Very good.
This is for colleagues who were feeling that PV-10 was too much, too fast and too quick; who are interested in privacy; and who understand the concerns of the experts we heard from, the Privacy Commissioner and the Chief Electoral Officer. Everybody hears those concerns and wants to do something about it, because how could you not? That would be my argument. In that case, NDP-21 is for you.
Here's what it does. It works with the Chief Electoral Officer to develop directives in consultation with the Privacy Commissioner and to work with the parties to establish guidelines. Those guidelines are then given into directives, and the Chief Electoral Officer can use those directives. It doesn't invoke PIPEDA. This was one of the concerns I heard, particularly from Liberal members, that PIPEDA was too much; it was too much on parties. This does not insist upon that.
This is exactly our job—to independently, as MPs, get elected to a committee, listen to the witnesses, glean the best information we can from them, and do right by Canadians. I suspect, or I presume, I suppose, there's a certain amount of pressure on colleagues to not vote for things that folks back in the party offices don't want to do.
This has two effects, one in practice and one in support of good behaviour. In practice, I think having real privacy policies that are in force, that work with our Chief Electoral Officer...which, again, this entire committee has referenced dozens of times and holds up in high esteem. It also has a secondary effect, where if anybody within the party structure is tempted to do something—such as, I don't know, a robocall into ridings illegally—these types of policies prevent that behaviour, which is what the law is supposed to do. It's not just to catch people when they do wrong. It's also to give enough warning so that when people are tempted, they're not really tempted to enact it.
I really believe we heard everything we need to hear from every witness. If a colleague can recall the testimony of a single witness who said something like this was a bad idea, from all the witnesses we heard, or if colleagues want to look through the ethics and privacy committee, which studied this as well, to find a single witness of any political persuasion who came forward and said Parliament shouldn't do something like this, I would love to hear that testimony. I feel pretty confident that we didn't receive that testimony, and neither did our corresponding committee at privacy and ethics receive that testimony.
A number of us on that committee visited Washington last year. Facebook and Congress and Twitter and a whole bunch of groups that are involved with this issue all gave us the same warning: Your laws are insufficient. We thought we had enough protections. We did not. When a hack happens, it's too late. When the illegal robocalls go out, it's too late.
I just implore colleagues that this is as soft a move as we can make while still ensuring that we get the job done. Like, really; the pleas to study more will be pretty weak when something bad happens. When we're asked what we did about it and we say “Well, we promised to study it more”, we'll hear, “Well, thanks”.We don't do this for any other section of law.
I'll end with this, Chair. This puts some of us in what I almost want to say is a direct conflict between our responsibilities as members of Parliament and members of political parties. The political parties generally don't want this. I know: I've talked to your parties about this. They don't want it. And I know why. They'd rather have it as it is, because status quo means nobody has any idea what the political parties are gathering and what we do with that information.
We don't work for political parties. We may represent them, and fly under various banners, but we work for the people who sent us here. I believe if you sat down with the average Canadian and told them what happens when they click on a survey or when they press “Like” on Facebook; what the parties do with the data; that the parties have very little to no protection to keep that secure; and the potential consequences if that data is breached, then the average Canadian of whatever political persuasion, from the right to the left, would say, “That's crazy. Can you do anything about it?”
Here's something we can do about it. I'll read from the amendment:
385.2 (1) The Chief Electoral Officer may develop directives, in consultation with the Privacy Commissioner, in respect of the protection of personal information by registered parties.
In proposed subsection 385.2(2), the subsections that are named turn guidelines into directives. Proposed subsection 385.2(3) would read:
The Chief Electoral Officer may deregister a registered party if that party's policy for the protection of personal information does not comply with a directive made under this section.
There is a consequence. Posting your policy on your website with no consequence—come on—is totally meaningless. It's checking a box. You don't even have to do it, and if you put up some policy and you don't do it, there's no consequence to you breaking whatever it is you wrote down.
That's not taking this issue seriously. This is an attempt to take the issue seriously.
Elizabeth's motion did more, and we supported it. This motion takes us down the path of us getting serious about privacy. It's 2018, and we're going to the polls in 2019. If anyone believes that this problem isn't only going to get worse for 2023, you're dreaming, and that's what the experts told us.
Don't listen to your parties on this.
We did not support Elizabeth's initial initiatives on this two or three years ago. It took a long conversation with some of the people running my party, saying to suck it up, that they're going to have to develop some privacy policy and we're going to have to be accountable if we break it—real ones—and so they did.
I'm here and able to say it, and not with everybody in my party who works on the data side thrilled about it, but I don't care; I don't work for them.
I ask members to support this amendment. We should do this. The evidence told us we should do this.
