
First, in terms of ethics, the whole thing was done in secret. So the operation was hidden from view and Canadians were not told that the operation was happening.
Second, when the Privacy Commissioner of Canada showed up, he was basically kept at a distance. By keeping the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at a distance, the government made it impossible for one of the mechanisms in the act, namely the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, to play its role. Not only did the government keep at a distance the agency responsible for overseeing the way in which political leaders handle the protection of privacy, but it also acted in secrecy and made no apologies for doing so.
Third, the issue was normalized. When certain things were revealed and votes were held on the matter in the House of Commons, members who had passed the motion at committee ended up on the government side.
What is the consequence? When there is no transparency, when the behaviour does not use the mechanisms provided for in the act to protect Canadians and their privacy, their trust in the political institutions and in their political leaders, their elected representatives, is undermined.
Each year, there are surveys on the level of trust that Canadians have in their political leaders. Unfortunately, for years, all the political science studies tell us that the level of trust is very low. Each time something else happens, or there is another kerfuffle—a Toronto newspaper made this one public—that runs counter to the way in which leaders should behave, the public's trust does not go up, it goes down or it stagnates.
We need to recognize that trust is the basic building block of democracy. A democracy cannot work if the public does not have a minimum level of trust in their elected representatives, their political leaders.
These days, we can easily see how a dictatorship works. You don't need any involvement from Parliament. One man decides to send a part of the world into war, and there we are at war. Conversely, in a democracy, mechanisms exist. Mechanisms are a social contract between the public and its political leaders. The contract is built on trust, which is why democracies, like the parliaments in Ottawa, Quebec City and anywhere else, have provided themselves with mechanisms, codes of ethics and codes of conduct to safeguard that level of trust.
For example, the National Assembly of Quebec has a code of ethics and a code of conduct. One of the points in that code deals with the strength of one's word. I could have chosen others but that is one example.
Let me go back to this situation, this affair. As the previous witness said, it's not really the end of the world. It's not the scandal of the century in terms of affronts to privacy. But it is one factor in a number of factors that end up combining with a whole bunch of factors that, over the years, undermine the public's trust.
When we don't consider that to be important, when we normalize an event like this—