Justice Committee on May 13th, 2014

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just at the start, I think I have to point out something. Some people have been commenting at committee today that if a section of the bill is found to be unconstitutional—and I say “if”—then somehow the entire bill is gone. Of course, we know that's not true. If a section is struck down, the rest of the bill survives, so I don't think we need to go down that road.

Somebody mentioned a code of conduct for social media—I forget who it was of our witnesses today—and I have to say that after hearing some of the things I've just heard, especially from you, Mr. Canning, it seems like a really interesting idea that at some point we perhaps could look at. It sounds to me as though that could be one road that we need to look at, because if there's a code of conduct that prohibits these types of activities, then these companies could shut down these accounts and other things. But that's just an aside.

Ms. Todd, I wanted to ask you this just quickly. When you gave your opening statement, you talked about your concerns with privacy. I want to understand where your concern comes from. Which part of the bill do you find concerning with respect to privacy?

[Carol Todd]

I read over parts of the bill and there were little clauses—I don't have the bill with me—that talked about cable and talked about.... There were three different clauses and amendments that confused me, and I wasn't sure how that fit to cyberbullying and cyber-harassment and the sharing of intimate images, which is why I put that in there.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

Right...in your statement.

[Carol Todd]

But in respect to a crime that was committed, where someone shared an image or someone has cyber-harassed and has said defaming words—Glen and I could talk to you for hours about that—that all comes with the need for processes and the things to search those out. I do agree with that, but they need to be done expediently, before someone hides or throws their computer into the ocean.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

That's what everyone's talked about at the committee. We want to try and get the balance right, and we do. We recognize that the distribution of intimate images has to be part of it, but I think we also recognize that we have to find the way to make sure the police have the powers to move quickly, to make sure that distribution ceases as quickly as possible.

If anyone wants to respond to that, that's fine. I'll use the rest of my time to say, if any of the witnesses want to respond to anything else that's been raised, please, go ahead.

[Allan Hubley]

Thank you. If it's all right, I'll respond first to that.

When the bill was first tabled, we actually sat and started looking at it, and our three families got to spend time that night actually looking over things and talking about it. There was the question around the cable part. It was something to do with the cable signal. The way I interpreted that personally, an example I was thinking of, is how you have someone parked outside your house, your Wi-Fi is open, and they tap into your Wi-Fi and start sending out images or messages to people and attacking people under your name, if they can get into your account like that. That's what I saw that clause as being able to deal with.

Now someone else I heard on a talk radio show interpreted that to mean that your bill is going to make sure that I pay my Rogers bill on time. Well, I haven't heard any parliamentarian worried about me paying Rogers or Bell, or whoever my provider is.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

We're not worried about that.

[Allan Hubley]

I was on a talk radio show in Montreal, right after the bill was tabled, and they had a legal expert on there. I was saying, I'm not the expert here on law, give me an example in this bill that causes you concern that we should allow the cyberbullying piece to continue while we sort out these concerns. What I want is protection for the kids. If there's something wrong in this bill, a clause or whatever, as you mentioned earlier, it can be struck down; it can be taken out.

I listened to the gentleman that tabled the bill—and thank you very much for your kind comments—but no one's giving me specifics about what's wrong with this bill. It's not that we doubt that there are concerns with the bill. I'm sure there are, but give us a specific about what's wrong in there. What's the damage it's going to do to somebody, in the interim, while it protects Canadian children? That's our concern.

I read into this bill—and I'm going to wrap up, Chair—there's a need for a warrant. I saw a lot more language in there about who you have to go to in order to get a warrant, the steps that you have to go through, and the production, and all that stuff, than I read about cyberbullying. If anything, if you want to improve that bill, as the lady at the front said—I'm sorry, I didn't get your name—put some more stuff in there about cyberbullying. Great idea. You know, we can offer, all of us can offer you some great suggestions on that.

I'll sum it up as this. Give us some examples of what's wrong with this bill. Why can't we go forward with it? Then maybe we could be a little more sympathetic as we try to protect our children while waiting for this bill. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

I have at least two more people who want to speak to it.

Ms. Reda, and Ms. Todd.

[Alycha Reda]

I actually want to direct it to Mr. Wilks' question, if that's okay, about what police officers can do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

He opened the door, so you can say what you want.

[Alycha Reda]

Okay.

Well, I agree, because I'm going into policing. I want to be a police officer, one day. In my travels around Canada, and speaking with children, the one thing that I noticed when having police officers invite me into their community, a lot of kids, when they come forward to me, and I bring the disclosure to the police officer, they come back and they say, “Why weren't you in the room with me? They made me feel like crap. They told me to not lie.” A female officer, I won't say where, said, “You better not be lying to me. I have way too much time on my hands right now.” She said that to a young girl who was 13, who ended up being abused by her stepbrother, who came forward to me years later.

So revictimization.... Learn to just take the time and have patience. Sit down with them. Don't revictimize them. This is why kids and adults, and people in general, do not trust officers. I still some days do not trust officers, even in my own community.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Ms. Todd.

[Carol Todd]

I keep hearing about Facebook, but I want everyone to know that there are many other social media sites that kids go to besides Facebook that are causing harm out there with the images and with the words. I'd put in that, if we had an international code of conduct.... There have been times in Canada, when we try and get a social media site that's in the U.S., or like Ask.fm, that's in Latvia, and we can't cross those international boundaries. We need those international boundaries crossed in order to protect our kids.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Mr. Canning, you had your hand up.

[Glenford Canning]

Yes, sir.

I want to address your point, and I think right now when you look at Bill C-13.... I've read opposition to it the last few days. I've read people's concerns about it, and some of them raise some legitimate stuff, but no one is offering something better right now. That's my problem. I don't want to see this whole thing thrown out, but at the same time, I would like the people who are saying.... I'd prefer it if they said they had a better idea. If it's a better idea, I'm 100% for it. I don't care where it comes from or who's doing it or anything like that. If there's something better, let's go with that, but please do something.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Ms. Chiles, do you have anything you would like to add?

[Kimberly Chiles]

With regard to what Carol Todd is saying, one of the things that I came up against was that these sites are often set up offshore, so an international code of conduct would be very lucrative in the sense that they wouldn't be so untouchable.

Host sites as well, things like GoDaddy. It took an instance of possible child pornography for the FBI to act on this, but I feel as an adult maybe the issue of bullying is often made to be a childhood issue. I think it's very much an issue for everyone, and I would like to see us have more power when it comes to fairly obvious accusations. When I say my picture is online and I didn't approve it and you can look at it, what more proof do you need?

I think section 230 makes them untouchable, so the battle over section 230 begins. There was an update a couple of days ago, and it's entering Congress in the U.S. It's an international issue, I think.

I'm not used to public speaking, so I apologize for my being all over the place, but I think it's really important that everybody is familiar with as many aspects of this as they can be. I'm very much of the mindset that an international code of conduct would be beneficial and possibly more so than something like this bill that covers a few too many details at once.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much.

Our final speaker with a couple of minutes is Madame Boivin.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We have indeed been talking a lot about Facebook, and this applies to more or less everyone. There's a tendency to pick a fairly high-profile group that all young people and adults are familiar with. I want to use my last few minutes to send a message, because I'm sure it will be heard by the right people.

The Facebook people made a special point to come and see us. No doubt, other colleagues met with them as well, given their concerns about the bill's effect on privacy.

And I think, like us, the politicians, the Facebook people have a vested interest in hearing what you have to say about cyberbullying. So, just as we made ourselves available to meet with them and hear what they had to say, we feel it is important for them to appear before us and answer the committee's questions. Once again, my message is this. I know the clerk is doing everything humanly possible to invite them, as well as representatives from Google and other such companies, to appear before the committee. I hope they will hear this message and not avoid us.

Mr. Canning and Mr. Hubley, fear not. We are going to propose some real measures. That is the message I want to send today.

The idea today was more to hear your stories, to see what you need, and what needs to be done. We're no fools. We're not going to say this is no good. That's not the way we proceed, not on our side anyway. We want to see a few tweaks, not necessarily super-major, but things could be done to this bill to make it palatable, so we're reasonably sure it won't have problems in court that we can foresee.

Nobody ever claimed that if one clause is gone then the whole bill falls. I don't think anybody would be that idiotic, especially around this table, but if the court arrived at a conclusion that a warrant was obtained on bad...and it has a problem constitutionally, and all the proof is attached to it, everybody knows what happens then. That's what we want to avoid. We'll make sure the tools are there for the police to do their job fast and make sure that no other situations like this happen and that it is supported by our framework of laws.

That is the important message we wanted to say, but of course we have some amendments that we will present to make sure of all those aspects. Some witnesses came to our committee and made some pretty good suggestions, knowing full well how to make sure that this bill is all right and does what it's supposed to do. That's the message I wanted to convey to you guys.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Merci, madame.

I want to thank all the witnesses for joining us today. It was a very special meeting for us hearing your individual and very personal stories. We want to thank you for sharing those with the committee and with Canada. Hopefully this bill will move forward over the next few weeks and get through committee and back to the House so that it can move forward.

Thank you very much.

We will see you on Thursday. The meeting is adjourned.